Why did art and personal adornment appear so late in human prehistory?

Question

Why did art and personal adornment appear so late in human prehistory?

Answer 1

I don't know why you say "late" as it appeared very early, and, what some others have said notwithstanding, before people settled down and cultivated land.

Very, very early peoples had jewlery, tatooes, and other adornments, and art, as well.

Answer 2

The same reason that blondes came after brunettes. For attraction purposes. After a while the population grew, and soon they had to find a way to make themselves stand out and more desirable.

Answer 3

Actually, art and personal adornment appeared relatively early in human development.

The Upper Paleolithic (100,000 YBP - 40,000 YBP) is a period that marks the efflourescence of "culture" - including art and personal adornment.

Answer 4

Folk then had far more to be concerned about than fashioning trinkets and stuff. Killing their food  would take up most of there waking hours. Don't forget they were all nomadic tribes in those days and had to carry all there stuff with them, so bangles and necklaces would not be among there necessities. Now when they elevated to hunter gatherers and began to settle down, that's when the bangles and beads and stuff began to show up in the excavations.

Answer 5

Frist, it is important to understand what you consider "Human" development.  Modern Homo sapiens or our ancestors (Homo erectus, habilis etc.)

If you mean all of Homo, then it is relativley late - 45-50,000 years ago - though new finds may be pushing that back a bit.

There seems to have been an explosion of artistic expression around the world at that time and some have attributed it to the final evolution of our brains to the modern form - something just clicked into place.  Of course it is always possible that there was artistic expression earlier in forms that do not survive.

DM

Answer 6

I would argue that art appeared earlier than most people think.  "ART" from a paleolithic mindset was different than we conceive  it today.  Even the earliest of archaeological artifacts have some sort of ritualistic symbolism, whether we recognize it or not.  If our world was destroyed, would humans 10,000 years from now recognize the symbolism of our modern day world without written documents?  I bet it would be extremely confusing to them.

Answer 7

Because it begins with the first settlements... When you are a nomade tribe, your focus is not on developing technologies or artcraft, but to develop a way to hunt down more effectively and safely (longer range weapons). So when they settle in place, technology arise slowly and artcraft arise with the gathering of more resources. So the settlement helps them to become richer, thus increase their time to do trading with others, which bring a primitive market and a flows of objects around tribes that eventually become more creative, as economically wise it was better to get food for a trinket made of stone or wood, than exchanging it with other food...

Answer 8

I think you need to re read your history books!

Answer 9

in the beginning all people spent time on was living and surviving in a harsh wilderness. that sole task took up every waking hour. it wasn't until people started creating tools to make their jobs go by faster and easier that they actually had the free time to think up adornment or to even practice it.