Art and Culture define humans, everywhere in the world.

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Art and Culture

Art and culture really is my thing; I am a trained artist and writer and my interests have always been in the creative arts. Art and culture define we humans. Without them, what would we have? From the earliest times, even hundreds of thousands of years before modern humans evolved, we were fascinated by art.

Culture derives from language. We don’t know when hominids began to talk, but it was also long before modern humans evolved. We have always had the hyoid bone and dropped larynx that are required for complex vocalisation. As far back as a million yeas ago, our forebears were talking to each other, which implies the development of culture. Homo erectus might not have had the brain capacity for complex speech but he was certainly communicating.

H. erectus lived in groups and it might well have been there that the very beginning of simple story-telling occurred. We know he collected pretty things, like stones and probably more perishable items. He was perhaps like a young child, in our terms, able to construct simple ideas and concepts and communicate them.

Were some of these concepts the foundation of faith? Faith, art and culture are bound together such that it’s hard to see how one could have one or two without the others. Were the first questions that our forebears asked ‘Who am I? And how did I get here?’

It seems likely that as soon aas we progressed from communicatng simple instructions to each other, to expressing more complex ideas, that these questions must have been asked.

I wonder what H. erectus’ answers were? Did he conceive a Great Being that created everythiing, including himself? Sadly, we shall never know, but I beleive that art and culture, and faith, began with him.