Cave Art

When I went to the Anthropology Museum last Tuesday, there was another special exhibit besides the Mayan exhibit.  It was entitled "Frobenius - The World of Cave Art".

Leo Frobenius  (1873-1938) was a German ethnologist and archaeologist who led expeditions throughout Africa, Europe and Oceania to study ancient cultures. 

One of his special interests was cave art, and on many of his journeys he took artists with him so that they could make life-size copies of the paintings.  More than 5000 of these copies were made, and they now belong to the University of Frankfurt.

Several dozen of these paintings have been brought to Mexico City for this exhibition.

Seven thousand year old paintings from caves in Libya show that the Sahara was not always a desert.

These paintings of horses from the cave of Cap Blanc in France are probably between fifteen and eighteen thousand years old.

This crocodile from Australia was probably painted more that 3000 years ago.

Figures of antelopes and humans in a 400 year old painting from Zimbabwe.