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Image: mmn.com

We humans have been at it a long, long time. Making stuff, painting pictures, carving symbols and animals into rock, all in the interest of making our surroundings a little nicer to look at.

Image: HeritageDaily.com

We’re getting closer and closer to pinpointing the exact era in our history when art came to occupy our minds, and with a recent finding in France, it looks like humans first picked up a brush about 37,000 years ago. The recently unearthed artwork is a huge 1.5 metric ton block of limestone with images painted on it and carved into it. It is believed to have adorned the home of ancient reindeer hunters in what is now France.

Image: history.com

No wonder so many of the masters have been French – they’ve had more practice than the rest of us! The subject matter is pretty hard to make out, but apparently there are some figures and a few carved elements of anatomy (ahem!). Pretty controversial stuff for way back then, which just goes to show you that artists have always been pushing boundaries.

I wonder what art from today will look like in 37,000 years. If you have any ideas, please share them with us here on WallSpin!

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It’s hard to say what’s more intense: Werner Herzog‘s choice of subject matter or his voice. Listening to his droll, deadpan narration is like watching a ship sink — but I mean that in the best possible way. His latest documentary, “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” applies his trademark intensity (in 3D!) to an uncharacteristically sublime topic: ancient cave paintings.

In 1994, incredible paintings were discovered in a cave above the Ardèche River in southern France. The images, mostly of Ice Age animals, are far more detailed and realistically rendered than most cave art. Whoever the ancient artist or artists were, they had some natural talent.

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The images are estimated to have been created as long as 33,000 years ago, predating other known cave art by roughly 7,000 years. Owing to a landslide that occurred about 20,000 years ago, blocking off the entrance to the cave, it has gone virtually untouched by modern man. After its discovery in the mid-nineties, it was promptly seized by the French government in order to preserve the images for posterity.

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By all accounts, Herzog’s film is an accomplishment simply in and of the fact that he and his crew gained access to the ancient art gallery. I haven’t seen the film, but judging from the trailer, I’m guessing that once inside, Herzog fires his free-associative existential mental motor up to a fever pitch, musing about what art this old says about our collective imagination and human history.

“Cave of Forgotten Dreams” is now playing in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, but should be coming to a theater near you soon.