Key Contributions
...in the caves, which served as a ceremonial chamber, a shrine, or perhaps a council room (Fiero, 3). These cave drawings usually depicted a hunt with an image of a human hand shown in negative relief. These drawings were not only considered the art of the prehistoric years, but also the literature or the times. This is the only written or visual records of this time. Literature took on a different form around 3100B.C. as the Ancient Egyptians invented their own form of writing known as Hieroglyphics. They also invented the first form of paper called papyrus, a thick parchment type paper made of stems from reeds (Bentley, 2005).
Stone statues found in this era were usually of women who were thought of as Mother Earth. Women of the tribes were thought upon as important for the continuation of the tribe. The Venus of Willendorf statues from around 25,000 B.C.E. depicted the woman as being pregnant and insuring the future of the tribe. Statues of ancient Egypt were more refined than the statues found in the prehistoric ages. The human body showed more proportion and detail of features. The ancient Egyptians took pride in the coffins of the dead, adorning them in gold and jewels depicting the life of the dead.
The architecture of the early civilizations consisted mainly of mud and limestone houses. The burial tombs, called Dolman sites, were constructed with post and lintel construction with large slabs of stone. This type of construction can still be seen today visiting the site of Stonehenge, which was constructed from 3000 1800 B.C.E. (Fiero, 2000). The ancient Egyptians constructed massive pyramids for their burial chambers to ensure the comfort of the dead in their afterlife. These tombs were built by thousands of men moving mammoth slabs of sandstone blocks, by strength and levers to set them in place. The burial chambers within the pyramids,...
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