Art May Have Helped Shape Human Cognition and Language

[Jovialis]

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS—According to a report in The Boston Globe, linguist Shigeru Miyagawa of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues think that cave art could offer clues to the evolution of language. Ancient paintings are often found in acoustic “hot spots” in caves, where the artists may have experienced echoes of the sounds they generated. Miyagawa suggests modern humans would have had to use a cognitive process to convert the acoustic signal into a mental representation, and then externalize it as a symbolic drawing. For example, the artists might have recreated the sounds of hoof beats, experienced the echo, and then drawn images of hoofed animals. He notes that cave art has been found all over the world, just like human language. For more, go to “he First Artists.”

https://www.archaeology.org/news/639...-communication

[Wheal]

That's an interesting concept to me. I am currently working on 'creating' four separate languages for four different 'tribes' and basing the intonations and words on the areas where the tribes are prevalent, ie. sea shore people basing their vocalization as an airy sound from the water and water birds; forest tribes are more guttural and growling, like animals found there. I appreciate the link and will review it for research.

[LeBrok]

For me visual and vocal art is connected to what we call a sense of beauty. The one most basic, genetically inherited, and shaped by evolution for some reason. Humans have it but also other animals like birds of paradise, though it is not very common on such scale. Interestingly the art of birds of paradise is also beautiful to people, like this feeling of sense of beauty is a universal thing. I guess, the birds of paradise could dig our music and art too.

[Salento]

Wondering what went wrong with Emperor Nero.
He was really in to it. He performed, fix some of the older Greeks Theaters, and builded some new too.
If you hear that artists have a Gentle Soul, think of Nero.

[Wheal]

That is an amazing video LeBrock. I can imagine how the actions of those birds could inspire dances by people.