The Invention of Art
The oldest works of art known to mankind have been found in six caves in the Lone and Ach Valleys in the Swabian Alb near Ulm. They are between 35,000 and 43,000 years old. They were created by modern man, who came to Central Europe more than 35,000 years ago during the last ice age along the Danube.
It was a non-sessile hunter-gatherer society. Glaciers covered northern Europe, Berlin, Lake Constance and reached as far as the Danube, and Neanderthals lived alongside Homo Sapiens.
Humans gathered not only food, but also knowledge. Without this, they would not have survived in their environment. The people of that time had extensive and diverse knowledge about their environment – more than most modern people today.
The caves and the finds document the creative power of modern humans in an extraordinary way.
I took the first photographs of the caves more than 15 years ago. At that time, many caves were still covered by trees and bushes and hardly visible. People barbecued on the caves and there were rubbish bins in front of the caves.
In recent years, trees have been felled in front of the cave entrances, the archaeopark was created at Vogelherdhöhle and today the caves are part of the UNESCO World Heritage.
