By revealing a vertiginous and sublime age, the discovery of prehistoric art has profoundly transformed our culture. Because of the gaps in archaeological remains, the absence of textual sources and the paradoxical artistic modernity of the Paleolithic, this era is incommensurable with the traditional historical framework and requires us to rethink history. What concepts and models have been developed to give prehistory a place in history? What are their epistemological implications? What do they tell us about art, our history and culture? The book calls upon prominent names in prehistory and anthropology (Gabriel de Mortillet, Henri Breuil, André Leroi-Gourhan), as well as art theorists as dissimilar as Alois Riegl, Élie Faure, Carl Einstein and George Kubler, to make prehistoric art a philosophical matrix for questioning the relationship between art, history and humanity.