Visual imagery used in drawing regulates arm movements in manner similar to how hunters visualize the arc of a spear. Neanderthals had large brains and made complex tools but never demonstrated the ability to draw recognizable images, unlike early modern humans who created vivid renderings of animals and other figures on rocks and cave walls. That artistic gap may be due to differences in the way they hunted, suggests a University of California, Davis, expert on predator-prey relations and their impacts on the evolution of behavior.
Neanderthals used thrusting spears to bring down tamer prey in Eurasia, while Homo sapiens, or modern humans, spent hundreds of thousands of years spear-hunting wary and dangerous game on the open grasslands of Africa.
Richard Coss, a professor emeritus of psychology, says the hand-eye coordination involved in both hunting with throwing spears and drawing representational art could be one factor explaining why modern humans became smarter than Neanderthals. (1)
We used to be alive.
With no time to make art.
We now live void lives.
And yet, we have painting.
We find no meaning anywhere.
And yet, we are artistic.
A dead civilization.
Leaving behind paintings; celebrating a life we have lost.
We used to be Neanderthals, brute and raw. Killing by contact, not from a distance. So, they (we) did not develop art back then. Or did they? Neanderthals lived every day without wanting to leave something behind. They just lived. And this was their heritage to the world. Their signature on the fabric of existence of the universe.
Their art was their own being.
Their own agony. Their own sorrow. Their own life.
A fascinating life, lived day after day in silence.
An incredible life lost in oblivion.
Without ever being told to anyone.
An incredible story lost in time.
A work of art…
Looking at the eyes of a dying animal…
Alternative
What you do defines what you… do.
And what we do is what we define.
Simple tautologies; often ignored.
Throw the spear away.
Kill animals.
Learn how to do art.
Do art. Name everything art.
Forget how to throw spears…
Die… There is no art now. Just life…
