Why do people draw?

Humans are unique in their ability to use tools to produce works which communicate information about 3D objects through 2D drawings. Drawings give us insight into the origins of our species, our uniqueness amongst animals, and our creative ability to produce images from the strategic placement of line and marks. Considerable research has been devoted to the ontogeny of drawing skill and considerable speculation has been devoted to the psychological value of drawings themselves.I present my thesis in parts in this blog - heres the start of chapter 1.

Cave Art and what it tells us about human psychological processes

A full history of humankind is impossible, but through the messages and signs that have been left behind as art by past civilisations, we can begin to understand something

about what makes us human. The art produced by people throughout the millennia of

human existence is not only a snapshot of the lives they lived, but it also offers insight into

the development of our species. Over time and across continents, the ability to adapt tools

and create art is present in all societies and the marks these early humans made on rocks and

in caves provides a brief glimpse into the evolution of human culture.

On the basis of carbon dating of cave paintings, we know that humans have drawn

since the late Stone Age, but the history of human mark-making is much older.

Approximately 164,000 years ago, humans were using pigments and dyes and engraving

patterns into bones and beads, and more than 60,000 years ago, they were engraving symbols

on surfaces in their surroundings with rock tools. Crayon-like pigment blocks more than

50,000-years old have been found in Australia, and the oldest preserved cave paintings have

been carbon dated as 40,000-years old (Bower, 2014). Cave paintings have provided

scientists with information about the methods, materials, and tools that were used to create

them, as well as information about the natural environment of the creators (Lewin, 1989).

The oldest known art created by human hands came from the African continent.

Radiocarbon dating of a cave buried between 26,000 and 29,000 BP1 shows that its

inhabitants drew animal figures on stone slabs within the cave before its collapse (Masson,

2006). These paintings provide a window into the lives of the earliest humans, their interests,

and their environment (Cutting & Massironi, 1998; Morriss-Kay, 2010).

(BP refers to items dated Before Present by carbon dating techniques (present estimated at 1950, the start of affordable carbon dating practices )

From a psychological perspective, the primary value of cave art is what it tells us

about the evolution of human cognitive ability. By examining cave drawings, scientists seek

to uncover the underlying processes that governed these artistic activities including both

motor control and thought. Although the motivation behind the creation of this art will

undoubtedly continue to elude us, these works can inform us about the lives of early

humans. Soon after the first humans appeared in Europe, they began making marks on

surfaces in their surroundings, which included standard graphic elements such as handprints

and outlines of figures, dots, and lines.

Humans, like animals, have two major drives: preservation of the individual and

preservation of the species. Charles Darwin distinguished between survival of the fittest and

sexual selection, arguing that animals’ natural ornaments (e.g., colourful plumage) are

explicitly related to the need to attract a mate even though these characteristics sometimes

threaten the survival of the individual (Penn, Holyoak, & Povinelli, 2008). It is not surprising

then that reproductive themes litter early human artworks. Some evolutionary theorists have

even suggested that human art-making may have initially served the additional purpose of

mate attraction (Hodgson, 2006). Preservation of the individual (and the social group) is

inherent in images related to hunting or to animals (and more rarely, fish) that were

important food sources. Preservation of the species, which involves sex and fertility,

nurturing, and group protective behaviour, is symbolised in many drawings, both overtly in

pubic triangles, and phallus-like objects, and more covertly with images of animals engaged

in the behaviour associated with the mating season (Morriss-Kay, 2010).

Many sites in Europe feature images including engraved outlines of animals and

humans, representations of both male and female sexual organs, and carved statuettes of

animal and human figures (Pettitt, 2008). Fertility is the dominant theme in many early

images of humans in European cave art, including human female ‘Venus’ figurines, reliefs,

2and engravings. Female sex and/or sexuality in cave art is reduced to a triangle for the mons

pubis and an engraved line to represent the vulva. The main fertility attributes of females

such as breasts, bellies (presumably pregnant), labia, and vulva feature in these works. A

female pubic triangle measuring only 40-56 cm carved in limestone at La Ferrassie,

Dordogne, France and dated to around 32,000–34,000 BP is one of the earliest known types

of carved human images in Europe (Valladas et al., 1992).

