<P> Engravings on flat pieces of stones are found in considerable numbers (up to 5,000 at one Spanish site) at sites with the appropriate geology, with the marks sometimes so shallow and faint that the technique involved is closer to drawing--many of these were not spotted by the earliest excavators, and found by later teams in spoil heaps . Painted plaques are less common . It is possible that they were used in rituals, or alternatively heated on a fire and wrapped as personal warmers . Either type of use may account for the many broken examples, often with the fragments dispersed over some distance (up to 30 metres apart at Gönnersdorf). Many sites have large quantities of flat stones apparently used as flooring, with only a minority decorated . </P> <P> Ice Age art can be naturalistic and figurative; it can also be geometric and non-representational . Some of the oldest works of art were found in the Schwäbische Alb, Baden - Württemberg, Germany . The Venus figurine known as the Venus of Hohle Fels, dates to some 40,000 years ago . Other fine examples of art from the Upper Palaeolithic (broadly 40,000 to 10,000 years ago) includes: cave painting (such as at Chauvet, Lascaux, Altamira, Cosquer, and Pech Merle), incised / engraved cave art such as at Creswell Crags, portable art (such as animal carvings and sculptures like the Venus of Willendorf), and open - air art (such as the rock art of the Côa Valley and Mazouco (it) in Portugal; Domingo García and Siega Verde in Spain; and Fornols - Haut (fr) in France). There are numerous carved or engraved pieces of bone and ivory, such as the Swimming Reindeer found in France from the Magdalenian period . These include spear throwers, including one shaped like a mammoth, and many of the type of objects called a bâton de commandement . One of the most famous pieces of portable art from Britain is the Robin Hood Cave Horse from Derbyshire . Other examples include the Kendrick's Cave Decorated Horse Jaw . </P> <P> Many of the finest examples were featured in the Ice Age Art: Arrival of the Modern Mind exhibition at the British Museum in 7 February--26 May 2013 . </P> <P> Cave paintings from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi were in 2014 found to be 40,000 years old, a similar date to the oldest European cave art, which suggests a much older origin for this type of art, perhaps in Africa . </P>

The most common images in the cave paintings of the european upper paleolithic art of