::inspiring creativity:: Rock Art
Apr 6th 2010, 07:25 by | Posted in :: inspiring creativity ::
Share"At twenty thousand years ago, what makes us human is the ability to make beautiful cave art. It's all relational. And if you look at us today, I wonder if we are human." - Professor Donald Johnson, discoverer of 'Lucy' in interview with Time magazine March 2009 on 'what makes us human".
It could be said that what makes us human, what makes us different to any other species on the planet, is our ability to tell stories. To tell stories you need to have the ability to retain memory and to envisage the future.
In essence as a species we are designed to be creative. Therefore it can be assumed that within us all lays creative energy. Story-telling allows us to share memory and to teach. To inspire, exchange ideas and seek to understand. It is the basis of passed-on knowledge, abstract reasoning, cultural identity and even religious interpretation.
Rock Art is the earliest known evidence of our need to tell stories and its history seems to coincide with what we identify as the emergence of our species, Homo Sapiens
We may never understand what our ancestors were saying to each other, what ideas they were sharing, but Rock Art is the pre-cursor of visual communication today. By looking back at the beauty, the unique thought process that could date back 60 000 years, we hopefully can see that creative energy and the design process today is but a continuation of what makes us human.
This short documentary and photos are from the Bradshaw Foundation which is an excellent visual and information resource for rock art and cave paintings. You can visit them here
:: inspiring creativity :: is a series of short posts by Gumption that highlights creative energy in any medium. For that is the purpose of good design and the creation process ... to inspire at a level deeper than the surface. ::