Cave art discovery in Indonesia force rethink of origin of art.

[Clueless Morgan]

Jared diamonds book The Third Chimpanzee talks about how art might have evolved in other animals - specifically in a kind of bird that builds elaborate and beautiful displays as part of its mating ritual. With this in mind it's very possible that our ancestors engaged in type of art that wouldn't have preserved for maybe hundreds of thousands of years. Probably not large nest-like art displays but who knows what our ancient ancestors mating rituals involved?

Cool.

The difference is mating display is not thought to be representational.

Certainly, good point.

the Third Chimpanzee looks at aspects of human behavior that we claim to be unique to humans and art is one of them ( he also mentions drug use and how some animals seem to engage in i as well). So while, yes, these birds don't seem to be engaging in representational art, they seem to be engaging in something that could have been a precursor to representational art which is what humans developed. Seeing this kind of activity in birds, I'm not surprised that human ancestors may have developed art earlier than we might have thought.

It also raises the question of whether art especially representational art is the kind of thing that would only be invented once, or whether it was inherently useful enough that it would develop in several disparate tribes independently.