Re: How art invented humanity

Noah Sombrero <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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.

Throat singing