Yellow Ochre Cave Paintings

Yellow ochre is one of the oldest pigments in existence.

Yellow ochre cave paintings.

25 000 years old and the cave of altamira in spain ca. Yellow ochre has been in use since prehistoric times until the present day. Paintings of animals made with red and yellow ochre pigments have been found in paleolithic sites at pech merle in france ca. Prehistoric people mined these from the earth and probably traveled significant distances to get the right pigments.

Yellow and red ochre pigments have been found in the caves at pech merle altamira and lascaux to name but a few examples. Ochre and orpiment pigments were used to represent gold and skin color in egyptian tombs then in the murals in roman villas. Red and yellow ochre are examples commonly seen in prehistoric cave paintings. 3 2019 shows ochre rock paintings in a prehistoric cave site unearthed in ngari prefecture southwest china s tibet autonomous region.

Cave paintings over 17 000 years old use this pigment which was made from the natural ochre mineral. For cave pictures pottery the human body and various artifacts. Photo provided by local archaeological authorities on jan. Because it was widely available yellow ochre pigment was one of the first colors used in art.

An artificial substitute for yellow ochre was found in the 1920s and it is still used today. The cave of lascaux has an image of a horse coloured with yellow ochre estimated to be 17 300 years old. Ochre is the earliest known pigment used by humans to paint our world perhaps as long ago as 300 000 years. The following graph gives the frequency of its use in the paintings of the schack collection in the bavarian state art collections in munich 1.