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Art of the Ice Age [slideshow]

In 2003 Paul Bahn led the team that discovered the first Ice Age cave art at Creswell Crags in Britain. In recent years, many more discoveries have been made including the expanding phenomenon of ‘open-air Ice Age art’. Information gathered from advanced dating methods have revolutionized our knowledge of how cave art was created and when it was created. For instance, we now know that the art found at Creswell Crags must have been created at least 12,800 years ago. This may seem like a long time ago, but other examples of cave art date back 40,000 years.

In the slideshow below, you can see some of the earliest examples of art on the planet, and take a tour of prehistoric art throughout the world.

Featured image credit: Rock painted panel with figures of bison in the cave of La Covaciella, Spain by Locutus Borg. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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