Ice age art at the British Museum

Ice Age art arrival of the modern mind – An exhibition 40,000 years in the making. British Museum

Ice Age art arrival of the modern mind – An exhibition 40,000 years in the making. British Museum

“Ice age” because modern humans began to migrate into Europe about 45,000 years ago, towards the end of the last ice age. By 40,000 years ago the first artworks were being made. Art had arrived, in John Berger’s words “like a foal that can walk straight away”. See review by Kathleen Jamie

How to become human (through art)

At the entrance, a hospital-sterile environs, a reproduction of the Altar of Bull and Cow Bison from Tuc D’Audoubert Cave

The clay sculptures are unique, two feet long, eighteen inches high, three to four inches thick. The sculptor’s finger marks run the length of the animals, mane and beard are etched with a burin and the jaw with the artist’s fingernails. The horns are rough and not smoothed over. The Cow is ready for the Bull, they lean together against the rocky earth. The clay has dried and cracked over its 14,000 years of existence.

The first stone tools our ancestors worked with (two-and-a-half mya) were big hammer-like rocks used for pounding, probably made by Homo habilis whose brain size was half way (700cc) between modern humans (1300cc) and chimps (400cc). But this exhibition hosts art from 40,000 years ago that requires intricate motor-skills, fine stone burins, and imagination.

The exhibition is called Ice Age art arrival of the modern mind but makes little attempt to explore the theme tacked on the end and very little information on the development of a mind that could make art, and needed to.. I will have a go.

Part 1 evolution of the mind

Part 2 Perception

Part 3 Language

Part 4 Art as scaffolding, working with the environment