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The Ancestor of Humans Was an "Artist" 500,000 Years Ago

Posted by samzenpus on from the original-doodler dept.

brindafella writes Our ancient ancestor, Homo erectus, around 500,000 years ago, has been shown to make doodles or patterns. So, it seems that we Homo sapiens have come from a thoughtful lineage. The zig-zag markings cut into the covering of a fossil freshwater shell were from a deposit in the main bone layer of Trinil (Java, Indonesia), the place where Homo erectus was discovered by Eugène Dubois in 1891, says Dr Stephen Munro, a palaeoanthropologist with the Australian National University. The team's testing shows the erectus doodling was from 0.54 million years to a minimum of 0.43 million years ago. This pushes back the thoughtful making of marks by hundreds of thousands of years. The thoughtful gathering of shellfish and their nutrients also points to possible explanations for the evolving of bigger brains.

37 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. Neat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I look forward to the History channel telling me the zigzag is clearly a representation of electromagnetic waves and attributing it to aliens.

    1. Re:Neat by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Funny

      I can remember the good old days of the History channel, when they'd have demonstrated how the could be rearranged into swastikas.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    2. Re:Neat by jandersen · · Score: 1

      They may well do so, but they would, as always, be missing the point, which is that somebody, half a million years ago, did this deliberately; the surface of a shell is hard, so it is not likely that it happened by accident, and it does not seem likely that this pattern could have had an obvious utility for the shell's use as a tool. So, somebody deliberately did this for no practical reason - perhaps just for the joy of doing it? It also seems like a very well controlled scratch - I haven't tried myself (yet), but I guess that it requires more skill and effort than what you would expect from something unimportant. Calling it 'art' may be stretching the concept, but it is very reasonable to think that it is the result of abstract thought about something not tied to the specifics of day to day survival.

    3. Re:Neat by dreamchaser · · Score: 1

      Whoosh. You missed the AC's point. It was sarcasm, a crack at all of the psudo-history and outright science fiction that is today's History Channel most of the time.

    4. Re:Neat by brindafella · · Score: 1
      > So, somebody deliberately did this for no practical reason - perhaps just for the joy of doing it? It also seems like a very well controlled scratch ...

      Thanks, 'j'. You got the point of this discovery. It jumped out at me in the same way. The report makes the point that the covering of the shell would have probably been green so the marking down into the white shell underneath would have made the scoring stand out. If it had only been one scratch then it would be called an incidental mark, but it went well beyond that to be a deliberate pattern.

      --
      Looking at space, radio, science and computing from a 'down-under' amateur enthusiast perspective.
  2. Art expands thought, science limits it by EzInKy · · Score: 1

    Science limits people with its rules that facts must be proveable. Art has no limits, and allows people to explore everything that can be imagined. Both have there place though, and it would be a shame for market forces to favor one above the other.

    --
    Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
    1. Re:Art expands thought, science limits it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Yes, but talking about art is a language of pseudo intelligence for people who don't know anything to make themselves sound smart based on their emotional reaction to things. This is proven by the fact that they use lengthy words to describe things that can actually be communicated in very simple terms. It's also a language based on the popularity of the person being discussed, if you're good and you copy someone, you have referenced them, you have created allusion, you've paid homage to the person before you, if you're bad you're deemed to have created a cliché. All in all it's all bullshit and stuff either looks good or it doesn't. Urinals in a fucking art gallery. Science is as objective as can be, art is as subjective as can be. I sniff my own farts because that's what great artists and art critics do.

    2. Re:Art expands thought, science limits it by codeButcher · · Score: 1

      Quip at bottom of page:

      Logic is the chastity belt of the mind!

      --
      Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
    3. Re:Art expands thought, science limits it by TapeCutter · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Art is symbolism, it's an important evolutionary leap in the workings of the human mind. It allows our species to pass on experience to future generations that in this case have now morphed into a different species. We have refined that symbolism into language and language into math. Therefore math is actually a highly evolved art that reflects our best understanding of the universe. In fact the best mathematicians describe themselves "playing with math" and "breaking the rules" (eg: imaginary numbers).

      Urinals in a fucking art gallery.

      Is just symbol that annoys both of us.

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
    4. Re:Art expands thought, science limits it by TapeCutter · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Science (with a capital 'S') is a philosophy

      Science (with a small 's') is a process.

      Hypothesis: The fact that Science works leads people to believe it is not a philosophy.

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
    5. Re:Art expands thought, science limits it by Viol8 · · Score: 1

      Wish I had mod points. Thats one of the best summing ups of art critics I've read in years.

    6. Re:Art expands thought, science limits it by jehan60188 · · Score: 1

      do you have a compound I can come live on?

    7. Re:Art expands thought, science limits it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The context of which is that the artist was taking the piss out of the "art fascists" of the day and was making a very valid, excellent, point.

      Moaning that "it's just urinals in a gallery" simply displays your ignorance.

      You're the sort of person who scoffs at a computer user that doesn't compile their own kernel. Stuck in your own little rut and utterly unable to comprehend anything outside of it.

      Now go away or I will taunt you a second time.

    8. Re:Art expands thought, science limits it by Udom · · Score: 1

      Bizarre that rationalism evangelists should try to claim Art created by a Homo Erectus 500,000 years ago. For many decades there has been an ongoing war being waged against the Art of the wild by those who would confine it in cages of polite discussion... Rationalism does to Art what taxidermy does to wild animals.

    9. Re:Art expands thought, science limits it by oldmac31310 · · Score: 1

      Took a wrong turn and went to the men's toilet instead of the gallery? Too bad. You missed some great 'Unmade Bed' art.

