This story celebrates Man and Woman as Artist.
What separates human from beast? Art? Tool-making is a more traditional answer, but some animals make tools; or language, but animals communicate, some with nuances rich enough to be deemed speech. Thought? Another possibility. Without dismissing the alternatives, let’s here focus on art.
How far back should we go? The first art form — proto-art at least — was burial, which assumes ritual and decorative aspects before men and women are even fully human. Proto-human Neanderthal Man seem to have sometimes buried their dead on beds of specially gathered flowers. Precise dating is impossible, but 100,000 years ago is one scholarly estimate.
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