This chapter deals with the beginnings of art, the tangible record of a uniquely human "aesthetic spirit." In addition to providing descriptions and visual analyses to help the newcomer to art discover the spirit and beauty of prehistoric works, this chapter also provides reasoned conjecture about the reasons the works look the way they do, and the ways in which they reveal something of the belief systems of early human artists.

Goals for this chapter include:

• Appreciate the enormous span of time represented by the prehistoric period (the longest period in art's history).

• Recognize that many of the works of art probably were thought to have some kind of magical power in the affairs of humanity and the cosmos.

• Learn of the divisions into which historians have placed the flow of time in the prehistoric period.

• Gain an understanding of the stylistic changes that accompanied the transition from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic period.

• Grasp the fundamentals of the techniques involved in early art production.