Lecture #2 How Art Made The World

In this weeks lecture and video, you will discover the greatest mystery of human creativity. You will begin to see the correlation between what an artist sees and creates and how that correlates to the culture in which they live. Modern humans, Homosapiens, who had the same brain that we have no, date as far back as 150,000 years ago. Yet they lived for thousands of years without creating images until 35,000 ago. Archeologists call the point in history when our pre-historic ancestors suddenly began to create images of the world around them “The Creative Explosion”.

In 1879 in Altamira Spain, the first discovery of pre historic cave paintings were discovered by amateur archaeologist Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola and his eight-year-old daughter María . When the discovery was first made public in 1880, it led to a bitter public controversy between experts which continued into the early 20th century, since many did not believe prehistoric man had the intellectual capacity to produce any kind of artistic expression. The acknowledgment of the authenticity of the paintings, which finally came in 1902, changed the perception of prehistoric human beings.

Paleolithic cave art that developed across Europe, from the Urals to the Iberian Peninusula, from 35,000 to 11,000 BC. Because of their deep galleries, isolated from external climatic influences, these caves are particularly well preserved. The caves are inscribed as masterpieces of creative genius and as the humanity’s earliest accomplished art. They are also inscribed as exceptional testimonies to a cultural tradition and as outstanding illustrations of a significant stage in human history.

Our ancestors were obsessed with animals and hunting, yet the images they began to recreate on the walls of the caves where the earliest images have been found show very little correlation between the animals that were hunted and part of the pre –historic diet and the animals that were painted in the caves. Also, it is important to understand that the images that have been discovered were painted deep within the caves where it is completely dark and difficult to maneuver in.

So how then did our pre-historic ancestors create an image representing their world, when they had never seen “pictures” of images before? As you will discover in the video, “How Art Made The World”, there were many clues found to create the extraordinary hypothesis that explains with scientific evidence what the human brain sees when it has sensory deprivation from being in complete darkness as well as when the brain is in an altered state. You will see that though the cave paintings in Europe that date back 35,000 years ago and cave paintings in Southern Africa that are only a few hundred years ago have many similarities. The questions on the Discussion Board will be centered around this hypothesis.

People didn’t all of a sudden invent making pictures by copying nature. What happened is that people were familiar with the images their brains were producing and they wanted to re-create those visions and project them onto walls to make them permanent. The 2-dimensional representations flattened onto the wall of a cave is that imagery from their heads. This theory is based on a scientific understanding of what was going on inside the heads of those who made it. It explains how we went from a world with no images to one with cave paintings. In the video you will learn about the clues that scientists and archeologists connected to explain that creative explosion.

What is also of great importance is the point in history when our pre-historic ancestors stopped painting animals on the walls of caves and began carving them on monolithic stones for ritual and ceremonial purposes in the hills of southeastern Turkey. On a hill known as Göbekli Tepe (“Potbelly Hill”) in southeastern Turkey, excavations led by Klaus Schmidt have uncovered several large megalithic enclosures that date between 10,000 and 8000 B.C.E., the dawn of civilization and the Neolithic age. Each of these circular enclosures, which many have described as Turkey’s “Stonehenge,” consists of ten to twelve massive stone pillars surrounding two larger monoliths positioned in the middle of the structure. There are no village remains at or near the Göbekli Tepe ruins, suggesting that the unique site was a ceremonial center exclusively used for the practice of the Neolithic religion of local hunter-gatherer groups.

Given the early age of the site, equally surprising are the varied and often highly elaborate carvings that adorn the pillars of the Göbekli Tepe ruins. Among the pillars are detailed and often very realistic depictions of animal figures, including vultures and scorpions, lions, bulls, boars, foxes, gazelles, asses, snakes, and other birds and reptiles. In addition, some of the massive monoliths are carved with stylized anthropomorphic details—including arms, legs and clothing—that give the impression of large super-human beings watching over the enclosures.

(Wikipedia on Gobekli Tepe)

It is believed that our hunter gathering ancestors started to farm in this area for the first time due to the necessity to feed all the people who were gathering at Gobekli Tepe for worship, ceremonies and rituals. The carved stones are so large, it is believed that it took 500 people to move one, so we can estimate there were thousands of people at this site.

In conclusion, imagry had become so important in the minds of human beings, that it brought about the greatest transformation in human history. Our ancestors became farmers and we became an agricultural society instead of hunters and gatherers.

Questions for Discussion Board: 1. How did the Sans beliefs correlate to the paintings in the rock paintings in Africa? (the paintings are recreations of the Shamans spiritual journeys and experiences while in a trance) 2. What happened to the pre-historic artists when they went into the dark caves and painted? What did they see in their minds from sensory deprivation? (they painted abstract shapes, patterns and their hallucinations) 3. Give a brief explanation of how the “Power of the Picture” went from cave paintings not essential to daily life, to today where we are flooded with images every day all day long.