One of the best-known examples of Paleolithic art is a painting found in the "Trois Frères" (Three brothers) cave in southern France.  A dancing figure wears reindeer antlers on his head and what is perhaps a mask on his face.  His hands are hidden in bear's paws and his body in an animal skin provided with a horse-tail.  Other parts of the figure may also be interpreted as parts of various animals' bodies.  This is the first time we come across an image that could be interpreted as a complete mask, although the surrealistic juxtaposition of incongruous animal elements could also have been a representation of a mythical figure, a dream of or a shaman in a state of trance.
Images of this kind are known to exist among non-European peoples of the recent past and it is impossible to know exactly what the Trois Frères painting represented.  Nevertheless, a mask is one possible interpretation.

The oldest extent mask, in the sense of a 'second face', originated in present-day in Palestine.  It was part of the renowned archaeological collection of Moshe Dayan; former Israeli Minister of Defense, and is now kept in the Israeli Museum in Jerusalem.  The age of the mask, which is made of hard limestone, is estimated at approximately 9,000 years.  It is convex and perfectly elliptical in outline, representing a stylized human face with large oval holes for the eyes, a small nose and an open mouth with two rows of teeth, reduced in number.  Nothing is known, of course, about the purpose served by this mask, nor by whom it was used.  However, the rounded holes, placed along its edge at regular intervals, suggest that it was part of a costume and was worn to cover someone's face.  It might have been worn on the head of a living man or of a dead one.  Its purpose may have been the protection of its wearer against evil spirits, or the petrifaction of the face of a man buried in the earth in expectation of eternal life, as occurred in some of the developed cultures of later ages, for example ancient Egypt.
Whatever the purpose of this mask may have been, it undoubtedly impress me as a mature piece of art and I cannot but admire the perfection of its execution.  The elliptical eyes repeat the ellipse of the mask's outline in a rhythmical and harmonious reiteration.  The way they are set into the concave areas, suggesting eyelids, renders this unique stone artifact lively in expression; we can hardly resist feeling that its very author is looking at us through the unmoving eyeholes.

Since its ascertainable beginning, the mask thus bear marks of an art and is intrinsically connected with it, representing one of its greatest subjects.  This is essentially the theme of the human face.  Even in the so-called animal masks, except the most realistic ones, attempts at an anthropomorphisation of their expression are observable.  It is this anthropomorphisation which raises the mere animal to the level of a supernatural being, turning it into a powerful spirit in the eyes of the observer.  On the other hand, however, it brings the animal closer to the man by expressing, in purely artistic terms, the underlying totalistic idea of the kinship of the human race with its mythical animal ancestor.  In the mask, the subject of which is the human face, the artist found a useful field for experiment.  His mastery of his craft enabled him to apply his skills to the broader subject of the entire human figure.  This is why the faces of the human figures representing ancestors, for instance among many African tribes, are treated in the same way as the human masks of the respective tribes, with the results that we are sometimes in doubt whether the figure is a stylized portrait of an ancestor, or a man wearing a well-known type of the tribal mask on his face.  Inn a similar way, masks of the communities which have reached a higher level of structure, for example in India, do not at all deviate from the dominant art style of the given society, but fully accord with it.

The belief in he existence of supernatural beings and their power of affecting the life of a man also resulted in the necessity of some sort of communication with them.  Out of the members of primeval communities, specialists were sorted out very soon, predestined for this particular task by their extraordinary qualities.  The latter undoubtedly included a higher sensibility, imagination and sometimes even an ability t fall in trance with a temporary loss of consciousness.  Unusual sounds made in this state may have been considered to be voices of spirits, demons, etc...  Primeval man, closely connected with nature, must also soon have discovered natural hallucinogenic means of creating such a state.  Although not aware of the true basis of their psychological effects, he regarded them as a means of manipulating supernatural beings.  The knowledge of these means raised an individual to the status of a powerful magician, shaman, etc...  in the eyes of his fellow-tribesmen.  The social exclusivity resulting from it inspired him to guard his knowledge as an invaluable secret.  Although this individual, as he himself believed, was more than anyone else able to make contact with supernatural forces and even to exert influence upon them, he did not lose his weak human nature.  On the contrary, this was endangered to an higher degree, and it was the mask which was intended to protect him against this danger by concealing his vulnerable human identity.

Probably similar was the motivation of the rise of many other masks used in most varied situations, whenever man was convinced that supernatural forces were near by, or that it was necessary to protect himself against their emanating power, even if they were not out to harm anybody.  Such  situations arose at the birth of child, at an illness or death of a man or animal connected with the man through totemistic ties of kinship, at the initiation of a young man into the secrets f life, which he had to possess both as a mature individual and as a member of the community, at the preparations for a hunt, at sowing, harvesting, etc...  For such situations, every community tended to create, strictly to maintain and to obey certain rules of conduct and activities, the breach of which could threaten the existence of the whole community and each of its members.  Their original 'reasoned' motivation, however, gradually fell into oblivion, especially under changed conditions of life, leaving behind only a 'meaningless' ritual holding in a firm grip he life of a member of both the primeval society and of the tribal community preserved in some areas of the world until today.  The ritual mask is usually part of such a rite.

The more a ritual withdraws from the conditions which gave t birth, the more mysterious it seems to be.  The fact that such a ritualisation is not always necessarily a long-term process but might be achieved within an unbelievably short period of time, can be verified even by the contemporary man in many social processes taking place around him, the length of which  can be measured by much less than the duration of an entire human life.  The ability and necessity of the ritualisation of vital behavior is a characteristic of the animal world, too, and man may have inherited these qualities from the time preceding the stage at which he separated himself as the only species endowed with reason.

Since man credited the mask with such a power, it is not surprising to see that he also explained it as resulting from the hidden presence of the spirit who was the source of this power.  This is the only explanation of the high regard and ritualised care for the mask as well as various taboos concerning their making and use.  And this is also the only way to explain the survival of this regard for the mask, even after the latter has long ceased to be a requisite of a magic ritual and fully entered the service of dramatic art in some area of the world.  Though the theater also derives its origin from magic mysteries, it was soon liberated from the bounds of ritual servitude in stratified society of the Eurasian continent, and was turned into a means of entertaining, heightening the prestige and satisfying power élite.  The mask as a product of plastic arts entered a new phase of its development here.  The fact that this art thus acquired a new dependence accords with the general laws of development and does not concern our subject anymore...