The Origins of Art, Music & Creative Culture
Peter's wonderful post about the cave paintings--"or, what makes men men"--reminded me of E. O. Wilson’s new book, The Social Conquest of the Earth. In that book, the eminent sociobiologist seeks to answer the questions that have led philosophers, sages, and theologians to put their pens to paper since time immemorial: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?
Wilson’s book, which outlines the biological origins of our advanced culture, is breathtaking in its scope. We are the way we are, Wilson argues, because we are one of a few species on earth that developed advanced social life. Advanced social life requires altruism–putting aside your personal interests for the interests of the group. Bees and ants are pros at this. Humans are not bad at it either (as explained further here).
For human beings, the cultural consequences of eusociality–of the hive-like mentality–have been enormous. Without it, there would be no culture to speak of.
So how did culture first emerge?
Wilson explains that the creative arts needed language (i.e. abstract thought) in order to initially develop:
The creative arts became possible as an evolutionary advance when humans developed the capacity for abstract thought. The human mind could then form a template of a shape, or a kind of object, or an action, and pass a concrete representation of the conception to another mind. Thus was born true, productive language, constructed from arbitrary words and symbols. Language was followed by visual art, music, dance, and the ceremonies and rituals of religion.
Unfortunately, no one knows exactly how the creative arts initially arose. But the creation of stone tools seems to have been an indispensable step along the way. About 1.7 millions year ago, ancestors of modern humans were creating stone tools to cut up food. Half a million years ago, our other ancestors developed the hand ax. Then:
Within another 100,000 years, people were using wooden spears, which must have taken several days and multiple steps of construct. In this period, the Middle Stone Age, the human ancestors began to evolve a technology based on a true, abstraction-based culture.
So culture arose out of the creation of useful artifacts. But it wasn’t long before artifacts were being used for purposes other than mere utility. In a relatively short period of time, our ancestors started wearing jewelry and then performing rituals that were spiritually meaningful–a major turning point in the history of cultural evolution.
Here is Wilson on the rise of our aesthetic sensibility:
Next came pierced snail shells thought to be used as necklaces, along with still more sophisticated tools, including well-designed bone points. Most intriguing are engraved pieces of ocher. One design, 77,000 years old, consists of three scratched lines that connect a row of nine X-shaped marks. The meaning, is any, is unknown, but the abstract nature of the pattern seems clear.
And on death:
Burials began at least 95,000 years ago, as evidenced by thirty individuals excavated at Qafzeh Cave in Israel. One of the dead, a nine-year-old child, was positioned with its legs bent and a deer antler in its arms. That arrangement alone suggests not just an abstract awareness of death but also some form of existential anxiety. Among today’s hunter-gatherers, death is an event managed by ceremony and art.
These rituals must have arisen, Wilson speculates, when the living asked “Where do all these dead people go?”
The answer would have been immediately obvious to them. The departed still lived, and regularly rejoined the living–in dreams. It was in the spirit world of dreams, and even more vividly in drug-induced hallucinations, that their deceased relatives dwelled, along with allies, enemies, gods, angels, demons, and monsters. Similar visions, as later societies found, could also be induced by fasting, exhaustion, and self-torture. Today, as then, the conscious mind of every living person leaves his body in sleep and enters the spirit world created by neuronal surges of his brain.
As the ceremonies surrounding death led to various religious rituals, yet another form of creative culture was coming on the scene: cave art.
The beginnings of the creative arts as they are practiced today may forever hidden. Yet they were sufficiently established by genetic and cultural evolution for the “creative explosion” that began approximately 35,000 years ago in Europe. From this time on until the Late Paleolithic period of over 20,000 years later, cave art flourished. Thousands of figures, mostly of large game animals, have been found in more than two hundred caves distributed through southwestern France and northeastern Spain, on both sides of the Pyrenees. Along with cliffside drawings in other parts of the world, they present a stunning snapshot of life just before the dawn of civilization.
Cave art was not only of big game, however. There was also an early form of what we’d today call finger painting:
There were also more figures of humans or at least parts of the human anatomy than are usually not mentioned in accounts of cave art. These tend to be pedestrian. The inhabitants often made prints by holding their hands on teh wall and spewing ocher powder from their mouths, leaving an outline of spread thumb and fingers behind. The size of the hands indicates that it was mostly children who engaged in this activity. A good many graffiti are present as well, with meaningless squiggles and crude representations of male and female genitalia common among them.
Did the hand art represent an early version of arts and crafts class? Was the graffiti the first form of pornography and “street art,” as it’s called today?
One question that arises when reading Wilson’s book is why–why would the creative arts have arisen?
At the beginning of his book, Wilson dismisses the creation myth–and, hence, organized religion–as “a Darwinian device for survival.” Could the same be said of the creative arts? Were they survival mechanisms that arose from our ability to think into the future, our need to cope with the past, and our desire to make sense of the world, as our brains got bigger and our thoughts increasingly abstract?
When Wilson writes about music (you can read his thoughts here), it's clear that it, like the other creative arts, reinforces the social instinct that makes us what we are: “They draw the tribal members together, creating a common knowledge and purpose.” In that sense, creative culture, which includes religious ritual, draws a person out of himself and into something larger and better than the self.
- Comment (13)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (4)
Comments:
Dec '10
Re: The Origins of Art, Music & Creative Culture
"Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?"
What's for lunch?
Jan '11
Re: The Origins of Art, Music & Creative Culture
I haven't read the book, but I'm immediately suspicious. A person whose profession is studying group behavior publishes a book that claims that the answers to the most basic questions of life (Who are we? Where are we going?) are found in ... studying group behavior.
