Art as a Product of Cognitive Advancement

Between 30,000 and 60,000 years ago, a cultural spark occurred in human civilizations around the world — a spark that signaled the very beginnings of artistic and religious expression. Although art appeared at different times and manifested itself in different forms across geographically disparate locations, physical anthropology finds that before this time, humans were incapable of producing works of representational or symbolic value. 

So how did humans evolve? Archaeologist Steven Mithen posits that artistic and cultural evolution was first induced by a cognitive evolution within the earliest humans. Before the emergence of art, the human mind had developed into four “chapels:” knowledge of technical functions, natural history, and social and linguistic intelligence. But in order for complex social structures to be formed and artistic expression to flourish, a communication between these chapels of the mind must occur. In order to develop the capacity to create art, Mithen says in his book The Prehistory of the Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion and Science, a “final major re-design of the mind” took place. Before the emergence of art, these four domains of thought had remained independent from one another; it was only after information could flow freely between these domains that art emerged.

Ivory lion-man statuette, Hohlenstein-Stadel, Germany,

considered one of the first examples of human art.

The trouble with pinpointing the very first instances of human artistic expression is partially due to our loose interpretations of the word “art.” Art, of course, is culturally explicit. Some look to bone etchings found in Bilzingsleben in Germany as an artistic artifact; others, like Mithen, define art as works that are representational of something else or illustrate participation in a “symbolic code” (i.e. motif repetition). Mithen finds an excellent example of these criteria in an ivory statuette found in Hohlenstein-Stadel (southern Germany) dated 30,000-33,000 years old.  This figure of a man with a lion’s head combines technical skill and creativity never seen before in other Upper Paleolithic artifacts. The ivory figure is also an example of the communication occurring between the brain domains  — though the early humans who crafted the statuette had never seen a lion-man, their newly-evolved capacity for information flow allowed for them to creatively fathom one.