[muawiyah]

"The Darwinian origin of art is a subject of much dispute. It's unlikely that the arts came about at one time or for one purpose: they evolved from overlapping interests based on survival and mate selection, and explore and make use of emotions experienced even by our pre-hominid ancestors.

This part is most subject to criticism. Just about all of us have a "part" of the gene-set that creates "art", and that enables us to appreciate it. Some have the whole thing and they create "art". It happened all at once sometime about 50,000 to 35,000 years ago ~ there was nothing piecemeal about it. The drawings and paintings preserved in the caves have no more primitive origin ~ it was all good from the very first day. It is demonstrable that there are no Darwinian "intermediate" forms or incremental steps when it comes to "art".

[blam]

I read a study where 25 art students were allowed to view a picture of a landscape picture with an open area surrounded by trees. They were allowed to view the picture for 30 minutes then, an hour later were asked to recreate/paint the picture from memory.

All 25 of the students paintings had oversized the open area in their paintings.

The test conclusion: It show our primordal longing for the savanah.

My conclusion: Trees are harder to paint than open areas. lol.

[phantomworker]

Interesting Darwinian ping.

[jimtorr]

It happened all at once sometime about 50,000 to 35,000 years ago.....

All at once, over a 15,000 year period? Those cave paintings show that they were created over a very long period. Also, just because we haven't found anything older is not evidence that nothing was done before then.

I would argue that the existence of jewerly that is far older than any cave painting shows that the origion of the esthetic arts is truly primordial.