Homo sapiens are intensely creative, more than any other species that have come before us. We owe it to our ancestry, previous homo species were creative in their tool making however we took it to another level. A dangerous selfish level in some cases, but another level no doubt.
I explore here only a handful of creative endeavours, tracing back to the earliest experiments and days of Homo sapiens to the modern versions, and in brief description. There are many creative endeavours of humans that I haven’t covered, but look to do in future blogs.
Tool making
Tool making dates back millions of years with our ancestors. This creative ability to take things in their natural form and repurpose it, is not totally unique to humans. We just seem to do it better than other species. Some of our ancestor’s tools didn’t develop for a million years, but Homo sapiens seemed to have far outpaced the others.
Tool making would develop from small stone tools, to wood, to metal tools, eventually creating tools out of diamond itself, and machinery large enough to fill factories.
Primitive tools also led to primitive weapons, to bring down prey or each other when one felt threatened. Advances in weaponry are terrifying. To begin with a simple spear like weapon to hunt and within 50,000 years, creating bombs capable of wiping out humanity in a flash.
Pottery
The first known experiments with pottery date back to 30,000 BCE with figurines. Pottery is made from clay and other materials, mixing them together and shaping it to either then being left to dry or baked at high temperatures to harden. Pottery vessels have been found as far back at 18,000 BCE. The Neolithic period (from around 10,000 years ago to 5,000 years ago) saw a great rise in the making and everyday use of pottery. This ties in with the increased use of agriculture as the main source of food. Food surplus needed storing, and food cooking increased as supply and populations increased. This was the beginning of wealth collecting amongst humans on a scale that made a significant difference to the shift of power.
As technologies developed to create higher temperature kilns for firing, so did different types of pottery: earthenware, stoneware and porcelain which includes bone china. Porcelain is the most difficult to produce and creates intricate designs of decorative ornaments.
Geoglyphs
Geoglyphs is essentially land art, huge figures and lines carved, painted or otherwise created on the ground so that it can be appreciated from afar. The most famous geoglyphs are the Nazca Lines in Peru. There are modern examples of geoglyphs, people painting onto landscapes.
Cave paintings
Cave painting dates back 70,000 years in some cases though the dates haven’t been fully confirmed. Confirmed dates put cave painting at its height and glory to between 40,000 years ago and 15,000 years ago. There are examples of cave paintings earlier and later than this period. They used early forms of paint and application, using pigments commonly found in nature like red and yellow ochre, charcoal for black and chalk for white. They would have used binders like oil, water, egg and others. Application would have been fingers, or early forms of brushes using animal hair and pieces of stone and wood.
Body painting
The earliest evidence of grinding pigments dates back to 100,000 years ago in a cave however it is likely that using paint as body art dates back further than this, as it easily disintegrates with the elements and doesn’t leave much evidence except where it is preserved in caves or on buried mummies.. The tradition of body painting is still upheld today but with different names, like makeup and tattoos.
Jewellery
This is another form of self-adornment that is ancient for humans, the oldest found jewellery dates back to 100,000 years ago. Jewellery can be made from a wide variety of natural items like gemstones, beads and shells strung together. The use of jewellery was a status symbol in ancient times, and still is today.
Fashion
Fashion is an interesting one. Early humans would have made clothing out of whatever they could find, natural materials from trees and plants and animal skins. This was more out of necessity. However personal expression with fashion, style and accessories can be seen from the use of jewellery and body art.
As empires grew, like Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, the people at the top would have had different clothing to those they ruled. This would have shown status and symbolise who is in power and what they had to show for it. This tradition of the royalty and nobility having the best that clothing had to offer, trickled down through the centuries.
Uniforms being a type of fashion, would have been created for armies to ensure their personal safety and determine whose side they were on. This tradition would slowly trickle down into other sectors of society, to ensure that there is a coherence and equality amongst workers and people of the same tribe.
Haute couture (high fashion/dressmaking) came about in Europe from 16th century. The centre for haute couture has shifted from city to city, and trend to trend for centuries. It is the bespoke high end fashion, to make a statement of wealth and privilege to those around. This still permeates the fashion world today, however shifts are happening to more sustainable fashion choices as it has been noted, there is enough clothing in the world today to clothe everyone and yet, the classic imbalance is ever present.
Canvas painting
The canvas for painting purposes has been around since around the 14th century. Before this, paintings were typically completed on the interior walls of homes, churches, palaces and wooden panels.
Canvases are made of linen, cotton or traditionally, hemp. The material is stretched across a wooden frame and coated with gesso to prime the canvas for painting. This allows the paint to sit more on top of the surface as opposed to being absorbed too much by the canvas material itself, which can change the final finish and image and degrade the image over time. This was typically used for oil paintings, the medium for painting has developed over the years into other alternatives.
The themes of canvas painting, or traditionally panel painting, has developed over the years. Religious themes were hugely important for a lot of ancient civilisations, and more modern ones like Greeks and Romans. At the shift of the renaissance, the theme persisted. To spend time and resources on painting, calls for an important subject matter.
Portraiture also was a common theme, traditionally created of those who are powerful, wealthy or of the gods. As time moved on and society developed, other types of portraiture came into fashion.
Other themes of painting include geometry, landscapes, abstract (modern style) and still life. The themes and styles are continually developing as people tap into reservoirs of emotions and events to inspire their art.
Architecture
In terms of homes for the general population, this has developed rather interestingly. In the upper Palaeolithic, the earliest man-made dwellings were found to be semi subterranean pit houses, digging the earth out and living under ground level. For some hunter gatherers, homes were versatile and non-permanent as they would be on the move. They would have been built from bones and skins of animals, as well as utilising natural materials like sticks, which then would be taken down or just left to crumble as they moved around in search of food.
In the Neolithic, after 10,000 years ago, with the rise of agriculture, it seemed necessary to build more solid homes for sedentary life as opposed to being on the move as hunter gatherers. Mud-brick homes became the norm, building them in close proximity to each other, sometimes sharing walls with access from above. After a while, stone and wood would have been introduced into home building, and finally concrete and steel.
The styles of architecture really come into play in the bigger stately homes, temples, monuments and palaces. This would have been where resources were available to employ the architects, create designs and make the different style buildings as the culture dictated. Today, architecture varies across the countries in style, but the main materials are steel, concrete and glass, with some bricks and stone.
Sculpture
The earliest forms of sculpture date back 70,000 years ago. To pick on an earlier point, for the ancient peoples, the time and effort to create things would have been done for very important things like rituals and religion.
Sculpture is the art of creating imagery from a single piece of stone or rock, or indeed other material like clay. Shaping and moulding to create something ornamental and potentially religious rather than of utility like a bowl. Like the other arts, this has developed into huge sculptural pieces, utilising new materials as technology discovered them. Today sculptural art is less common than say canvas art, as canvases are more accessible to the masses with price and themes. However the sculptural arts are still successful today as they were 70,000 years ago, in sparking off conversation and bringing people together.
There are undoubtedly other forms of creativity that will be explored in future blogs, this is just a taster of our creativity. Music, graphic design, other forms of sewing, crafts, carpentry, glass making to name a few more. We’re such a creative bunch aren’t we!
