What about cave paintings? Now, we don’t know how old those really are. But many “experts” seem to think the paintings are more than 10,000 years old.
Some of those paintings are pretty amazing and beautiful. Like, they-could-teach-Picasso-a-few-things-beautiful. (And Picasso did talk about “stealing” vs. copying. Hmmmm .....)
If a picture is worth a 1,000 words I would suggest we need to re-think “writing = civilization”.
I can’t find the reference but one of the things found in the Lauscaux cave paintings was that if you put up a flaming torch to it, flickering as it does, it generates the illusion of movement. Pretty advanced art.