Yellow Ochre Cave Paintings

Natural iron rich oxides provided red yellow brown paints and dyes for a wide range of prehistoric uses including but in no way limited to rock art paintings pottery wall paintings and cave art and human tattoos.

Yellow ochre cave paintings.

Red and yellow ochre are examples commonly seen in prehistoric cave paintings. Ochre and orpiment pigments were used to represent gold and skin color in egyptian tombs then in the murals in roman villas. For example the ochre used in the famous cave paintings at lascaux probably came from 25 miles away. 3 2019 shows ochre rock paintings in a prehistoric cave site unearthed in ngari prefecture southwest china s tibet autonomous region.

Because it was widely available yellow ochre pigment was one of the first colors used in art. Paintings of animals made with red and yellow ochre pigments have been found in paleolithic sites at pech merle in france ca. For cave pictures pottery the human body and various artifacts. Prehistoric people mined these from the earth and probably traveled significant distances to get the right pigments.

Cave paintings over 17 000 years old use this pigment which was made from the natural ochre mineral. Yellow ochre has been in use since prehistoric times until the present day. Yellow ochre is one of the oldest pigments in existence. An artificial substitute for yellow ochre was found in the 1920s and it is still used today.

Yellow and red ochre pigments have been found in the caves at pech merle altamira and lascaux to name but a few examples. 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. Photo provided by local archaeological authorities on jan. The cave of lascaux has an image of a horse coloured with yellow ochre estimated to be 17 300 years old.