Visitors can now view images of man during prehistoric times at the “Frobenius; The World of Rock Art,” exhibition at the National Anthropology Museum running until November 5.
The 103 pieces are laid out to teach the public about the oldest known human beings.
Between 1913 and 1919, the German ethnologist, Leo Frobenius (1873-1938), along with his expedition team, recorded information found in rock art in deserts, solitary mountains and hidden caves across the continents of Africa, Oceania and Europe.
The copies offer a sense of prehistoric originality. Additionally, there are cave paintings from the Sahara, Spain, France, Scandinavia and Australia.
Leo Fronebius argued that prehistoric cultures were as important as those of ancient Greek and Roman, so they deserve to be documented in archives and museums.
The tour begins with the watercolor “Reclining Bison,” copied from an expedition in Spain.
In the North Africa section, there are cave paintings located in Egypt, Libya and Algeria, such as “Humans with Heads of Animals and Dead Rhinoceroses,” “Elephant Weevils, Animals, and Elliptical Forms.”
In the section on Europe, we can see the results of the expeditions in Spain, France and Italy. Among them “Man with Headdress and Long suit,” “Man with Sword Traversing an Animal” and “Animals and Representations with Daggers.”
The exhibition continues with pieces from the northwestern Australian territory with the Wanjina Wunggur community, perhaps the only place in the world where rock art is kept alive.
Between the texts and images of the exhibition, we learn that cave paintings are a testimony to the “prehistory” of almost all the regions of the planet and that the pictorial monuments in caves allow verification of the existence of cultures that until more than 100 years no one was aware of.
