How Old Is Art?

Confirmed dates for the world’s oldest art just got older, according to the report of an international research team published in the May 14 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Dating back about 37,000 years, the art consists of engravings made in stone that has since fallen from the ceiling of a cave at Abri Castanet in southwestern France. While not as visually arresting as the more famous cave art found at Chauvet, the Castanet engravings are both older and represent what is very likely an earlier stage in the history of the Aurignacian culture, which spanned 40,000 to about 28,000 years ago. Some of the Chauvet paintings are now confirmed at between 30,000 and 32,000 years ago.

Credit: HTO. A replica of a painting, now in the public domain.

The Castanet engravings are both simpler artistically and were located in the general living area of the cave. The Aurignacian culture that created both the paintings and the engravings is known for is many forms of art. According to New York University anthropology professor Randall White, one of the study's co-authors, the Aurignacians "had relatively complex social identities communicated through personal ornamentation, and they practiced sculpture and graphic arts."

"But unlike the Chauvet paintings and engravings, which are deep underground and away from living areas, the engravings and paintings at Castanet are directly associated with everyday life, given their proximity to tools, fireplaces, bone and antler tool production, and ornament workshops," White said in press release issued by NYU.

With more refined archeological techniques, the story of the rise of human symbolic culture is likely to become more complex and more ancient. While there may well have been bursts of cultural creativity in which symbolic advance occurred rapidly, additional findings may also suggest a more steady rise in the story of human art. The study, entitled “Context and dating of Aurignacian vulvar representations from Abri Castanet, France,” appears in the May 14, 2012 edition of PNAS.

100,000 Years of Art

The awakening of human creativity is one of the great mysteries of our species. Even today we marvel at the artistic power of cave art, some of it dating back nearly 35,000 years ago. Musical instruments—flutes, at least—date back nearly as far. Beads, often made by carefully drilling a hole through shells, date to nearly 100,000 years ago.

And now comes evidence to suggest that painting goes back just as far. At least 100,000 years ago, about 40,000 years earlier than previously thought, human beings made pigments for paint through a process that is surprisingly complex.

In the October 14 edition of the journal Science, Christopher Henshilwood and his team present their analysis of the earliest known “artists’ workshop.” In the Blombos Cave in Cape Town, South Africa, they discovered a 100,000 year old ochre processing site. In two places in the cave, ochre was ground into fine powder, mixed with crushed quartz and other chemicals including charcoal and bone, and blended into a pigment mixture that was stored in two abalone shells. The pigment may have been used for painting, body decoration, or coloring of clothing.

"The recovery of these toolkits adds evidence for early technological and behavioural developments associated with humans and documents their deliberate planning, production and curation of pigmented compound and the use of containers. It also demonstrates that humans had an elementary knowledge of chemistry and the ability for long-term planning 100,000 years ago," concludes Henshilwood in a press release issued by the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. The article, "A 100,000-Year-Old Ochre-Processing Workshop at Blombos Cave, South Africa," appears in the October 14 issue of Science.

What is fascinating is how early all this occurred and just how complex the process was. It involved careful planning over time. It included surprisingly sophistical technology (one is tempted to say “chemical engineering”). Why? What was stirring then, and how are we still inventing new ways to release the human imagination?