Stone Age Art - West Asia
Hunters in a painting from a shrine
in Catal Huyuk, about 7000 BC
The earliest art known from West Asia was found at Jericho in modern Palestine and at Catal Huyuk (CHAT-al-HOO-yook) in modern Turkey. It dates to about 8000 BC. There are wall paintings in people's houses showing hunting scenes. Aren't they a lot like the hunting scenes painted by the San of the Kalahari desert in South Africa?
The people of Jericho and other nearby towns also made sculptures of people, about half life size, made out of plaster and tar. The one shown here, from Ain Ghazal, is now in the Louvre museum in Paris.
People in West Asia about 7000 BC also began to make
clay pots and to make woven
linen fabric out of flax. They
did not yet know how to weave
wool, even though they were beginning
to keep sheep - they just kept
the sheep for meat.
To learn more about Stone Age West Asian art, check out this book from Amazon.com or from your library:
The
Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient, by Henri Frankfort (5th
edition 1997). The standard for college art history classes.
Sumerian Art
Main West Asian Art page
Main Art page
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