221. The earliest discovered traces of art are beads (necklace) and carvings, and then paintings, from sites dating back to the Upper Paleolithic period.
222．The early Australians may have painted on the walls of rock shelters and cliff faces at least 30,000 years ago and maybe as much as 60,000 years ago.
223. in the inner reaches of caves, whose difficulty of access has been interpreted by some as a sign that magical-religious activities were performed there.
224. The paintings rest on bare walls, with no backdrops or environmental trappings（decorated items）.
225．Perhaps, like many contemporary peoples, Upper Paleolithic men and women believed that the drawing of a human image could cause death of injury, and if that were indeed their belief, it might explain why human figures are rarely depicted in cave art.
226. This theory is suggested by evidence of chips in the painted figures, perhaps made by spears thrown at the drawings.
227. Cave art seems to have reached a peak toward the end of the Upper Paleolithic period, when the herds of game were decreasing.
228. The particular symbolic significance of the cave paintings in southwestern France is more explicitly revealed, perhaps, by the results of a study conducted by researchers Patricia Rice and Ann Paterson.
229. In addition, the paintings mostly portray animals that the painters may have feared the most because of their size, speed, natural weapons such as tusks and horns, and the unpredictability of their behavior.
230. But in that period, when getting food no longer depended on hunting large game animals (because they were becoming extinct), the art ceased to focus on portrayals of animals.
