Tea at Trianon: Did Art Exist Before Modern Humans?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Did Art Exist Before Modern Humans?

From Live Science:

For centuries, the "Unicorn Cave," or "Einhornhöhle," in central Germany has been famous for its many thousands of bones. In medieval times, people thought the bones came from unicorns. But a few years ago, archaeologists excavating the cave unearthed an unusual object: a toe bone from a giant deer. The material itself was noteworthy: Although giant deer were once prey for Europe's prehistoric hunters, the animals usually roamed much farther north, indicating this bone had been brought from afar. And it was clearly different from others in the cave: Several large grooves had been carved at angles into the bone's upper surface, creating a prominent chevron-like pattern. Even more extraordinary was its age: Radiocarbon dating of the bone showed that the deer lived around 51,000 years ago, when the Unicorn Cave was occupied by Neanderthals, our extinct human relatives.
"The engraved bone from Einhornhöhle is at least 50,000 years old and thus ranges among the oldest known symbolic objects," said Dirk Leder, an archaeologist with the Lower Saxony state government who has published research on the object. The meaning of the symbolism is lost to time, but it may have been "a device intended to communicate with other group members, outsiders, spirits or the like — we simply don't know," he said. The bone is one of several contenders for the much-disputed title of the "world's oldest art." This is a broad and crowded field — encompassing what look like accidental chicken scratches and representational imagery that is breathtakingly realistic.
Over the past decade, increasing evidence suggests artistic expression emerged much earlier in human evolution than scientists once thought, and it's reshaping our understanding of the cognitive abilities of archaic humans, such as Neanderthals and earlier hominins. For instance, there's archaeological evidence that Neanderthals made abstract designs on cave walls long before Homo sapiens arrived in Europe and may have made pendants from eagle talons up to 130,000 years ago. (Read more.)