The representations of anatomical features in these early images illustrate an

awareness of basic animal husbandry and breeding practices, a precursor to early farming

practice. Neolithic man lived in small groups, hunting and gathering in different regions for

food sources that were plentiful or available at particular times. The inclusion of drawings

about the animals in an area may have served a teaching or instructional function at sites

where these groups congregated during different seasons. For example, the analysis by

Aujoulat (2005) of the images of animals in Lascaux Cave, Dordogne, France concludes that

the images were painted in the following order: horses, aurochs and then deer, and that each

species shows physical features characteristic of its breeding season – the horses have the

thick coats of late winter/early spring, the aurochs have their summer coats, and the deer

have antlers and are represented in groups characteristic of early autumn

The drawings of early Homo sapiens provide insight into the development of

mankind from hunter-gatherer to early farmer, the development of belief systems, and social

sharing of information (Vaesen, 2012). The habit of documenting the environment in

drawings is further demonstrated by the addition of stylised human figures and companion

animals, including dogs and other domesticated species, animals in the locale, and a wide

range of geometric shapes.

Analysis of frequency patterns of over 3300 representative images from European

Stone Age art panels revealed consistent patterns of presentation of various subjects across

sites. Horses, bison, and ibex, were most commonly presented and constituted more than

10% of the total images, followed by Mammoth, aurochs, hinds, and stags. Humans or

human-like forms are relatively rare, representing only 4.3% of all drawn images, followed by

very rare animals such as reindeer, bear, lion, fish, and rhinoceros. (Sauvet & Wlodarczyk,

2008). In Northern Europe and Russia, the most common element in Stone Age rock art are

boats (Kolpakov & Shumkin, 2012), deer and eagles feature in Eurasian art (Omarov,

5Baigunakov, & Sabdenova, 2014; Toleubayev, Zhumatayev, & Baimuhamedova, 2014), and

babirusas (a tusked pig-like animal) in Indonesia (Aubert et al., 2014).

Animals are the most frequently represented images throughout early art, however,

early attempts at the representation of human features emerge across continents and

civilisations. Drawing of people is one of the first drawing behaviours observed in human

children (Callaghan, 2015) so it is perhaps not surprising that early man also made attempts

at representing themselves in drawings. In Siberia, for example, Stone Age humans drew

stylised faces, both separate and as part of anthropomorphic figures. Using red mineral dye,

they etched, pecked (hit with a tool repeatedly), or painted these images onto hard surfaces.

Faces were drawn using a range of styles; circular, semi-circular, heart shaped, and rhomboid

forms. Concentric circles and lines around the eyes and mouth exaggerated features.

Suggested teeth, beards, and horn-like protrusions also form part of these drawings.

Triangular-shaped bodies in silhouette and with details also feature in the art of the late

Neolithic period (Karşilaştirilmasi, 2010; Zaika, 2012). These stylised representations of

humans can be seen in contemporary hunter-gatherer societies such as with the Mikea of

South-western Madagascar, the Okiek of Kenya, as well as Australian Aborigines (Lee &

Daly, 1999)

In South Africa, Pleistocene paintings found at the Wonderwerk Cave show both

naturalistic representations of animals and geometric finger-painted figures in contrast to

other African sites where engravings (petroglyphs) are the prevalent rock art form (Chazan

& Horwitz, 2009). Early Brazilian rock art discovered at Lapa do Santo cave, alongside

faunal and macro-botanical remains of early hunter-gatherers, reveals figures pecked in the

bedrock. Among them is a small anthropomorphic figure with three digits, a C-shaped head,

and an oversized phallus (Hayden et al., 2015; Neves, Araujo, Bernardo, Kipnis, & Feathers,

2012). Carbon dating of cave art from Sulawesi, situated east of Borneo in the Wallacean

archipelago, suggest that figurative art was already part of the cultural repertoire of the first

modern human populations to reach this region more than 40,000 years ago. Cave paintings

at Chauvet Cave in France suggest that rock art emerged independently at around the same

time and at roughly both ends of the global spatial distribution of early modern humans

(Aubert et al., 2014).

