A Sense of Different Eras Reflected in World Art

Abstract

The archaeological record on the emergence of visual art, despite its status as one of humanity's defining characteristics, is few. Art is created by the use of color, pattern, and resemblance of design. Insofar as human intelligence, symbolizing activity, or anatomy were concerned, the Upper Palaeolithic Europe artworks created at least 30,000 years before are logically analogous to those formed in recent millennia. Africa was the cradle of humanity's artistic endeavors. The first reported "artistic activity" is likely a pragmatic one: humans painting their bodies with ochre and beads. The first non-biological patterns discovered include zigzag and crisscross tendencies, nested curves, or parallel lines. Their similarity to entopic events (the involuntary output of the visual system) suggests they have a physiological basis. The suggestive qualities of an irregular surface have served as inspiration for certain works of 2D art, while the identification of human likeness in natural objects and their subsequent modification to emphasize that similarity may have been the genesis of 3D art. Tools for hunting would have profited greatly from an evolutionary shift in brain design that allowed for the production of images in one's imagination, or "the mind's eye."

It is possible that early sculpture used the idea that three-dimensional objects (such as sculptures and reliefs) might be mentally broken down into their component surfaces. Africa is a logical starting point for the development of the mind's ability to produce art independently of the body, but the ability may have arisen independently of time and place in genetically and culturally different communities within Africa and during global dispersal, explaining the regional variation seen in both ancient and modern works of art. Rare and great individuals would have been the driving force for stylistic shifts all through the history of art.