In the Paleolithic caves of Lascaux and Trois Freres (10-15,000 BC), dancing figures with the feet of men, equipped with horns or antlers, and wearing the hides of animals are depicted amongst a swarm of animals. One of these figures carries a bowed instrument, while another man, with a bird's head, is in what appears to be a trance position at the feet of a wounded bison. It has been conjectured that these figures constitute a record of shamanic ceremonies related to the hunt, and, judging from the size of footprints found in the caves, to initiatory rites of passage held in the caves. An antlered mask made from the skull of a red deer in England around 7500 BC may well indicate a continuance of this tradition, as may the antlered and masked Celtic "Lord of Beasts" given form several thousands of years later. Stone pig and bird masks have been found as artifacts of the Vinca civilization (ca. 5000 BC) in the former Yugoslavia, and these are thought to have been worn in association with goddess worship and fertility rites. The man-masked-as-animal appears and reappears in many contexts throughout the history of European civilizations: in rituals and in celebrations of myth and legend, as characters in ribald dramas, and as creatures in popular mummeries and carnival processions. It is a recurring motif in the history of masking in Europe-a rich and varied history with shifts in direction following a drift from sacred to secular concerns and contexts, and with many chapters in which the mask is lost, regained, lost again, and once more "discovered."

The archaic Mediterranean world was rich in masking traditions. Bull masks were used in the Minoan Civilization of Crete; Spartans used miniature clay masks in burial ceremonies; the archaic civilizations of Syracuse and Corinth used grotesque Gorgon heads as protective figures; Mycenaean kings were buried with masks of beaten gold; and Athenians used wooden masks of animals and men to honor Dionysus-the newly adopted god of paradoxes, of borders, and of ecstatic experience. It was in the context of these multiple masking traditions, many of which were influenced by traditions of North Africa and Southwest Asia, that the Athenian theatre festivals developed in the 5th Century BC, using light-weight masks of hardened linen and paste that fit over the entire head in order to represent, not gods and demons, but human beings in mimetic representations of both mythic legends and contemporary social dramas. To judge from vase paintings and textual references, the masks (prosopon) of the classical period were for the most part economical in their depiction of facial expressions, sometimes forming an almost neutral simplification of the human face, sometimes subtly altering that image for age, gender, social station, and characteristic disposition, and occasionally becoming more fearsome (as in the masks of the Furies that probably drew upon the Gorgon tradition) or verging towards caricature (as in some of Aristophanes's comedies featuring living politicians and philosophers). In the Hellenic and Roman times, tragic masks (personae) became more clearly representative of extreme emotional states, while the comic masks worn in both scripted comedies and improvised mime performances became more stereotyped and grotesque.

After the rise of Christianity and the fall of Rome, the Christian church attempted to shut down traditional masked entertainments, though it is unlikely this attempt was ever completely successful; Byzantium, in particular, seems to have become a mixing ground for European and Near Eastern popular traditions. Despite these efforts, Christian religious plays developed around Biblical stories and the lives of the saints and, by the start of the 13th century, there were written references to such plays being presented "by the usual masked players." Gold masks were used sometimes for God, Jesus was also sometimes masked, and so was the evil Hero; but the most frequent use of masks in these plays was for the devil and his wicked minions. Incorporating elements of the old Greek god of the forests, Pan, and drawing perhaps from imagery in Central Asian art, the grotesque European devil and his followers would often emerge out of the open maw of huge "hellmouth"; they sported goat hooves and horns, and actors wore masks characterized by grotesque, exaggerated features stressing raw sensation. They became the popular and clownish exemplars of all that was evil.

Popular festival traditions of masking not only persisted in Europe but became much stronger towards end of the medieval period. Masked processions and foolery took place especially around the old Celtic New Year, Harvest Festival and All Souls Day (Halloween) on the last day of October (when the dead were honored by giving gifts to masked children), during the twelve days of Christmas that bracketed the Christian calendar's New Year (and coincided with a Roman time of revelry), and at the time of year traditional to both Celtic spring planting ceremonies and the Roman Saturnalia. This last period found new life as Carnival: a period of license and merry-making prior to the austere lenten season. Local traditions of masking and mumming developed during these times are still celebrated in many sites in Europe, such as the Chläus masks-beautiful, wild, and ugly-used in parts of the Swiss Alps on New Year's Eve and masks of fantastic masked beasts such as the Kuranti of Slovenia and Surovaskare of Bulgaria that appear at planting time. Frequently, figures representing winter (a giant bear, a devil) are driven out or otherwise subdued as ritual scapegoats. With increasing urbanization, the ritual and functional aspects of these ceremonies yielded primacy to the general merrymaking and symbolic inversions attending the battle between fat carnival and lean lent. Young men masked and participated in sanctioned transgressive behavior. The devil and his witches became, for a time, figures of fun and mischief, masked creatures from the woods ran through urban streets, and a time of relative license prevailed. While it is debated to this day whether the medieval carnival ultimately operated as a rehearsal for revolution or as a safety valve that strengthened the status quo, the tradition has remained popular in several of the Catholic cities of Europe and was again reinvigorated by the interest in folklore as a carrier of community identity that emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Carnival masks are very specific to localities and are frequently controlled by carnival guilds. The wearing of these masks in rowdy processions functions to evoke local histories, provides a comic self-portrait of the society's semi-secret self, and, in so doing, celebrates continuity, even as social structures and decorum are mocked. Though most of the cities celebrating Carnival are still Catholic, an important exception is Basle, Switzerland, where over 10,000 participants mask, play music, and put on satiric plays each year.

In the early 16th Century, as the Carnival was gaining new strength in Venice and Rome, a new form of improvised comedy arose out of the remnants of the Greek and Roman mimes, spurred on by the rediscovery of Hellenic and Roman comedies and, perhaps, by contact with near-Eastern cultures. The Commedia dell'Arte, as it came to be called, used leather half-masks to depict character types drawn from various locales of Italy, lampooning miserly merchants, pompous professors, and cowardly captains, giving scope to sly servants, and advancing plots centered around romantic love. The Commedia became enormously popular, not only in Italy but throughout Europe and Latin America; it held the stage for over two hundred years, and profoundly influenced all of the great Renaissance and Baroque comic playwrights, including Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, and Moliere.

With the rise of a positivist world view in Europe, the theatrical mask went into a period of decline, only to be revived once more in the 20th century by modern and post-modern playwrights and directors, both in Europe and in the immigrant European communities of the Americas, who found themselves fighting against the limitations of a "naturalistic" aesthetic and who rediscovered in the mask a vehicle for humor, social critique, and an awakening of the imagination.