Layton (1991) wrote: ‘we identify art works in a formal sense because we find them aesthetically pleasing and we find that they enhance our perception of the world around us through the apt use of images’. There is no consensus on how to define art, although most definitions emphasize aesthetics. As this includes artistic creativity, evidence of the increasing sophistication of tool technology, as well as evidence from crania of increasing brain size, suggests that our ancestors had the ability to create art or proto-art much earlier in evolution than is suggested by current knowledge of art-related artefacts. The brain activation detected by positron emission tomography during tool-making included both visuomotor and language circuits, suggesting that tool-making and language share a basis in the human capacity for complex goal-directed manual activity. The tools were of the Oldowan and Acheulian types, representing a period of some 2 million years during which time the brain of our hominin ancestors expanded and tools became more advanced. (2008) studied the brain activity of subjects who had become expert in Early Stone Age tool-making. There is good evidence for a neurological relationship between visual creativity and language. Nevertheless, with the evolution of human cognition, they were deployed in new ways, with complex symbolic meaning becoming attached to them. Vocalization, ritualized movement and visual display are part of animal courtship and dominance competition as well as human ritual and communication, so it is likely that the roots of music, dance and body decoration lie deep in the evolutionary history of the animal kingdom. In all societies today, the visual arts are intimately intertwined with music, dance, ritual (marking life landmarks, death, religion and politics) and language (poetry, song and story-telling). At all stages in the evolution of artistic creativity, stylistic change must have been due to rare, highly gifted individuals.Īrt, in its many forms, is practised by almost all human cultures and can be regarded as one of the defining characteristics of the human species. The cognitive ability to create art separate from the body must have originated in Africa but the practice may have begun at different times in genetically and culturally distinct groups both within Africa and during global dispersal, leading to the regional variety seen in both ancient and recent art. Analysis of early tool-making techniques suggests that creating 3D objects (sculptures and reliefs) involves their cognitive deconstruction into a series of surfaces, a principle that could have been applied to early sculpture. The creation of images from the imagination, or ‘the mind’s eye’, required a seminal evolutionary change in the neural structures underpinning perception this change would have had a survival advantage in both tool-making and hunting. 3D art may have begun with human likeness recognition in natural objects, which were modified to enhance that likeness some 2D art has also clearly been influenced by suggestive features of an uneven surface. Zig-zag and criss-cross patterns, nested curves and parallel lines are the earliest known patterns to have been created separately from the body their similarity to entopic phenomena (involuntary products of the visual system) suggests a physiological origin. The earliest known evidence of ‘artistic behaviour’ is of human body decoration, including skin colouring with ochre and the use of beads, although both may have had functional origins. The origins of art are therefore much more ancient and lie within Africa, before worldwide human dispersal. The 2D and 3D art forms that were created by Upper Palaeolithic Europeans at least 30 000 years ago are conceptually equivalent to those created in recent centuries, indicating that human cognition and symbolling activity, as well as anatomy, were fully modern by that time. The components of art include colour, pattern and the reproduction of visual likeness. Creating visual art is one of the defining characteristics of the human species, but the paucity of archaeological evidence means that we have limited information on the origin and evolution of this aspect of human culture.
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