Paleolithic body paint and perhaps in ritual. Undisputed evidence of art only becomes common in the Upper Paleolithic. Lower Paleolithic Acheulean tool users, according to Robert G. Bednarik, began to engage in symbolic behavior such as art around 850,000 BP. They decorated themselves with beads and collected exotic stones for aesthetic, rather than utilitarian qualities. According to him, traces of the pigment ochre from late Lower Paleolithic Acheulean archaeological sites suggests that Acheulean societies, like later Upper Paleolithic societies, collected and used ochre to create rock art. Nevertheless, it is also possible that the ochre traces found at Lower Paleolithic sites
Zapata (lithograph) close cropping of the scene decontextualizes the figures in the lithograph. The original mural provides a gruesome focal point for Zapata and his followers, however the lithograph, created for an American audience, indicates Zapata's gaze to fall on the floral, tropical setting. This alteration removes the political associations inherent to the mural. Rivera’s print shows parallels with Paolo Uccello’s early fifteenth-century painting "The Battle of San Romano" (c. 1438). Both works depict a white horse similar in size to the human figures pictured, figures bristling with armaments receding into the background, and weapons underfoot in the foreground. Rivera did in