In the history of art, prehistoric art is all art produced in preliterate, prehistorical cultures beginning somewhere in very late geological history, and generally continuing until that culture either develops writing or other methods of record-keeping, or makes significant contact with another culture that has, and ...

The depiction of a "warty pig" in a rock art panel on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi is thought to be about 45,500 years old and may be the earliest "representational" art ever found.

Prehistoric Art (~40,000 — 4,000 B.C.) Natural materials such as stone were common in prehistoric sculptures and engravings. Pigments from natural materials were often used to create illustrations in cave paintings and the Paleolithic cave paintings in Lascaux in France.

The foundations of art history can be traced back thousands of years. Ancient art is often grouped together with pre-historic art (c. 40,000 BCE–600 CE) and roughly dates from around 6,000 or 3,000 BCE (depending on the source) to c. 400–600 CE.