[HN Gopher] Did Neanderthals make art?
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Did Neanderthals make art?
Author : fzliu
Score : 52 points
Date : 2022-09-21 21:56 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sapiens.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sapiens.org)
| zepppotemkin wrote:
| Serious question, why do we can about human art when we've got
| things like stable diffusion now? retro value?
| kredd wrote:
| Because stable diffusion is trained on human art?
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| Stable Diffusion literally just copy-pastes existing art,
| madlibs-style.
|
| If anything, it greatly increases the value of human art.
| (Because it now has more leverage and reach.)
| the_af wrote:
| If you pick up watercolors and try to paint an illustration,
| then pick up oils and try doing the same, then pick chalk,
| pencils, etc, and try doing the same, do you feel any one of
| those art tools/supplies make the others redundant or "retro"?
|
| Do you feel art is a technical problem that must be somehow
| "solved", and once "solved" we can move on to more worthy
| endeavors?
| hackerlight wrote:
| Some people say it's because artists use it as a medium for
| communication. Personally, I don't care about that, I just want
| the beautiful images.
| shishy wrote:
| I think though there's more than just the beauty inherent to
| an image, a lot of times people buy the artist themself,
| since their life context and your relationship with them can
| give you a potentially more meaningful way of engaging with
| and "reading" the art.
| the_af wrote:
| Even sticking to that particularly narrow definition, if you
| give a commission to two artists, one using only stable
| diffusion and the other more traditional methods, are you
| confident that you will always prefer the work done with
| stable diffusion? Even from a purely "this is a beautiful
| image" perspective?
| njdvndsjkvn wrote:
| According to the modern meaning of art, as long as the artist
| intends for it to be art then it is art. Since it is not the work
| itself but the artist that defines art then anything that was
| intended at least in part to evoke some emotional response is
| art. Therefore under this definition it is highly likely that
| Neanderthals made art. For example making a shelter look nicer
| than it had to be. Any rituals would also have to be considered
| art as they are ultimately intended to evoke an emotional
| response even if this was not a conscious decision.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| What fascinates me is that Neanderthals - and others - most
| likely shared ideas with us (art or burial ceremony) and maybe
| our specie wouldn't have come up with some of these ideas.
| xeromal wrote:
| Stuff you should know has a nice little podcast episode about
| this. It's probably not as scientific as this, but they delve
| into the unwarranted belittling of neanderthals that most people
| have.
|
| I believe they discussed some cave art that was made by
| neanderthals in spain way before sapiens arrived in the area
| proving that it was their art instead of a just a mimic which
| seems to align with what this article was discussing.
|
| https://podcasts.apple.com/la/podcast/what-happened-to-the-n...
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| I think the conclusion is arguable but far from certain. There
| are a number of behaviors that are universally present across all
| cultures: art, language, fire.
|
| None of these behaviors are present in our closest extant
| relatives (chimps/bonobos). Therefore they appeared, perhaps
| together, perhaps separately somewhere along the way. Given that,
| we're then just arguing about _when_ these traits emerged.
|
| I do not think it is prejudicial to consider that given the
| timing of the appearance of art-like artifacts, it could easily
| be the case that art was (mostly?) limited to Homo Sapiens and
| their descendants.
| BbzzbB wrote:
| How I wish I could go back in time 50-100k years to visit some
| tribe or group of _Homo somethings_ to see with my own eyes how
| similar we are outside of cultural heritage, to see how closer
| they are to modern humans with a language barrier as opposed to
| interacting with non-humanoid primates.
| swayvil wrote:
| What's really hard to judge is differences in technology.
|
| We might look at some bit of carving or architecture and conclude
| that its purpose was merely religious. But maybe it served a
| practical purpose that's just really alien to us.
|
| Time is money after all. Even for neanderthals.
|
| Give it a few thousand years. They dig up one of our particle
| accelerator facilities. Conclude that it was a temple where they
| worshipped giant circles.
