Global Prehistory

What this unit covers

The topics below follow the published Art History course framework for Unit 1. This unit is worth 4% of the exam, so budget your time against that rather than against how long the unit takes to teach.

Lessons in this unit

• Paleolithic Imagery: The Origins of Art13 min · 3 objectivesDescribe the form, technique, and likely function of Paleolithic cave paintings and portable objects · Explain how naturalism, twisted perspective, and abstraction appear in the earliest known art · Analyze the contexts — ritual, mobility, and survival — that shaped prehistoric image-making
• Neolithic Monuments, Ceramics & Settled Life14 min · 3 objectivesConnect the Neolithic shift to farming with new art forms: pottery, monumental stone, and the built environment · Describe the form and function of Stonehenge and other megalithic and ritual objects · Compare portable Neolithic objects across regions to practice cross-cultural analysis

Every term in Unit 1

All 12 terms we publish for Global Prehistory, with definitions. Reading them through is the fastest way to find the ones you cannot define — then drill those in cram mode until you can produce them without the prompt.

Apollo 11 Stones

Namibia, c. 25,500–25,300 BCE, charcoal on stone. Among the oldest known figurative art in Africa. The animal is a composite — feline body, human-like hind legs — so even the earliest art is already interpretive rather than purely observational.

Great Hall of the Bulls

Lascaux, France, c. 15,000 BCE, rock painting. Animals overlap and float without groundline, painted in twisted perspective: body in profile, horns turned frontally so both are visible. Clarity of identification mattered more than optical accuracy.

Camelid sacrum in the shape of a canine

Tequixquiac, Mexico, c. 14,000–7000 BCE, bone. A sacrum — a bone associated with reproduction in several Mesoamerican traditions — carved to reveal an animal already suggested by its shape. The earliest known example of worked art in the Americas.

Running horned woman

Tassili n'Ajjer, Algeria, c. 6000–4000 BCE, pigment on rock. Body dotted with markings often read as scarification or body paint; the horns suggest ritual or a deity. Evidence that the Sahara was once green and populated.

Beaker with ibex motifs

Susa, Iran, c. 4200–3500 BCE, painted terra cotta. Animals abstracted almost to geometry — the ibex horns become a near-circle. Shows abstraction as a deliberate choice, not a failure of skill.

Anthropomorphic stele

Arabian Peninsula, fourth millennium BCE, sandstone. A human figure reduced to a belt, a double-bladed knife and a trapezoidal head. Among the earliest evidence of ritual imagery in Arabia.

Jade cong

Liangzhu, China, c. 3300–2200 BCE, carved jade. A square tube around a circular core, usually read as earth encircling heaven. Jade is too hard to carve — it must be abraded — so a cong represents enormous labor.

Stonehenge

Wiltshire, England, c. 2500–1600 BCE, sandstone. Post-and-lintel in stone, with lintels curved to the circle and mortise-and-tenon joints. Aligned to the summer solstice sunrise, making the structure an instrument as much as a monument.

The Ambum Stone

Papua New Guinea, c. 1500 BCE, greywacke. A composite creature, possibly an anteater embryo. Its weight and finish suggest a ceremonial rather than practical object.

Tlatilco female figurine

Mexico, c. 1200–900 BCE, ceramic. Two faces on one head, or one head split — a duality theme that recurs across Mesoamerican art for the next 2,500 years.

Terra cotta fragment (Lapita)

Solomon Islands, c. 1000 BCE, incised terra cotta. Dentate-stamped geometric designs. Lapita pottery traces the migration route of the first settlers of the remote Pacific.

Twisted perspective

Depicting one part of a body in profile and another frontally within the same figure, so each is shown from its most identifiable angle. Common in prehistoric and Egyptian art; a convention of clarity, not an error.

What examiners penalize here

• When you attribute a prehistoric work, argue from **medium + convention + context** together. "Charcoal on a portable stone" points to Apollo 11 Stones; "mineral pigment on deep-cave rock with twisted perspective" points to Lascaux; "carved natural bone shaped like an animal" points to the Camelid sacrum. Naming a diagnostic visual trait earns the attribution point.

Practice Art History

Our practice bank is drawn from across the whole course rather than filtered to one unit, which is closer to how the exam asks anyway — it will not tell you which unit a question is testing.

Questions about this unit

All 10 units of AP Art History

1. Unit 1 · Global Prehistory
2. Unit 2 · Ancient Mediterranean
3. Unit 3 · Early Europe & Colonial Americas
4. Unit 4 · Later Europe & Americas
5. Unit 5 · Indigenous Americas
6. Unit 6 · Africa
7. Unit 7 · West & Central Asia
8. Unit 8 · South, East & Southeast Asia
9. Unit 9 · The Pacific
10. Unit 10 · Global Contemporary