Re: How art invented humanity

On Fri, 31 Jul 2026 22:23:00 +0000, Creon <[email protected]> wrote:

>At Fri, 31 Jul 2026 17:52:45 -0000 (UTC), Tara <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> 
>> In 1940, rumours of secret passageways to an old manor lured four teenage boys
>> into a hole in the ground near the village of Montignac in southwestern
>> France. Instead of a tunnel laden with gold, they found a series of natural
>> chambers bejewelled with exquisite paintings: horses and elk, ibex and bulls,
>> almost perfectly preserved on the limestone walls. Experts examining the
>> Lascaux caves in subsequent years using radiocarbon dating estimated that the
>> paintings had been made some 19,000 years ago. Today, the images are believed
>> to be around 20,000 years old. But Lascaux is far from the oldest example of
>> human art. Since 1940, many other caves have been found in Europe, Australia,
>> Indonesia and Africa containing art no less astounding. Some of it is more
>> than twice the age of the Lascaux murals.
>> Cave painting of prehistoric animals in earthy tones on a textured rock
>> surface.
>> 
>> These discoveries have turned the questions of when and why humans invented
>> art into central problems of the human sciences. As fair and poignant as such
>> questions may be, they leave unaddressed the deeper mystery of what art is in
>> the first place, where it comes from in the human soul, and what it might
>> reveal to us about the nature of reality.
>> 
>> Popular legend holds that when Pablo Picasso visited the Lascaux cave a few
>> years after its discovery, he emerged exclaiming: ‘We have invented nothing’ –
>> art had appeared full-grown from its earliest instance. The common
>> interpretation is that Picasso was humbly attributing the invention of art to
>> our prehistoric ancestors rather than claiming it for himself and his
>> contemporaries, or any human of the modern age. But perhaps this apocryphal
>> story conveys a weirder truth, namely that no one really invented art.
>> Instead, it was the other way around: art invented humanity..........
>> 
>> Art has never been a celebration of humanity, but always an exploration of
>> those borderlands where the human ends and something else begins. This applies
>> even to art dealing with seemingly human ideas, feelings and things. Only
>> through art can a city become a jungle, a house an alien structure, a sadness
>> a kind of weather event....................
>> 
>> https://aeon.co/essays/humans-did-not-invent-art-it-was-the-other-way-around?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=48f001c5bc-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_07_24_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-49ad69cbc2-71577312
>
>Which brings to mind a question I've seen before...
>
>Which came first:  music, or speech?

There is a peculiar form of singing among indigenous inuit.  I can't
think of what they call it now.
-- 
Noah Sombrero mustachioed villain
Don't get political with me young man
or I'll tie you to a railroad track and
<<<talk>>> to <<<YOOooooo>>>
Who dares to talk to El Sombrero?
dares: Ned
does not dare: Julian  shrinks in horror and warns others away