| causi wrote:
| As far as I know there's no real evidence that an individual
| neanderthal was _any_ less intelligent than an individual human.
| colechristensen wrote:
| That there are none left besides the limited interbreeding mark
| in our genetics could be seen as evidence.
| the_af wrote:
| Very limited evidence, if at all. It's not true that more
| intelligent animals cannot be outcompeted by less intelligent
| ones.
| Symmetry wrote:
| That's evidence but weak evidence and I think group size is a
| more likely culprit (we really ought to be _homo gregalis_
| rather than _homo sapiens_ ). That means a conflict between a
| group of _sapiens_ and _neanderthalensis_ is more likely to
| go the _sapiens_ 's way. But also the secret of our success
| is that we're so good at cultural transmission and evolution.
| And when the children of a tribe can learn from the best of
| 20 instead of the best of 6 hunters you get both a higher
| level of skill and more rapid cultural innovation around
| techniques.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| How so? That they weren't intelligent enough to keep their
| genes pure? Couldn't they have been dominant but also a
| minority so they were willingly diluted away?
|
| I wonder if the Neanderthal genes we have are more from men
| or women? Perhaps that would show which direction any
| conquest and raping happened in.
| causi wrote:
| Neanderthal extinction isn't evidence they were dumber than
| us any more than the Native American genocide is evidence
| Native Americans are dumber than Europeans.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Creative expression is related to intelligence, but if it was
| linearly correlated then the most intelligent modern humans
| would be the world's greatest artists with few exceptions,
| which is not the case. It is a distinct ability, which is why
| some children are very good artists despite their comparative
| lower IQ in contrast to adults. Other creatures that approach
| the intelligence of human children don't exhibit creative
| expression. And no, training apes and elephants to paint
| blotches on a canvas really doesn't count since it's not of
| their own accord. Other animals, and _every other_ ape we are
| distantly related to are not artistically creative beyond tool
| making, but tool making is utilitarian and not a pure form of
| creative expression for its own sake. Thus, it 's really not
| farfetched to assume that other species of Homo aren't as
| artistic given a lack of art demonstrated to have been produced
| by them. It may have nothing to do with intelligence at all.
| darkerside wrote:
| Or, maybe IQ is not a good measure of anything besides one
| specific type of intelligence.
| StevePerkins wrote:
| Perhaps a tangent, but I simply don't understand why we
| can't apply different terms for "other types of
| intelligence"?
|
| Growing up, it baffled me that being able to chuck a
| football 50 yards meant there would be a weekly pep rally
| in your honor, and an annual parade through the town.
| Whereas for the gifted program kids, the main message we
| seemed to receive from teachers and administrators was to
| stay humble, that being intelligent doesn't make you better
| than anyone else, etc.
|
| Why do we celebrate athleticism, musical talent, and other
| forms of ability in others, yet also feel so fiercely
| insecure about other people's IQ test scores that we have
| to co-opt the term "intelligence" itself? To apply it to
| socialization skills and other various abilities. Other
| than perhaps video games being labeled as "e-sports", you
| see no major push to label the less physically gifted as
| "mental athletes", or any other co-opt.
|
| Why can't empathy and socialization skill be... empathy and
| socialization skill? Artistic talent be artistic talent,
| etc? Why are individuals so willing to self-identify as
| average or below-average in any of these traits, yet we
| torture language because it's anathema to admit that we
| might not each be in the 90th-percentile of something
| called "intelligence"?
| ravenstine wrote:
| > Why do we celebrate athleticism, musical talent, and
| other forms of ability in others, yet also feel so
| fiercely insecure about other people's IQ test scores
| that we have to co-opt the term "intelligence" itself?
|
| Possibly because we see intelligence as the ultimate
| limiting factor to any kind of success. It's not entirely
| untrue, but it doesn't paint the entire picture. My IQ
| isn't even above 100 and yet I'm making over thrice the
| average American income as a software engineer, drawing
| PCBs, making hardware devices, and debating people online
| every day over things like Typescript; the idea that IQ
| is everything doesn't ring true to me.
