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December 2003
Lifestyle choices: Art movement
Pinning down the moment when humans found that, having ensured their survival, they had time to turn to art and culture has been an abiding preoccupation among archaeologists. Nicholas Conard makes the case that the moment was 30,000 years ago, and the place was Swabia, a district in what is now Germany at the headwaters of the Danube. Carefully executed mammoth-ivory carvings from Hohle Fels Cave in Swabia include representations of a horse, a person with the head of a lion, and what may be the earliest known representation of a bird. Figurative art of this quality has a claim to being an indicator of fully developed symbolic communication and language.
Palaeolithic ivory sculptures from southwestern
Germany and the origins of figurative art
NICHOLAS J. CONARD
Nature 426, 830–832 (2003); doi:10.1038/nature02186
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Archaeology: Art of the ancients
ANTHONY SINCLAIR
One might imagine that the first examples of art would be simple and crude.
New finds bolster the evidence that modern humans were astonishingly quick
in developing their artistic skills.
Nature 426, 774–775 (2003); doi:10.1038/426774a
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