Gee, what are the odds?
But in fairness, I haven't read the book, so this is just an immediate suspicion.
Jun '10
Re: The Origins of Art, Music & Creative Culture
The same people that think religion was just a stage that humans went through, rarely think the same thing about music. I suspect that's because music doesn't demand anything of us that's profoundly difficult.
Oct '10
Re: The Origins of Art, Music & Creative Culture
In Chris Stringer's new book Lone Survivors he discusses how when sea levels rose 14000 years ago and cut off Tasmania from Australia, the isolation led the islanders to lose many of their skills. Similarily, over 60,000 years ago the isolated groups of modern man in Africa and Neandertals in Europe all made tools and (perhaps) buried their dead, but it was only when conditions allowed the AFRICAN population to grow that culture -- no longer hindered by isolation -- really took off. That may have been the reason for our success.
Oct '10
Re: The Origins of Art, Music & Creative Culture
You're right to be suspicious. KC. I haven't read this either, but I have his book Consilience and in it he makes it clear that he is a thorough materialist. He rejects any transcendental basis for ethics, but his insight that the fight over the issue will dominate this century is accurate, I'm sure. He was raised a Southern Baptist and takes a conciliatory tone toward Christianity that isn't quite as smug and patronizing as a lot of other science popularizers, but I never know how far to trust his judgement.
I have the same problem with Jared Diamond who wrote the bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel. In the first chapter he commits such an obvious blunder in service to political correctness that I couldn't finish the book. When an author has such obvious bias, it's tough to read them without undue suspicion. It becomes work.
Oct '10
Re: The Origins of Art, Music & Creative Culture
Severely Ltd.
I have the same problem with Jared Diamond who wrote the bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel. In the first chapter he commits such an obvious blunder in service to political correctness that I couldn't finish the book. When an author has such obvious bias, it's tough to read them without undue suspicion. It becomes work. · 5 minutes ago
What was the blunder? I also read the book, but didn't notice that.
Nov '11
Re: The Origins of Art, Music & Creative Culture
I see books like this as just regurgitating modern myths and stifling creativity. For instance the assumptions that humans had no (or very little) language or music for that matter. Where and why would anyone believe this? Seems to me humans have pretty much stayed the same it's the technology that has changed. I would also argue that creativity is more individual than social. Books like this are fun I'll admit but should be read as if somebody in Darwins's time wrote it- sort of a new 'social science fiction' category.
I've edited it to mention the thought that earliest humans were more likely actually genetically superior to us (I would say with the same nature, however). That would be an interesting. discussion.
Edited on July 20, 2012 at 4:00pmMay '11
Re: The Origins of Art, Music & Creative Culture
PracticalMary:
I've edited it to mention the thought that earliest humans were more likely actually genetically superior to us (I would say with the same nature, however). That would be an interesting. discussion. · 28 minutes ago
Edited 0 minutes ago
Can you please define "genetically superior"? What makes one animal, plant, etc. genetically superior?
Oct '10
Re: The Origins of Art, Music & Creative Culture
Just got back to the discussion. On page 19 he is discussing how European colonist around the world considered themselves more intelligent than their colonial subjects. The last paragraph begins:
"The objection to such racists explanations is not just that they are loathsome, but also that they are wrong...In fact, as I shall explain in a moment, modern "Stone Age" peoples are on average probably more intelligent, not less intelligent, than industrialized peoples."
On the next page:
"From the very beginning of my work with New Guineans, they impressed me as being on the average more intelligent, more alert, more expressive, and more interested in things and people around them than the average European or American is."
Capping it off on page 22:
"Why did New Guineans wind up technologically primitive, despite what I believe to be their superior intelligence." Continued below.
Oct '10
Re: The Origins of Art, Music & Creative Culture
My point is that after pointing out the loathsomeness of racist explanations, he immediately makes racists assumptions based on his own observations which are apparently fine when they're impugning your own race or culture. I don't have a problem with Diamond or anyone theorizing about race but I 'loath' this progressive double standard.
Apr '11
Re: The Origins of Art, Music & Creative Culture
Great point. Studies and theories on early man can be fascinating food for thought, but can also be as speculative as science fiction is about the future. So, there were/will be people walking around with two arms and two legs facing challenges small and large. Fill in the blanks.
Anthropology in particular has some gems. One of my favorites is the LGBT caveman:
Oh, of course. Clearly that's the more logical conclusion. Guess they don't teach Occam's Razor in anthropology departments.
Oct '10
Re: The Origins of Art, Music & Creative Culture
I hadn't remembered that, but your point is well made.
Apr '12
Re: The Origins of Art, Music & Creative Culture
Emily: excellent article, and fascinating topic of conversation. Peter's was as well, but I didn't think I had much to add then.
One of the ways to better understanding humaness and art can be found in contrasts. Not, how are we like the bees and chimps, but how are we different. These ideas have changed as we investigate. But while narrower, the contrasts are sharper.
Take for instance Gorilla painting.
This is a painting of Koko's pet Blue Jay.
Below is Michael's painting of his deceased pet dog "Apple," painted from memory.
and here is a photograph of Apple:
Eventually, over time, we see that the gorillas understand these paintings as representations of what they claim. They are allowed to choose their subject matter, and they choose the colors, paints, etc. They name their art, and claim, through their somewhat limited ASL, that they represent named people or objects.
A far cry from:
We can say so un-chauvinistically because, through ASL, we know the apes too can grasp our art much better than their own.
But nothing illustrates the stark differences better than the tragic story of Lucy Temerlin.
Are you familiar with it?
Edited on July 21, 2012 at 5:41am