Re: How art invented humanity

On 7/31/2026 3:23 PM, Creon 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?
> 
Apparently, the first art form was basket weaving.

The oldest known baskets were discovered in Faiyum in upper Egypt and 
have been carbon dated to between 10,000 and 12,000 years old, earlier 
than any established dates for archaeological evidence of pottery 
vessels, which were too heavy and fragile to suit far-ranging 
hunter-gatherers.