      --
      http://www.acetonestudio.com
    10. Re:Art expands thought, science limits it by Udom · · Score: 1

      Art and thought have no natural link, and the link forged in the last 100 years or so is artificial and destructive. And Art is no evolutionary leap as its effect depends on emotional cues weighed by a variety of subsystems of the brain that are present to greater or lesser degree in pretty much all living things. It's ironic that the Western Art world wraps itself in the mantle of the rational while studiously ignoring the science behind perception.

  3. inb4 homoerectus jokes by Noah+Haders · · Score: 1

    oops too late

  4. Drawing doodles by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I dunno

    Ever since I was a little kid, every time I pee into the urinal I drew doodles with the pee streams

    1. Re:Drawing doodles by gtall · · Score: 1

      If they get fossilized and buried for millennia, then its art. You did have them fossilized, yes?

  5. Alternative by jklovanc · · Score: 1

    The researchers also found that one of the shells had clear evidence of being turned into a tool.
    "It had a deliberately-made sharp cutting edge," says Munro.

    One shell could have been used to sharpen the edge of another shell.

  6. What I want to know by maroberts · · Score: 1

    ...is that since all our ancestors were artists, how did science and progress get started?

    --

    Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
    Karma: Chameleon

    1. Re:What I want to know by dreamchaser · · Score: 1

      Da Vinci was both artist and scientist, and I'm sure quite a few modern day scientists have hobbies that would fall under the 'art' category.

  7. Metallica by Charliemopps · · Score: 4, Funny

    Clearly from the image... that first letter is an "M" and it's quite stylized...
    I think it's rather clear they were trying to carve Metallica, like most of us did to our desks in highschool.

    So clearly wherever this was found was an ancient school.

    And please, before you shun these proto-humans, keep in mind that this was half a million years ago. Long before anyone could have possibly imagine Metallica would turn into a bunch of Douchebags.

  8. Re:art is for fags by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    What did you expect from a species named "homo erectus?"

  9. Who said it's "Art"? by wirefarm · · Score: 1

    To me, this looks more like a form of accounting.
    Each mark represents something owed or something paid: In effect, it's a "chit".
    (Was unsure of the exact meaning of chit, so I googled it:
    Chit: A short official note, memorandum, or voucher, typically recording a sum owed.)

    Capuchin monkeys can be taught the concept of money. They understand debt:
    http://scholar.google.com/scho...

    I haven't seen any studies where they spontaneously create art, though, which leads me to believe that accounting could appear earlier.
    "Deliberate Markings", yes, which is significant and amazing, but undoubtedly some fool is going to claim that it is "unmistakeable proof that the ancients worshiped the ocean waves" or that it was carved by a shaman as a form of divination.

    --
    -- My Weblog.
    1. Re:Who said it's "Art"? by Art+Challenor · · Score: 1

      To me, this looks more like a form of accounting.

      If we're all descended from a bunch of accounts, that explains a lot about the world.

    2. Re:Who said it's "Art"? by wirefarm · · Score: 1

      "If we're all descended from a bunch of accounts, that explains a lot about the world."

      Exactly

      My unfounded personal theory is that we get art from our Neanderthal ancestors.

      --
      -- My Weblog.
    3. Re:Who said it's "Art"? by Greyfox · · Score: 1

      Kinda looks like that guy was drawing mountains. They look very similar to the mountains children draw.

      --

      I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

    4. Re:Who said it's "Art"? by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      Accountants, TV Producers, Hair Dressers, Management Consultants, Telephone Sanitizes...
      They all came from the B Arch, where all the Middle men where, The A Arch had all the achievers and great thinkers and the C Arch had all the people who actually did things useful.
      However they were eaten by a Mutant Star Goat.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  10. Rolling Rolling Rolling... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    This is just a early ad campain for ZigZag rolling papers. It was aimed at surfers at the beach.

  11. Wow by cyberchondriac · · Score: 1

    That's a wild leap of scientific assumption from very little evidence. He could've simply been trying to sharpen (or maybe dull) a blade. There's really no way to prove that this was "thoughtful", and I'd hardly think of it as art.
    Then again, with some of the modern "art" out there, I guess maybe it qualifies as among the best.

    --

    Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
    1. Re:Wow by dreamchaser · · Score: 1

      Making a tool is in itself a thoughtful act. It's not a big leap to crude doodling or 'art' with one of those tools.

  12. Re:No evidence... by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    Clerical error. It was designed by lager brains, not larger ones. Happens all the time.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  13. Word shortage? by oldmac31310 · · Score: 1

    Such a 'thoughtful' summary! Surely there must be more and better words with which 'thoughtful' could be substituted?

    --
    http://www.acetonestudio.com
  14. unimpressed by Khashishi · · Score: 1

    I have higher expectations from proto-humans than some zigzag lines scratched into a shell. Come on, you really expect me to accept that as art?

  15. Pushes back discovery, not reality by radtea · · Score: 1

    Fossil finds are a very sparsely sampled distribution, which means that while the earliest evidence for art has been pushed back hundreds of thousands of years, the earliest making of art almost certainly predates it by a much longer span: http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=...

    This is not a new idea, but it's one that continually evades reporters in this area. The data of first discovery of a sparsely sampled distribution is almost certainly much, much later than the first instance of the thing being sampled.

    --
    Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
  16. Evolution by freakmn · · Score: 2

    If Humans evolved from artists, why are there still artists?

    --
    warning: This post is likely to contain gobs of dripping sarcasm. Consume at your own risk.