Appreciation of traditional rock paintings?

Appreciation of Rock Paintings in Cangyuan, Yunnan

According to archaeological confirmation, the most representative southern rock paintings are distributed in Yunnan and Guangxi. Cangyuan rock painting is the first rock painting in Yunnan, and more than a dozen rock painting spots have been found in Awashan area near the border between China and Myanmar. The upper limit of the creation age of Cangyuan rock paintings may be in the Neolithic Age or the Bronze Age, and the lower limit is about the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period.

The "Battle Map of Dancing and Pasturing" shown here was found on a cliff near the top of the mountain in Meng Province. This is a large-scale rock painting painted in red, with scenes of dancing, grazing and war. Its basic modeling adopts the method of plane line drawing, and its painting style is almost patterned and decorative. The whole painting can be divided into three parts: the upper part is a shield dance, the middle part is a grazing picture, and the lower part is a war fighting scene.

In the shield dance, several soldiers, mostly holding a shield and a stick or spear, stood or squatted, showing rhythmic dance movements. The dancer standing in the middle is tall and prominent, wearing a pair of earrings and a villain on each side. This kind of dance is probably related to witchcraft activities.

Below the screen of the shield dance is a grazing map, which shows a man dragging a cow with his head held high and moving slowly. There is a horizontal line below. There are two animals on the horizontal line, and there are two people below, stretching their arms to drive away the animals in front.

At the bottom of the work is a scene of war and battle, which probably reflects the struggle between different nationalities and tribes and is obviously narrative. There are about 20 people in the painting, some with bows and arrows, and some with strings falling to the ground. The characters are staggered and the fighting is fierce. Bow and arrow was an advanced weapon at that time, which could attack distant targets, so it was almost indispensable in painting with war and hunting scenes. Since there are no animals except people in the picture, it can be concluded that this picture is not a hunting picture, but a war picture. Soldiers with crossbows have an abstract symbol or mark behind them. Although its meaning is unclear, it still shows that the ancestors at that time had the ability to think abstractly and use abstract symbols.

Most of the figures in this rock painting are triangular. Generally speaking, the composition of rock paintings is dense, the dance scenes are patchy, the fighting scenes are fierce, the grazing patterns echo, and the atmosphere of each picture is well grasped. But there is almost no spatial relationship between form and form, which is a plane display; The proportion of body size is not determined by spatial distance, but by the status of the characters.

If we compare the themes of rock paintings in the north and the south, the most common rock paintings in the north are animals and hunting activities, while the most common rock paintings in the south are human-centered activities.