GAERHF - for which data entry is actively underway - provides a long-term, and global perspective on the widespread practice of creating images of ourselves, of human figures. It adopts the concept of 'early' quite loosely and will include representations created through approximately the middle of the thirteenth century CE. The global scope is taken literally, any relevant image created anywhere. GAERHF's content is not, however, a proxy for all of art history. The earliest creations that can be considered as “art” consist of geometric designs. The majority of earliest known art in caves is far more focussed on animals, with humans appearing as stick figures. Many cultures have rich visual traditions that more or less explicitly avoid representing people. Nonetheless, the urge to create images of ourselves is clearly a widespread and early phenomenon. The Sulawesi caves in Indonesia show that the humans who had arrived there by perhaps as early as 40,000 BCE had the general capacity to paint and at least some interest in showing human figures amongst the animals that drew more of their attention. This means that art is already reasonably considered global by this stage of human migration. The earliest art in caves and rock shelters in North and South America demonstrates a similar point. Accordingly, the capacity for artistic representation is a universal human quality. The long history of rock art in Africa and Europe, along with the appearance of palaeolithic figurines in Europe, provides an extension of this observation. Again, at the scale of millennia, the representation of human figures is quite quickly a global phenomenon.
GAERHF further intends to make it easy to discover and consider this record of human artistic output. While it has a goal of allowing users to decide what this record means, GAERHF does allow the spatial and chronological context of any one representation to be explored in the form of other representations that are near by either of those aspects.
Currently, GAERHF is an aggregator of existing data and links to existing resources. Wikipedia is the most common linked resource. Smarthistory is also invaluable. Individual museum collections are utilized. The British Museum has an excellent site of African Rock Art and links to that are being added. Other sites - such as the impressive Don's Maps - are also very useful sources.
While the word “global” provides an intentionally straightforward basis for inclusion, there are still fuzzy edges to the corpus. “Human figure” refers to form and allows representations of divinities that clearly take human form to be included. As such beings display excesssively demonic features, they are excluded. This is a judgment call. Zoomorphic beings are also not yet present, though that may change. The range of figures is meant to be increasingly representative across the globe as data entry continues. Within the growing corpus, materials, activities, and other aspects will increasingly be represented. The major external attributes associated with each figure are location and chronology. A preference is given to objects with firm findspots, though that is not a requirement. Chronology can be either specific or very broad. Cave art is often dated to very wide ranges, which is a fundamental aspect of the art form as it survives into the current day.
The GAERHF interface will develop over time with a focus on integrating visual content, spatial representation, and chronological display. Other aspects such as material, dimensions, and characterization of content will be added.
All GAERHF data and related code are available online. https://github.com/gaerhf/gaerhf hosts the data in the form of a turtle serialized RDF file (gaerhf.ttl). That file can be accessed directly via https://gaerhf.github.io/gaerhf/gaerhf.ttl. The code that runs this website is at https://github.com/gaerhf/gaerhf.github.io. It is likely that at least the GAERHF data will also be posted to a more permanent archive such as Zenodo.
The project is directed by Sebastian Heath of NYU’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. Mary Lord assisted with initial research and data collection (Summer 2023); followed by Gideon Burnes Heath (Winter 2025). Isabel Grossman-Sartain (NYU/ISAW) is assisting in Summer 2025.