Prehistoric Cave Paintings And Stone Carvings

A selection of stamps and items featuring cave and stone paintings, issued either as single stamps or as the only cave and stone paintings design within a set. Issuing countries are: Afar and Issa, Central African Republic, Australia (postal stationary with printed stamp), Italy, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Madagascar and Niger.

Prehistoric rock art in Zimbabwe is among the richest in Africa, with thousands of sites found throughout the country's granite hills and caves. Most of the paintings were created by San (Bushmen) hunter-gatherers over the past 10,000 years and depict animals, humans, and scenes of daily life and spiritual rituals. Often painted with natural pigments in red, brown, and white, these artworks provide valuable insight into the beliefs, environment, and social practices of southern Africa's early inhabitants.

Cave and stone paintings, Zimbabwe, 1982.

Bolivia is home to numerous prehistoric rock art sites, with paintings and engravings found in caves and rock shelters across the Andes and lowland regions. Many of these works, created thousands of years ago by early hunter-gatherer communities, depict many local subjects and symbolic motifs. Notable sites such as Incamachay and Cueva del Diablo in the Chuquisaca region showcase vivid red and ochre pictographs (color paintings on rocks),revealing aspects of the daily life of early Andean societies.

Rock paintings and engravings, Bolivia, 1993.

....more Bolivia, 1993.

Jabal Jassasiyah in northeastern Qatar is the country's most important rock art site, featuring over 800 petroglyphs carved into limestone. Dating from the Neolithic to pre-Islamic periods, the carvings include geometric patterns, ships, and cup marks, reflecting aspects of early life and maritime traditions in the region.

Rock carvings in Jabal Jassasiyah, Qatar, 1995.

Abbe Henri Breuil (1877–1961) was a French priest, archaeologist, and one of the founding figures of modern Paleolithic research. He documented and interpreted hundreds of prehistoric cave paintings and engravings across Europe and Africa. Breuil played a central role in advancing the study of Paleolithic art and human evolution and was closely associated with the Human Paleontology Institute in Monaco founded with the support of Prince Albert I of Monaco.

Century of Breuil birth, France, 1977 - Stamp, FDC and Maxi card. Note the cave paintings on the commemorative postmark.



Century of Human Paleontology Institute, Breuil with Prince Albert I, Monaco, Grimaldi Cave, 1910.

Breuil, Guinea, 2011.

Speleology is the scientific study of caves and other karst features, as well as their composition, structure, physical properties, history, ecology, and the processes by which they form and change over time.

The Cuban Society of Speleology (Sociedad Espeleologica de Cuba), founded in 1940, is one of the oldest scientific organizations in the country. It is dedicated to the exploration, study, and preservation of caves and karst landscapes in Cuba, contributing to research in geology, archaeology, and paleontology. To mark the 30th anniversary of it, Cuba issued this set in 1970 features Cuban cave paintings.







A single stamp was issued in 1990 to mark the 50th anniversary of the society features Cro-magnon group painting cave wall.

Kakadu National Park in northern Australia is home to one of the world's richest collections of Aboriginal rock art, with paintings spanning over 20,000 years. These pictographs depict animals, hunting scenes, spiritual figures, and ancestral stories, offering a continuous record of Indigenous culture from prehistoric times to the present.
Prehistoric paintings from Kakadu, stamps from Australia and Mozambique.


SS issued by Niger in 2016 shows in the margin early painters in one of Kakadu caves.

Pictographs are images or symbols painted or drawn onto rock surfaces using natural pigments like ochre, charcoal, or clay.

More from Australia in addition to the above stamps, is a banknote of 1 AU$ shows aboriginal rock paintings, 1974.

The Australian coat of arms on the front of the banknote is depicted in a style resembling Aboriginal rock art. I don't know whether the design is copied from real paintings or created as an artistic interpretation.

Here it is presented next to the official coat of arms for comparison.

Cave paintings, probably from Spain, Guinea Bissau, 2003.

Wadi Mathendous is a prehistoric archaeological site in the Mesak Settafet escarpment, located in the southwestern Fezzan region in Libya. It contains many petroglyphs of figures and objects, as well as other rock art. The chiseled animals include elephants, giraffes, aurochs, wildcats, and crocodiles. These rock engravings and cave paintings have been dated to the Neolithic period, around 8,000 years ago.

Rock paintings from Wadi Mathendous, Libya, 1978.

Second visit to Lascaux cave, France....a selection of non French stamps.






Lascaux painting on the SS margin.

Cave Paintings, Spain, 1975.

The "Man of Bicorp," painting in Arana cave (Cave of the Spider) located near Bicorp in the Valencia region. The painting dates to around 8000–6000 BC and depicts a human figure climbing a ladder to collect honey from a beehive, surrounded by flying bees. This scene is one of the oldest known representations of honey gathering.


Horse, painting from Tito Bustillo cave, Spain. The cave was inhabited by humans (Cro-magnon) before the year 10,000 BC.

Stone paintings, Brazil, 1975.

Prehistoric rock paintings of the Tassili n'Ajjer World Heritage Site, second set, Algeria, 1967.