Over the centuries, art has evolved in many ways. It began with cave drawings of animals in France. It, then, evolved into sculpting corpulent women. Centuries later, it was used for religious imagery. Today, art has evolved into simple one-color canvases. Art has evolved in many ways, yet art today has devolved into what some say is not even art.
In 1879, the first cave paintings were discovered in Altamira. These paintings were at first rejected because they were simply "too good."" Then, in 1940, four boys and a dog named "Robot- were playing in Lascaux, France. Robot fell into a hole in the ground, and when the boys rescued him, they discovered nearly 110 caves with over 2000 animal paintings inside. These were painted in the Upper Paleolithic era, before agriculture and domesticated animals. In this era, there were other types of art other than cave paintings; sculptures of corpulent women, called venuses, were also made of red ocher, a type of clay mixed with iron oxide (rust). .
Next came the Neolithic era. This is when agriculture and civilization began. The original settlements were in Jericho, known for its walls falling down in the famed Bible story, and Çatal Huyuk in Turkey. Art in this time was primarily utilitarian. They would make pottery and basketry. They also would have to remove large stones from fields for planting, and these stones would be used to build temples of worship. There were three stages in this time: 1, emergence, 2, fluorescence, and 3, decline. This age is also known as the copper age because this is the age when copper is beginning to be smelted.
Next, art is found in Egypt. Art was considered very important to Egyptians. Egypt is known as the "grandmother- of western art and civilization. In 2650 BC, a stepped pyramid was built at Saqqara for King Djoser. Most pyramids were ombs but the stepped pyramid was not. There are four main historical categories in Egyptian history: 1, old kingdom (2700-2040 BC), 2, middle kingdom (2040-1674 BC), 3, new kingdom (1552-1069 BC), and 4, the late period (1070 BC- 2nd century AD).