What is the Oldest Human Art? (choices, choice, science)

[eudaimonia]

Story telling gets so far down to our basic humanity, that I have to vote for this.


eudaimonia,

Mark

[gnostic]

I have voted tool making, although this is not really art, but what anthropologists called an "industry".

[ChrisP]

WHAT ABOUT DANCE!!!

Surely that has to be the oldest. Doesn't require tools... paints... words. Doesn't even require the ability to produce tones with your voice like singing.

Disclaimer: I am a man, and am not Spanish, Italian or from South America... therefore I may not know what dance is.

[gnostic]

Originally Posted by ChrisP

WHAT ABOUT DANCE!!!

Surely that has to be the oldest. Doesn't require tools... paints... words. Doesn't even require the ability to produce tones with your voice like singing.

The only problem is that there is no way to prove that dance is the oldest.

Tools, painting and sculpture can be proven by the existence of the physical evidence. Dancing may be older than singing, and it may be ancient, but both of these can not be recorded in any way.

If man lived in during Ice Age, then he would need to feed himself in some way, and this is usually done with some form of weapon for hunting. Depending on technique, the flint can be given a sharpened edge. The sharp tools can also be used to skin animal hide for clothings, particularly for primitive people living in freezing climates.

I doubt very much that dancing would help them to gain food.

[michel]

I said painting; I like being in the minority..............

I guess early humans liked to keep a record of what they did as art inside their caves........

[gnostic]

Originally Posted by Michel

I said painting; I like being in the minority..............

Well, painting is art. Tool making is not; I chose this because it was in the list on stuff to vote on. Otherwise, I'd have voted painting too. Another possibility of the oldest art is statuettes, figurines or fetishes.

[Azakel]

Originally Posted by gnostic

Well, painting is art. Tool making is not; I chose this because it was in the list on stuff to vote on. Otherwise, I'd have voted painting too. Another possibility of the oldest art is statuettes, figurines or fetishes.

Traditionally the term art was used to refer to any skill or mastery, a concept which altered during the Romantic period, when art came to be seen as "a special faculty of the human mind to be classified with religion and science.

By this, one can say tool making is an Aet, just because the meaning of the word changed mean nothing really.

[Hema]

Other - the art of making love.

[PureX]

Craftsmanship is not "art". Neither are biological functions. *smile*