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

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.

Comments

Neat

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Neat

[Hognoxious]

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

Re:Art expands thought, science limits it

[TapeCutter]

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.

Re:Art expands thought, science limits it

[TapeCutter]

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.

Metallica

[Charliemopps]

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.

Evolution

[freakmn]

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