|
| As a counterpoint, something like musical talent can be
| highly subjective. An artist can make a piece of music
| that is "perfectly" composed and performed, but the guy
| who used Garageband with some unique samples can get more
| plays on Spotify. Athleticism is no exception either, as
| anyone who has watched the Olympics has seen how
| ridiculously subjective the judges are (especially in
| gymnastics and skating). Measures of either sports or
| musical ability predict very little outside of their
| respective domains, whereas IQ is correlated with many
| things.
| ravenstine wrote:
| I don't agree that there's more than one kind of
| intelligence. People have various abilities, skills, and
| gifts, but being good at something isn't a type of
| intelligence. I know that psychological professionals may
| disagree, but I think that applying intelligence to
| anything but "general intelligence" is something we've
| invented to keep people from feeling bad about themselves.
|
| So in a way, I agree with what you're saying, but I'm not
| sure if it's in the way that you were thinking.
|
| My position on intelligence is that it's largely overrated.
| It's good for predicting outcomes, and it's effective for
| determining whether someone is mentally challenged, but
| greater intelligence has drawbacks for the individual. What
| makes many people successful, regardless, of IQ, is having
| a framework by which they make smart decisions.
|
| Contrast the 90 IQ person who makes smart decisions to
| avoid pitfalls and be likable to others with the 145 IQ
| gifted person who can't get anyone to like them, can't
| relate to others, and struggles to function in a general
| domain. If you want others to believe in you and to like
| you, it mostly comes down to making decisions that create
| that perception. The simplest one is merely showing up to
| your job on time. People who show up on time are far more
| likely to keep their jobs. Knowing history and having good
| conversational skills creates likability and intellectual
| respect, yet those areas don't require an above average IQ
| at all. Intelligent people might know a lot about history,
| but can have poor conversational skills and not know when
| to shut up about the Roman Empire. Intelligence is
| positively correlated with various mental illnesses which
| can subject them to addiction and poor decision making,
| whereas the 90 IQ person who doesn't impulse buy and pays
| off their debts is capable of being in a better state in
| life than the 145 IQ person who lives in a shoebox
| apartment because they can't hold down a tedious job that
| pays, they have no friends or family of their own, and they
| keep spending their earnings on weed and other nonsense.
|
| This doesn't mean that intelligence is worthless, but
| properly trained "dumb" people can beat many "gifted"
| people without even given them smart drugs.
| Vetch wrote:
| I remember reading that geniuses tend to be more likely to
| have creative or artistic hobbies. Art is an instance of
| symbolic abstract reasoning. The level of originating new
| modes of expressing shape and form, which is what all the
| earliest humans would have had to do, is the highest mode of
| intelligence.
|
| You can't use today's standards where it's all streamlined
| and commodified (though still requiring talent) on that
| period of time where every little innovation, even simple
| counting, would have required incredible brilliance and
| lateral thinking.
| lkrubner wrote:
| It is limiting the way researchers presume the burden of proof
| has to go the other way. The extreme case of this is with homo
| erectus being found on Crete, but we are not allowed to suggest
| that they knew how to build a raft. No, we have to assume that
| they swam to Crete, this is much more logical than assuming
| they knew how to build a raft.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| For what it's worth I'm not sure that ocean travel is
| actually that common across _human_ cultures. For instance,
| Madagascar was first inhabited by people who sailed from
| _Indonesia_ ~1200-1500 yrs ago.
| zasdffaa wrote:
| I DDG'd your phrase
|
| https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=homo%20erectus%20being%20.
| ..
|
| The first hit is <https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/
| article/100217-cr...> which says
|
| "Crete has been surrounded by vast stretches of sea for some
| five million years. The discovery of the hand ax suggests
| that people besides technologically modern humans--possibly
| Homo heidelbergensis--island-hopped across the Mediterranean
| tens of thousands of millennia earlier than expected."
