paleoanthropology5: How did art evolve in humans? (v1.0)

Key reference is prof John Hawks of university of Wisconsin, Madison. 

Art gives humans a way of expressing things. Art has been done by humans across the world over a long time. It is not like language which has an obvious function. Art though is clearly a form of communication through time. When ancient humans made art, it was the first time it gave us a window into their time and their minds. They speak to us in ways that nothing else does. But they are often enigmatic and mysterious because there is such a vast distance between us.

But there is a long running debate. What was the purpose of art? Was art something that made humans behaviorally modern? Or was art something that occurs as a side effect of other phenomenon in our recent evolution? Is it something that emerges naturally for creatures that communicate the way we do and the senses we have? Is it something that depends on our cultures?

Almost everything humans do have some art in it. Building shapes are not 100% based on function alone. Even tools are not 100% based on function alone. This is true even for ancient hand axes from the Acheulean technology of the stone age. Art even manifests itself in the realm of science. It is no accident that many artists earlier like Leonardo Da Vinci were also scientists. Art and science are two seemingly different fields, but they have a lot in common. Both require creativity, imagination, and curiosity. In fact, art and science have been intertwined throughout history. Many scientists have used art to help them visualize their ideas and communicate their findings to others. Similarly, artists have used science to create new materials and techniques. Art is integrated into our lives.

Even before humans, there are some possible signs of art. In Bilzingsleben Germany a bone fragment, an elephant tibia, has two groups of 7 and 14 incised parallel lines and might represent an early example of art. The regular spacing of the incisions, their subequal lengths and V-like cross-sections suggest they were created at the same time, with a single stone tool. The tibia dates to between 350,000 and 400,000 years ago. There is no utilitarian explanation. The site was likely populated by Homo Erectus (an ancestor of humans).

Even in very early humans (100,000 years ago: Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis), there was art without a utilitarian function. In Tata in Hungary for example, there is a round rock with a natural grove. A person cut another grove at right angles to it. There is absolutely no utilitarian explanation for this except artistic expression.  In Africa, there are beads as adornments found in many sites made from ostrich eggshells by humans that are as early as 75,000 years old. Neanderthals used natural pigments to decorate about 50,000 years ago. In the apollo 11 cave in Namibia in Africa, there is a flat stone with a painting of a lion. It is dated about 30 to 40 thousand years ago. This tells us people were interested in depicting their environment early on. The earliest known cave art site is Chauvet cave in France with pictures of lions and Rhinos. It dates to 30 to 32 thousand years ago. There is a magical quality that demonstrates imagination in some of this art like a creature with the body of a man but the head of a deer.

Although humans had the potential, it is only in the last 100,000 years that art really started being used. It is only in the last 30,000 that we have more interesting paintings that even showcases imagination. It seems to have blossomed much more as population increased and there were more social interactions. It tells us that being human was about sharing and communication and art was a form of that. Art evolved from simple aeisthetics markings, to decorations and ornaments, to depicting ones environment to more imaginative pieces. Art seems to be a fundamental aspect of a social human as we evolved into communicating and representing beings and as our population increased and we formed bigger communities.