In addition to telling us something about how early humans lived, rock art also

allows us to view the progress of at least some of the cognitive skills of early humans. Not

only do the animals they drew inform analysis of their surroundings and prey, but they also

provide a window into the observation skills of early humans. For example, Horvath, Farkas,

Boncz, Blaho, and Kriska (2012) compared the paintings of four-legged animals

(quadrupeds) by modern artists and by Upper Palaeolithic Homo sapiens. Quadrupeds have

a defined sequence of footfalls during walking, trotting, and running. Horvath et al. assessed

the animal paintings to see if the correct sequence of foot positions was displayed in the

work. For each painting they calculated the number of feet in the correct position relative to

the movement type for each painting. On the basis of their assessment of the artistic

rendition of animal gait relative to the actual sequence of footfalls in walking, running and

trotting, Horvath et al. concluded that early Homo sapiens depicted these movements more

accurately than did modern artists. The error rate for the incorrect depiction of gait and limb

movement in cave-art (46.2%) was significantly lower than that of modern artists (83.5%).

The high level of accuracy in Palaeolithic cave art suggests that these early humans paid

careful attention to animals’ motion which was important to their hunting and their survival.

The cave paintings of early humans also display advanced drawing and painting

techniques such as perspective-taking and shading (Blater, 1999). The paintings in the

Altamira Cave in Northern Spain and at Grotte Chauvet in France feature over 300

portrayals of animals, both static and in motion, either etched or painted, in a variety of

7colours and include shading, perspective, and tone to create realistic representations rather

than just outlines. In one portrayal, an artist depicts a bison’s head using a combination of

sculpture and drawing. The artist used the surroundings to maximise the representation of

the animal including drawing the animal's eyes on natural contours of the rock face in an

attempt to mirror the physical dimensions of the animal's skull. These techniques illustrate

planning on the part of early artists. Not only did they observe and recall the form and

movement of animals, but they also observed and recalled placement, shade, perspective,

and size which subsequently form part of their design process and execution.

Evidence of sketching outlines in rock art in the Kimberley region of Australia also

provide evidence of planning before the production of art. The drawings in this region span

around 40,000 years of human history and document the culture of the Aboriginal people in

Australia. These drawings are known as Bradshaw Rock Art, after the pastoralist Joseph

Bradshaw who first documented them in the mid-1800's (Bradshaw, 1892). Bradshaw

drawings are small, typically only 10-70-cm long and 4-22-cm wide, but despite their small

size, they give the first evidence of clothing use by human beings, with humanoid figures

shown wearing headdresses, tassels, skirts, and pants (Michaelsen, Ebersole, Smith, & Biro,

2000). Alongside these early clothing representations, Australian Aboriginal shamanistic

culture is also evident in Bradshaw drawings. These drawings feature female figures in the

role of shaman, indicating particular roles for women. The women in Bradshaw drawings are

in central positions within the drawings, they are drawn in ceremonial robes with their heads

arched towards the sky with breasts clearly visible either side of the silhouette figure

It is clear that the neurological potential to create art, and probably the creation of

art, was established before Homo sapiens left Africa, but we cannot know whether regional

stylistic differences were already established within each emigrating group or were acquired

en-route or at their final destinations. The archaeological record is more generous in

information on tool-making and it is beyond doubt that all of these Homo sapiens groups

left Africa with an accomplished ability to create 3D tools with a great variety of applications

(Hodson, 2006). Nearly all of the marks discovered so far have been engraved onto relatively

hard surfaces, such as rock, bone, and ochre. No artistic style is static, so the passage of time

and generations, with different cultural and environmental influences, changes in climate,

different available materials and technological skills, not to mention specific highly-gifted

individuals, must have been important factors influencing stylistic development, culminating

in the regional variety apparent in world art today.

The emergence of rock art in the repertoire of early man occurs at the same time as

the development of new hand tools, displaying a heightened sophistication of cognitive skills

and the ability to balance tools to make them more efficient for hunting and adaptation to

the environment. With the ability to create more useful and flexible tools came increased

spatial abilities. Improved spatial skills underlie the capacity to create a 2D representation of

an object from visual memory. Hodson (2009) suggests that this emergent skill is the result

of a cerebral structural change in Homo sapiens. The drawings created by early humankind

do not differ significantly from the abilities of contemporary humans, indicating that early

human cognition, hand-eye coordination, and the use of symbols has not changed

significantly in 40,000 years.