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Crayon on a rock shard suggests early humans indulged in abstract art
- landonxjames 8y agoI think that the sample is a little small to call it "abstract" art. It seems as if it could easily be part of a larger figurative drawing.
- tyingq 8y agoThat's what I thought as well. Some fragment of a drawing of a basket or netting?
- dmazin 8y agoIt's possible, but would be surprising. The earliest drawings of any kind are tens of thousands of years younger than this find.
- bunderbunder 8y agoI was thinking along similar lines. It seems less extraordinary to think that the development of art would progress simpler stages - scribbling, then symbols, and so on - and only later get to the level of refinement we see at places like Lascaux. Also that we wouldn't necessarily see much of that in the archaeological record, because you've probably got to have advanced to the point where your art is very serious business before you're doing something as difficult and potentially dangerous as putting it deep inside a cave. So, assume that people probably were drawing on rocks for a long time before the earliest cave paintings we know of. And assume that, for much of that time, it's typically quite a bit less refined than what we typically see in caves. Ask any kid, and even most adults - making beautiful figurative art is hard, and takes a lot of practice. I agree that we can't know for sure that this isn't a fragment of some larger piece of representational art. But I can't fault these researchers for going with the simplest available hypothesis.
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- nautilus12 8y agoThe conclusion is so premmature. What if ancient children, like modern children liked playing with crayons. Are we calling kids scribbling on the wall abstract art now?
- dmazin 8y agoYou're missing the point a little bit. "Abstract drawing" is the best description of the markings, not an argument that there was a culture of abstract art back then. (In the original paper -- the linked-to writeup is pretty poorly worded, yeah.) This drawing predates any drawings (as opposed to etchings) we know from humans by tens of thousands of years -- even if it's a child's doodling, it displays a level of cognition previously dated to much more modern times.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoLets not go overboard. The article was specific - the drawing was 'abstract' as versus 'figurative' or art representing a figure like an animal
- black6 8y agoMy children’s art is definitely abstract most of the time.
- afdsgujbuionio 8y agoI'd call it that. It's not good abstract art, but it seems to me that children make deliberate decisions to make something that looks good.
- bunderbunder 8y agoWhy not? It seems pretty trivial to me to say that art can encompass any creation of designs or patterns for pleasure, including scribbling and doodling. And scribbling and (some) doodling are pretty unambiguously abstract. Ergo, abstract art. It's hard for me to imagine a more Philistine sentiment than dismissing something as art on the grounds that, if a child can do it, it must not be art.
- 8y ago
- sandworm101 8y agoSo marks on a stone is now art? This is a handful of lines. Why is it not language? Or math? Or a navigational marker? That they are calling this set of marks "art" tells me more about thier assumptions about ancient humans than about actual history. It is evidence of expression and the physical tools needed to create a record of that expression, tools common to many expressive forms. Art requires more.
- apocalypstyx 8y agoAbstract art is like communism: it fundamentally follows upon a set of historic circumstances and development and tradition, and applying such terms backwards in time is a logical error.
- village-idiot 8y agoEarly humans probably had more downtime during good hunting years. Not much of a point to work harder when you can’t store a ton of food for the future, so they probably made a ton of small art like this.
- dmazin 8y agoTo put this find in perspective, behavioral modernity -- a sign of which is the use of pigment -- is generally dated to about 50,000 years ago. Previous finds in Blombos Cave, 77,000-year-old ochre engravings (as opposed to drawings) showed the early evolution of modern behavior. This find, on the other hand, is a drawing, the oldest known finding of which was until now 40,000 years old.
- waserwill 8y agoA cool find, but not necessarily surprising: all modern populations have some art in their culture, but modern populations diverged >70 kya. One might imagine that our common ancestors had similar behaviors to all living humans, at least those behaviors which have not been transmitted culturally in recent years (especially when you take long-isolated or unique peoples into account; e.g. Amazonian and Papuan tribes, San hunter-gatherers, etc.).
- apersona 8y agoWhat if they were trying to draw what they're seeing but struggling with it?
- Finnucane 8y agoFirst art followed by first art critic: "That doesn't look like horse. My kid could do that!"
- outside1234 8y agoOr someone just scribbled on a rock as they sat waiting for prey to walk by. Not to diminish this find, but it doesn't demonstrate a pattern or show intent.
- Allower 8y agoSo why do we think this was done by hominids?
- JoshMnem 8y agoI'm skeptical of the idea that its the same kind of "abstract art" as Pollock and Mondrian. This book[1] provides clues to another possible interpretation. Symbols and patterns have been used to encode knowledge systems in oral cultures since prehistoric times. [1] https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/general-books/popular-science/The-Memory-Code-Lynne-Kelly-9781760291327 https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/general-books/pop...
- emilsedgh 8y agoWhy is everyone so locked on the word "art"? I think in this context it means "it was abstract (and it proved they could think in abstracts)" and "it was for amusement not their daily struggles".