How was the art of prehistoric period related to society?

Question

How was the art of prehistoric period related to society?

Answer 1

Much of the prehistoric art is believed to be stories about real life events such as a hunt or a famine or a new star in the sky. It is believed that this is a historical record of events. Because there was no form of written language, people used pictures to show events.

Answer 2

We don't know, because there are no historical records.

We might guess based on archeo-anthropological evidence and also by studying 20th-century hunter-gatherer tribes.

The visual arts seem to have filled a ritual function, since in stone-age caves like Lascaux and Altamira, the wall paintings are 'way back in the dark, airless parts of the cave, not near the entrance where the people normally stayed.  So to paint them, the artists needed to take torches down into the dark, stale parts of the cave--not done for fun, and not done for decor.

Now, I generally get a bit touchy when someone says "art" and means "painting".  Music and dance are arts too, and we're fairly certain that primitive people used them both for entertainment and for ritual.  In particular, shamans would use trance-dancing (and musical accompaniment) to enter the spirit world for enlightenment or healing.