What came first, language or cave paintings?
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I don't know. Or whether they were art.
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Might be an interesting rabbit hole to dive down. And I guess the definition of art *is* slippery
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Language came well before anything we would recognise as art, at least based on all known historical evidence. To say without art there is no language is both wrong in fact and meaningless even as a metaphor or provocation.
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Interesting. Do you have citations for that?
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Sorry, no single source at hand but any general search on evolution of language (spoken, signs obviously much earlier) and history of art gives the relevant time lines. Lang believed to have evolved least 100,000 yrs ago (method still unclear) known art much more recent.
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The 100,000 year mark doesn’t seem to have consensus, but cave paintings (those they have been found/lasted) have a solid date of about 40,000. Earliest written language goes back to about 3,000 b.c. http://linguistlist.org/ask-ling/oldest.cfm …
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Grabbing hold of a live fish is now art, don't you know? (And no, he's wrong: Language came way before art in human evolution. Music is probably very early, though. Weaving, pottery, cave art--somewhat later. Written language is very late.)
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Can you say that for sure anout spoken art?
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Given that spoken art is speech, which is language, at most you could argue that speech and art co-evolved simultaneously. Unlikely, and probably untestable. The earliest *written* language was, it seems, accounting: keeping track of sheep and grains bought and sold.
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Thanks for the reply, I understand written language is a late development (Socrates is famously known to have been against writing) but I do think spoken art would have developed very close to language.
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Primary reason for speech is communication hence language would’ve developed first.
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You may find this interesting. From the National Museum of Natural History’s Human Evolution exhibit:pic.twitter.com/0up0oNQDFP
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As you can see, expressing identity and writing came much later (100,000 years and 77,000 years ago, respectively.)pic.twitter.com/VHsN0hye0r
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Indeed. Thank you for sharing these.
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It's in no way contradictory to say that science and art are intertwined, nor that without art there is no language or culture. It is self-evident.
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