Key takeaways:
- The history teacher gets a hands-on approach to lessons on archaic rock art.
- A history student at the Université de Sherbrooke brings his hands dirty as a class cave-painting project.
Old cave paintings for Sherbrooke university:
Many history students at the Université de Sherbrooke knew they would be studying prehistoric rock art this semester. Still, they had no thought they would be making cave paintings of their own.
Adelphine Bonneau, an assistant lecturer in chemistry and history, got approval for her class to put an approach to practice on the substantial walls of a network of tunnels underneath the university.
“After a lesson where I defined how individuals used to make [cave] paintings, I offered to them to reproduce it — with ingredients we know had been used by those individuals,” she stated. Source – cbc.ca
The students picked between clay, ochre, calcite, and talc, binding a stain with oil, egg yolk, egg white, or pig’s blood.
“Then they attempted to use their mixture, their painting, on the wall with different techniques,” stated Bonneau, “with their fingers, their hands, pencils, sponges … [or] blowing the painting by using a straw.” Source – cbc.ca
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According to the teacher, prehistoric cave painters would have probably used the blood of much larger mammals, but pig’s blood was the best her butcher could do for her.
Sticks and stones
Bonneau demonstrates that rock painting contains “all kinds of representation … on rocks and stones,” whether it’s engraved on huge boulders, small rocks around rivers, rock shelters, or caves. Source – cbc.ca
She says cave painting is a precise rock painting that typically portrays animals, humans, or mythological creatures. Cave paintings are primarily focused in Europe, Indonesia, and Australia, but paintings and engravings have also been seen in smaller quantities on all continents except Antarctica.
Bonneau’s students aren’t trained artists, but they said getting out of the classroom to try something other was necessary to change pace.
