r, horn, ivory, clay in small, portable sculpture and etching and, most spectacularly, as murals on the walls of rock shelters and deep in caves. Human desire to depict the nature of their environment led to the first impressions

gh cultures all over the world have developed into incredibly diverse structures and forms, there is a unifying use of symmetry that appears crossing cultures, space, and time, and it began with the first identifiable culture during the Paleolithic era. Symmetry is an important, pervasive element of nature, art, and science. It denotes a pattern of identical or, at least, similar shapes used in balance on either side of a common axis. It is readably identifiable, catches the eye, and is considered beautiful. It can be observed in birds, fish, plants, flowers, and humans. Symmetry is not just pleasing to look at, but it is a vital element of "hard-wired" survival mechanisms dictated by DNA. (Abas & Salman, 1995).

The art of this era included frequent images of horses, bison, mammoths, wooly rhinoceros, reindeer, red deer, and ibex. The range of quality, as judged by current standards, is considerable. Many of the animal images seem extremely crude and incomplete while others strike us as exquisitely beautiful. Their are also numerous "enigmatic" signs: rectilinear forms and characteristic shapes such as the tectiforms or claviformes, dots (solitary or in clusters or series, lines, either rectilinear or wavy series sometimes referred to as "spaghetti" (Cole 99). There are also commonly found positive and negative images of handprints and even images of handprints carved in the cave walls. Human images are also found but are rare, often incomplete, and generally crudely rendered. While there are both temporal and geographical variations there are a number of distinctive features that justify characterizing the graphics as having a particular style. When animals or other objects are d!

epicted often only the occluding bounds of the object are depicted. Even among solid chromatic images occluding bounds are outlined by scratching, engraving, and application of contrastive coloring. Charcoal sketches have been found under subsequent applications of pigments at Niaux (Clottes, Menu, & Walter, 1990a,b). This characteristic of outlining and the simplicity of the many of the images produces an effect of a cartoon-like image. The cartoon-like quality is enhanced by another common feature, the use of carcicature or exaggeration of distinctive features of the objects depicted. Paleolithic images of animals are all but invariably depicted in profile, at least the major components such as head, neck, torso, and legs are in profile. However, these profiles also frequently have a "twisted" perspective in which horns, antlers, tusks, feet, and sometimes ears are prese

Some common words found in the essay are:
Paleolithic Neolithical, Menu Walter, Abas Salman, France Leroi-Gourhan, West Adding, England Separate, Willendorf Venus, Dellue Delluc1985, Impressions Art, British Isles, distinctive features, paleolithic artists, paleolithic art, depict nature environment, cave paintings, circles stones, stone circles, science science, nature environment, mirror symmetry, 1986 1994 images, nature art science, bahn 1986 1994, occluding bounds,
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Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)