|
| I'm getting really worn out by some commenters here.
| Assertions are made, not backed up, and often plain wrong.
| It's not what HN is supposed to be about.
| userlandmax wrote:
| Were they painters? asks this article - then shows a painting. I
| believe the answer not being in the affirmative here really has
| to do some serious legwork. Don't trust it. Crows might make art,
| among other animals. Don't disparage our hominid cousins.
| adamc wrote:
| There have been several cases where we said "only (modern) humans
| do ____", and it turns out to be false, e.g., "make tools".
|
| So if I have to guess... my guess would be, sure they did.
| They're just a variant of human.
| colechristensen wrote:
| There's a specific technical way to express this but "use
| complex language about the future of a subject not currently
| present"
|
| i.e. nothing but a modern human has the language and/or
| worldview to say "Sally wants hamburgers for lunch tomorrow by
| the river"
| coldacid wrote:
| >They're just a variant of human.
|
| I would go as far as to say that anyone who is a member of
| genus Homo is a human.
| AlphaOne1 wrote:
| The title of this article reminded me of a thought provoking book
| by GK Chesterton, "The Everlasting Man", obviously he write from
| a religious perspective but one discussion raised a question that
| I had not considered before. Why do we assume primitive man was
| any less intelligent or artistic than we are now?
|
| "Human civilization is older than human records. That is the sane
| way of stating our relations to these remote things. Humanity has
| left examples of its other arts earlier than the art of writing;
| or at least of any writing that we can read. [..] In short, the
| prehistoric period need not mean the primitive period, in the
| sense of the barbaric or bestial period. It does not mean the
| time before civilization or the time before arts and crafts. It
| simply means the time before any connected narratives that we can
| read. This does indeed make all the practical difference between
| remembrance and forgetfulness;" [1]
|
| [1]https://www.worldinvisible.com/library/chesterton/everlastin..
| .
| delecti wrote:
| I love the thought of humanity being constant like that.
| Examples of things like prehistoric people drawing dicks on
| things, or "<name> was here" written on various ancient walls,
| all really emphasize that humans have been basically the same
| for a long time. "It was part of a fertility ritual" is one
| explanation, or another is that people have just always drawn
| dicks on things.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| On some deep level it _is_ a fertility ritual. Today, I mean.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I'd add one argument about art: living in a "primitive" state
| full of unknowns promotes imagination a few orders of
| magnitude.
|
| Another one: I make a parallel with pre-tooled humans that
| these people long ago were living on a thin line and had to be
| extremely lean and yet wildly efficient all the time, you don't
| have much time to craft a spear and it better be lethal when
| you finally approach a prey. And you do this with your hands.
| It looks as stupid as senior writing a few lines of code and
| looking dumb when it fact it's 80% right the first time.
| checkyoursudo wrote:
| I had a debate in a computational intelligence course in grad
| school that veered off from the topic of embodied cognition
| somehow into the advance of human culture. (During class; no
| mind-altering substances included.)
|
| The crux of the debate was, on one side, two of us saying there
| is no such thing as advancement in culture (art, music, taste,
| etc), only in science (knowledge) and technology (application);
| while the other side insisted that culture does indeed
| progress. It was an interesting debate. I still think that no
| culture is significantly more advanced culturally than any
| other probably going back many tens of thousands of years (or
| maybe ever? I don't know). Art or music or cuisine, etc, that
| invokes the intended emotional, cognitive, etc response is
| doing what it is supposed to do. Any preference to modern over
| ancient is purely subjective and nullified by any preference to
| ancient over modern.
|
| I would therefore agree that modern humans are not more
| artistic.
