History of the Arts

A (short) history of all the arts everywhere through all time.

We're going to start with a galloping overview history of artistic traditions and movements worldwide.

Prehistory

The arts originated in everyday objects, most of which are lost to natural decay (bacteria), erosion, climatic conditions, insects, and fire, among others. We don't know which of these artistic activities came first. For all practical purposes, they're as old as humanity. However, as these pictures show, we have artifacts that go back only a fraction of that time.

The oldest musical instrument, of course, is the human voice. The line between speaking and singing is very blurry. Speech is more common, of course. But by gradually modifying tonality and rhythm, we can slide from speech to song. Some very experienced, mature pop music singers like Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra sing so well that they're almost speaking. But it's safe to say that we've been singing as long as we've been speaking.

The oldest tools go back 2.5 million years. While using those tools for food, clothing, and shelter would have been most important, it makes sense that those tools would have been used for rhythmic beating, if nothing else, to accompany the human voice. The question, what's the oldest drumstick? is probably the same as the question, what's the oldest stick?

What aspects of art can we safely assume are as old as humanity even though the tools and artistic products are lost? Why can we assume this? Because art is a process, not a thing.

anthropology: origins and social relationships of human beings

archeology: the branch of anthropology that studies prehistoric people and their cultures mainly by study of their artifacts (the things they left behind that we have recovered)

To simplify, anthropology studies people and archeology studies things, even though both are trying to understand the same thing, how people lived a very long time ago.

Anthropologists can support the development of self-conscious "art" as we know it back to 200,000 years ago. That's about when most researchers agree that the species Homo sapiens became distinct, though at the time there were other species in the genus Homo.

Others feel as though a time frame of 40,000 - 10,000 years ago is a safer bet for when art spread throughout every human group on earth. At about that time one of the two or three most important developments in human prehistory spread across the earth: the Neolithic Revolution. (Neolithic means "new stone" age, and some researchers say that it did not spread, it developed independently half a dozen times.) Most humans stopped moving around hunting meat and gathering fruit, grain, and vegetables. They moved into stable communities.

Instead of hunting game, they domesticated pigs, cow, and sheep. Instead of gathering food, they farmed a few grains (emmer, einkorn and barley) and fruits. There is a lot of evidence that the general health of people living in these communities was poorer than that of their hunter-gatherer ancestors because of poor diet, lack of exercise, and the opportunity for disease to spread.

The Neolithic Revolution happened first in what is now the Mideast, Iraq and Turkey, about 12,000 years ago. It had spread to (arose in) Asia around 10,000 years ago, Africa and Europe 7,000 years ago, and the Americas 5,000 years ago.

Soon, there was surplus food, which led to leisure. Which led to art. The first such civilization to flower was Sumer by 7,000 years ago in what is now Iraq. Rock carving (petroglyphs) appeared throughout the world during the Lower Paleolithic (the part of the Stone Age that came first). Chronologically, these arts followed: engravings, sculpture (in stone, ivory, bone and wood), cave painting, relief sculpture, ceramic pottery and architecture. By the end of the Upper Paleolithic (the most recent part of the Stone Age), we have the first evidence of bronze and gold sculpture.

Timeline of the Arts and History

These are not specific chronological periods. They are a set of behavioral and cultural characteristics that usually followed in this order and end when written historical record-keeping began. Until then, all we have are artifacts and almost always durable artifacts, thus the stone and metal names to these periods.

Early human migrations

The Stone Age

The Stone Age - "-lithic" is Greek for "stone".

Paleolithic Age

Paleolithic Age comprises 99% of the history of humanity and is commonly divided into three: Lower Paleolithic, Middle paleolithic, Upper Paleolithic

Rock art that old is found on every continent except Antarctica: gallery

first cupules - La Ferrassie Cupules 60,000 BCE, France

cave paintings come from four successive Upper Paleolithic cultures, the first being the Aurignacian - Grotte Chauvet, France - c.30,000 BC (see images above and gallery on Google Images)

oldest known ceramic artwork is the Venus of Dolni Vestonice (left, and a very large hi-res version), a 4-inch figure made from clay and bone ash and dating to roughly 26,000 BC, found near Brno in the Czech Republic

hand stencils at the Cuevas de las Manos (Cave of the Hands) (right) near Rio de las Pinturas, Argentina, - c. 9,500 BC

tools – cudgel, club, sharpened stone, chopper, handaxe, scraper, spear, harpoon, needle, scratch awl

art materials - charcoal, dirt, clay, wood, vines, threads

spinning Tibetan Handcraft

weaving

The few (though thousands) of artifacts we have are a tiny fraction of all that was produced. We can see that humans' drawing skills were as developed as ours today, so we can only assume that their music and dance was as developed as ours, too.

Unlike technology, which can be said to "improve", the arts have changed but I'm not sure they have improved.

Mesolithic Age

Mesolithic Age - hunting/gathering, nomadic, extended family/bands, women probably as powerful if not more powerful than men

Almost all the artifacts that we have of the human form from pre-Neolithic cultures are images of women, often with exaggerated features. Many anthropologists and archaeologists think that women took care of the children and provided the steady diet of gathered food while the men went out on long, dangerous, and often unsuccessful hunts for animal protein to supplement the grain, fruits, and vegetables gathered by the women.

tools – bow and arrow, fish–basket, boats

Neolithic Age

Neolithic Age - The Neolithic Revolution was marked by the use of wild and domestic crops and domesticated animals; stable communities; beginning of male dominance over women

tools – chisel, hoe, plough, yoke, reaping-hook, grain pourer, barley, loom, earthenware (pottery) and weapons

The oldest art in China is three pottery pieces pieces were unearthed at Liyuzui Cave in Liuzhou, Guangxi Province dated 16,500 and 19,000 BCE.

The oldest prehistoric ceramic art was made during the ancient Japanese Jomon culture. Ceramic remains taken from the Odaiyamamoto I site in Aomori Prefecture - one of the most ancient sites for this type of Japanese art - were carbon-dated to between 14,540 and 13,320 BCE.

The Metal Ages

The Copper Age - early metal tools made with pouding gold and silver. Some low heat and pounding; blowstick and lungs for air compression to make the fire hotter. Mehrgarh (Pakistan) starting around 7000 BCE.

The Bronze Age - advanced metalworking (smelting copper and tin); bellows to make a fire hot enough to smelt ores of copper, lead, tin -- in that order because it takes more heat to get tin from the rock (ore) than it takes to get lead, and more for lead than copper; potter's wheel. Earliest evidence: 4500 BCE.

The Iron Age - cutting tools and weapons were mainly made of iron or steel; foot bellows to make a fire hot enough to smelt iron ore, about three times hotter than what s needed for tin. But iron tools and weapons are very strong.

When does "history" begin?

The Iron Age lasted in every culture until written records, that is, until what we call "history" replaces "pre-history" and is studied by historians in addition to archaeologists and anthropologists.

The Iron Age is usually said to end in the Mediterranean with the rise of the Greek civilization around 400 BC, in India with the beginnings of Buddhism around 500 BC, in China with the beginnings of Confucianism around the same time, and in Northern Europe a thousand years later with the early Middle Ages.

Timelines

Timeline of musical events

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

note: almost all the dates below are rounded off or approximate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_colonization_of_the_Americas

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Africa

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa

created new boundaries in ancient kingdoms, and nation-states resulting in disjointed, inexplicable, tension-prone countries today.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aesthetics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_traditional_masks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_folk_art