Today in lunch block SMArt, we finished up our Powerpoint on Paleolithic Paintings and began Planning our Pictogram Projects! (I'm having fun with this alliteration.) We reviewed the three main caves: Chauvet (France), Lascaux (France), and Altamira (Spain), and talked about some of the paintings found inside.
This painting (above) is the only painting in Lascaux Cave that depicts a human. We spent some time trying to figure out why the human isn't depicted in nearly as much detail as the bison (and why there's a bird on a stick). Although we can't know for sure, we think that humans simply weren't as important to the painter as animals, and also that the painter most likely didn't see many humans because of the secluded lifestyle during that time. As for the bird on the stick - we've settled on the "Paleolithic Lawn Flamingo Theory."
We discussed the main theme of this unit further: Why did these people create art? Because we can't know the answer for sure, we came up with lots of plausible answers. Perhaps they created art to teach lessons, or to tell stories. Maybe they were filling free time, since tools like the atlatl made it so they weren't spending all day hunting. It's possible that they were decorating the caves, trying to impress others with their ability to hunt, or using the paintings as target practice. Or maybe, they were just creating art for the sake of creating art - something that we can relate to thousands and thousands of years later!
We watched a great video about pictograms (above) and made some connections to the Paleolithic Art we had just been studying. Afterwards, we began planning out own projects: a series of pictograms that tell how to do something! My group was making instructions for a banana split. I can't wait to see the final products!
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