Dating to around c. 13,000 B.C.E., a cave painting in the Trois Frères cave in France depicts what some believe is a musical bow, a hunting bow used as a single-stringed musical instrument.
There are 18 caves in northern Spain which together represent the apogee of Upper Paleolithic cave art in Europe between 35,000 and 11,000 years ago.
The oldest firmly dated rock art painting in Australia, dated at roughly 26,000 B.C., is a charcoal drawing on a rock fragment in the Narwala Gabarnmang rock shelter in the Northern Territory.
The Bhimbetka rock shelters are an archaeological site in central India that spans the prehistoric paleolithic and mesolithic periods, as well as the historic period. It exhibits the earliest traces of human life on the Indian subcontinent and evidence of Stone Age starting at the site in Acheulian times.
The Venus of Galgenberg is one of the earliest examples of figurative art in Europe. The sculpture was discovered in 1988 close to Stratzing, Austria.
Dancing as self-expression probably developed perhaps as early as speech and language and almost certainly by the time people were painting on cave walls, making clay figurines and decorating their bodies with ornaments.
One motif – a faint red dot – at El Castillo Cave in Spain is said to be more than 40,000 years old.
