
Crayon on a rock shard suggests early humans indulged in abstract art - ArtWomb
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06657-x
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landonxjames
I 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.

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dmazin
It's possible, but would be surprising. The earliest drawings of _any_ kind
are tens of thousands of years younger than this find.

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bunderbunder
I 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
The 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?

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bunderbunder
Why 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.

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beaconstudios
> And scribbling and (some) doodling are pretty unambiguously abstract.

Abstractions of what? Surely to have an abstraction, you have to have a
subject. If I'm drawing lines randomly, I'm not rendering an abstraction of
anything.

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bunderbunder
"Abstraction", in the verb sense, is the process of taking a subject that
isn't abstract and making it more abstract. But that isn't the only way to
produce an abstract image.

For example, see abstract expressionism.

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beaconstudios
true, but my point still holds for pure abstractions - drawing random lines is
not creating a representation of an abstract concept.

Unless you want to argue that any output you produce represents the
abstraction of your brain's state (ie the random lines represent the firing of
the neuronal pathways that are causing you to choose that specific arrangement
of "random" lines), but that's pretty meta and outside what I think the common
conception of abstract art is.

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bunderbunder
Your point seems to rest on holding to a different definition of "abstract"
from the one I was originally using.

Which is (unintentionally, I presume) a subtle form of putting words into my
mouth and then arguing against those instead.

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beaconstudios
It's not a form of putting words in your mouth, it's called misunderstanding,
miscommunication or "talking past each other". I'm operating from my
understanding of the word and you are operating from yours. It seems there is
a difference between the two. I can't be putting words in your mouth if we're
using the same word with different understandings of what it means.

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bunderbunder
Right, I had noticed the misunderstanding, which is why I initially responded
by clarifying my terminology. "Abstract" is jargon in art, so it doesn't
necessarily work exactly the same way there as it does in vernacular usage.

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dmazin
To 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.

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village-idiot
Early 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.

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JoshMnem
I'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/pop...](https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/general-
books/popular-science/The-Memory-Code-Lynne-Kelly-9781760291327)

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waserwill
A 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.).

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apersona
What if they were trying to draw what they're seeing but struggling with it?

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Finnucane
First art followed by first art critic: "That doesn't look like horse. My kid
could do that!"

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emilsedgh
Why 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".

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outside1234
Or 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.

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gilrain
You think it’s more likely someone drew on a rock with a crayon
unintentionally?

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apocalypstyx
Abstract 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.

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sandworm101
So 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.

