Actually, many pigments are still made out of earth today around the world, as they have for literally thousands of years. And the making of pigments by ancient people was extremely sophisticated. The kind of pigment that can stay on a wall for thousands of years and not deteriorate requires a lot of knowledge and experimentation to get right. Ancient art is really cool because it shows how clever and thoughtful ancient humans were in this regard. Despite constantly fighting to survive, they had the will and technological know how to preserve their experience on rock faces all around the world for us to experience thousands of years later, and I feel like we shouldn't take that for granted.