The earliest known Christian monastic communities ( see Monasticism ) consisted of groups of cells or huts collected about a common center, which was usually the house of some hermit or anchorite famous for holiness or singular asceticism, but without any attempt at orderly arrangement.

In the earliest age of Christian monasticism the ascetics were accustomed to live singly, independent of one another, not far from some village church, supporting themselves by the labour of their own hands, and distributing the surplus after the supply of their own scanty wants to the poor.

The earliest known Christian image of an angel, in the Cubicolo dell ' Annunziazione in the Catacomb of Priscilla, which is dated to the middle of the third century, is without wings.

In the 16th century, Christian missionaries from Spain and Portugal first encountered indigenous peoples using ayahuasca in South America ; their earliest reports described it as the work of the devil.

One of the earliest Christian martyrs in North America was Saint Peter the Aleut.

The combined book Ezra-Nehemiah of the earliest Christian and Jewish period was known as Ezra and was probably attributed to him ; according to a rabbinic tradition, however, Nehemiah was the real author but was forbidden to claim authorship because of his bad habit of disparaging others.

Those who favour the later date appeal to the earliest external testimony, that of the Christian father Irenaeus ( c. 150-202 ), who wrote that he received his information from people who knew John personally.

The earliest Christian interpretations of Jonah are found in the Gospel of Matthew ( see and 16: 1-4 ) and the Gospel of Luke ( see Luke 11: 29-32 ).

The second half of is quoted by some of the earliest Christian writers.

Barnabas (), born Joseph, was an early Christian, one of the earliest Christian disciples in Jerusalem.

While there have been many theological disputes over the nature of Jesus over the earliest centuries of Christian history, Christians generally believe that Jesus is God incarnate and " true God and true man " ( or both fully divine and fully human ).

In the 16th and the 17th centuries, the earliest European arrivals in China, the Christian Jesuits, considered Confucianism to be an ethical system, not a religion, and one that was compatible with Christianity.

In essence, the earliest vision of Christendom was a vision of a Christian theocracy, a government founded upon and upholding Christian values, whose institutions are spread through and over with Christian doctrine.

Christian alternative music has its roots in the early 1980s, as the earliest efforts at Christian punk and new wave were recorded by artists like Andy McCarroll and Moral Support, Undercover, The 77s, Adam Again, Quickflight, Daniel Amos, Youth Choir ( later renamed The Choir ), Lifesavers Underground, Michael Knott, The Altar Boys, Breakfast with Amy, Steve Taylor, 4-4-1, David Edwards and Vector.

Due to schisms, only the two earliest councils can be considered to have included bishops of the entire Christian Church, as it existed before those schisms.

While some Celtic Christian practices were changed at the Synod of Whitby, the church in the British Isles was under papal authority from earliest times.

Paul, the earliest known Christian author, wrote several letters ( or epistles ) in Greek to various churches.

In favour of the Synoptic chronology is that in the earliest Christian traditions relating to the Last Supper in the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians, there is a clear link between Passion of Jesus, the Last Supper and the Passover lamb.

There has been discussion by academics whether the " word square " is actually a Christian artefact, but if it is, it is one of the earliest examples of early Christianity in Britain.

Much of the post-Roman development of St Albans was in memorial to Saint Alban, the earliest known British Christian martyr, executed in AD 250 ( the exact date is unknown, with scholars suggesting dates of 209, 254 and 304 ).

The very earliest accounts of belief are contained in these texts, such as early Christian creeds and hymns, as well as accounts of the Passion, the empty tomb, and Resurrection appearances ; some of these are dated to the 30s or 40s CE, originating within the Jerusalem Church.

It includes the some of the earliest objects made by humans 2 million years ago ; the art and archaeology of Europe from the earliest times to the present day, including the history of Britain under Roman occupation.

One of the earliest articulations of the anthropological meaning of the term " culture " came from Sir Edward Tylor who writes on the first page of his 1897 book: “ Culture, or civilization, taken in its broad, ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society .” The term " civilization " later gave way to definitions by V. Gordon Childe, with culture forming an umbrella term and civilization becoming a particular kind of culture.

A Macedonian mosaic of the 4th century BC is one of the earliest examples of the Centauress in art.

Although it had been funding British experimental films as early as 1952, the British Film Institute's foundation of a production board in 1964 — and a substantial increase in public funding from 1971 onwards — enabled it to become a dominant force in developing British art cinema in the 1970s and 80s: from the first of Bill Douglas's Trilogy My Childhood ( 1972 ), and of Terence Davies ' Trilogy Childhood ( 1978 ), via Peter Greenaway's earliest films ( including the surprising commercial success of The Draughtsman's Contract ( 1982 )) and Derek Jarman's championing of the New Queer Cinema.

Apart from jewelry, from earliest antiquity until the 19th century engraved gems and hardstone carvings such as cups were major luxury art forms ; the carvings of Carl Fabergé were the last significant works in this tradition.

Some people credit the band Bauhaus ' first single " Bela Lugosi's Dead ", released August 1979, with the start of the goth subculture, though many prior art house movements influenced gothic fashion and style, the illustrations and paintings of Swiss artist, H. R. Giger being one of the earliest.

The earliest Christian art would often depict scenes from the New Testament such as the raising of Lazarus, the baptism of Jesus or the motif of the " Good Shepherd ".

If cave art is ambiguous on this matter then cuneiform inscriptions which hold the earliest writings seem to have been initially for non-fiction.

The earliest clear description of the use of opium as a recreational drug in China came from Xu Boling, who wrote in 1483 that opium was " mainly used to aid masculinity, strengthen sperm and regain vigor ," and that it " enhances the art of alchemists, sex and court

The most famous of these is the Laas Gaal complex, which contains some of the earliest known rock art on the African continent.

Mesopotamia is generally considered to be the location of the earliest civilization or complex society, meaning that it contained cities, full-time division of labor, social concentration of wealth into capital, unequal distribution of wealth, ruling classes, community ties based on residency rather than kinship, long distance trade, monumental architecture, standardized forms of art and culture, writing, and mathematics and science.

* According to Ryūs own sources, Iizasa Ienao founds Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto-ryu, the earliest historically verifiable Japanese koryū martial art that is still extant today.

Those of these sculptures that belonged to the temples within the walls, present a peculiar and archaic style of art, and are universally recognized as among the earliest extant specimens of Greek sculpture Those, on the contrary, which have been found among the ruins of the temple on the opposite hill, are of a later and more advanced style, though still retaining considerable remains of the stiffness of the earliest art.

The earliest known example of Hals ' own art is the 1611, Jacobus Zaffius.

( 1963, Tate Modern, London ), one of the earliest known examples of pop art, adapted a comic-book panel from a 1962 issue of DC Comics ' All-American Men of War.

Here his earliest formal artistic instruction took place in an atmosphere steeped in a study of the styles and themes of 19th-century Italian art.

In his earliest Parisian work, traces of this influence, and that of his studies of Renaissance art, can still be seen.

In 1920, Ray helped Duchamp make the Rotary Glass Plates, his first machine and one of the earliest examples of kinetic art.

One of the earliest known depictions of a landscape in Chinese art comes from a pair of hollow-tile door panels from a Western Han Dynasty tomb near Zhengzhou, dated 60 BCE.

Fox's earliest stories for DC Comics featured Speed Saunders ( with art by Creig Flessel and, later, Fred Guardineer ) beginning at least with Detective Comics # 4.

In art Chrysaor's earliest appearance seems to be on the great pediment of the early 6th century BC Doric Temple of Artemis at Corfu, where he is shown beside his mother, Medusa.