|
| However, as someone who studies intelligence, I would say that
| because of modern nutrition, medicine, evolution, and
| adaptation, modern humans are probably a tiny bit more
| intelligent than ancient humans. I would guess that someone
| alive 50,000 years ago who was transported to today and raised
| as a modern human would have little trouble, but that the
| _average_ ancient human would probably be slightly less
| intelligent than the _average_ modern human.
|
| Hell, if the Flynn effect proves to be real, then the average
| grandparent may be slightly less intelligent than the average
| grandchild. Just in a couple generations. Over the course of
| dozens or hundreds of human generations, the difference would
| not be zero.
| ruined wrote:
| yes
| benji-york wrote:
| Tangentially, this reminds me of my favorite--if flawed--
| definition of art (which I can't find a source for at the
| moment): Art is anything a human does that is
| not necessary for survival.
| smegsicle wrote:
| a well-crafted spear is not art? that seems almost backwards-
| art is anything that takes skill to create
|
| the associate of art with uselessness and dissociated
| aesthetics is more a product of an age of decadence than
| anything central to appreciation of artforms
| userlandmax wrote:
| A well crafted spear is indeed art - since it doesn't
| absolutely need to be well crafted, it is that aspect of the
| spear-as-tool, specifically, that is considered art, and
| elevates it to that realm. This is why OP said the argument
| is flawed, because it is. It becomes highly subjective quite
| fast. But thats the reasoning.
| userlandmax wrote:
| This is close to Scott McCloud's definition in his book
| Understanding Comics.
| benji-york wrote:
| Thanks for the pointer! His definition is very similar and
| may well be the original source.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| "Neanderthals are depicted as hunched-over creatures who don't
| seem to have the imagination to do anything besides stare
| uncomprehendingly at a rock"
|
| I'm pretty sure the illustration the author is talking about
| depicts a neanderthal using one rock to chip another rock into a
| sharp implement - not puzzling over it.
| gkilmain wrote:
| Our bias really comes out when we write doesn't it?
|
| "I'm super smart and have good posture - hey look at this
| hunched over Neanderthal! And they're staring at a rock! Idiot"
|
| Bias being those with bad posture and an affinity for staring
| has no imagination
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I wonder if future genera of Homo will depict _us_ staring
| uncomprehendingly at a screen.
| michellegienow wrote:
| Neanderthals probably did have some form of language since appear
| to also have had a gene that is crucial to language in humans.
| And they buried their dead. So why would we presume they didn't
| make some sort of marks intentionally, to convey meaning or just
| to decorate their favorite rock?
| protonimitate wrote:
| To me the more interesting question is: did Neanderthals
| _value_ art?
|
| Could argue all day about what is and isn't art and if they
| created artifacts that fit the definition, but what I'd really
| like to know is "did they appreciate things purely for
| aesthetics and cultural relevance, and not utility?"
| nautilius wrote:
| > "did they appreciate things purely for aesthetics and
| cultural relevance, and not utility?"
|
| Many animals do, even sharing their sense of aesthetics with
| human taste. Just look at how flowers evolved to some form
| even we find pleasing without any skin in the game, or how
| animals that live in total dark (deep sea, for example) are
| atrociously ugly.
| darkerside wrote:
| Why do you say they evolved with our taste? Isn't it just
| as likely we have tastes that suit what happened to evolve
| naturally?
| dendrite9 wrote:
| There was an episode of In Our Time about cave art that
| features a discussion about the art not being solely for
| utility. Unfortunately I cannot find a transcript and I can't
| remember when the discussion came up. Still, if you are
| interested you might want to listen or look at some of the
| further reading links.
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mqn7
| the_af wrote:
| I think "create art" and "value art" are essentially
| equivalent in the context of the question we are pondering.
| You cannot argue they made art if there was none to
| appreciate it as art; art doesn't exist without an observer.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Do some human artists make art?
|
| "Just sayin'"...the question will evaluate to being contentious
| in all contexts, i suspect.
| buildsjets wrote:
| Do some elephant artists make art?
|
| https://www.cmzoo.org/support/animal-art/elephant-art/
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