Music is forever

Sitting here listening to Crowded House, this other NatGeo snippet caught my eye..

At last…

I have long believed that women were an essential part of the Creative Fire, but this being a man’s world, I was outvoted by the conviction that only a man would ever think of picking up a burnt stick and using it to draw with…

Enter the Neolithic…

Images from the Larousse Encyclopedia of Ancient and Medieval History (1963)

About 10,000 years ago, a great revolution took place. The previously nomadic tribes of the Paleolithic started settling down. They introduced farming, village life and a new kind of art. This time is called the Neolithic.

It sprang from the fertile soils in the area between Egypt and Iran and gradually spread across the globe. As it spread, the new art styles became localised and so regional styles were born.

What was so special about this `new age’? Previously, art had been a way of expressing the world of nature. Paleolithic artists covered surfaces with representations of the animals they hunted and shared their lives with. They used natural thins like bone and gut and skin from these animals, and shells and unpolished minerals to create the new necessities of life, like clothes, tools and needles, and some ornamentation, like jewellery and small clay statues.

But with settlement and time to ponder and relinquish oneself to the Creative Fire, a new form of art arose – abstractionism. This took its earliest form in pottery. The Neolithic people were mad about pots. They made huge numbers of them, many of which have come down to us intact. I imagine both men and women had a hand in this ancient art – certainly pots would be needed by both sexes. But what really makes them stand out is that they are such a rich vein of early abstract art styles.

This new style did not copy from the pragmatic forms of nature, but from its abstract forms – the swirl of waves, the ridges in sand, the curve of hills, the jagged shapes of mountains, and, it must be suspected, the patterns found on animal hides.

But these new artists did not choose to make abstract geometric patterns because they were easier. Take a look at the spiral pot above. The spirals are Grecian in their precise geometry but they were not made by Greeks – at least, not by artisans of the famous Kingdom of Ancient Greece, which came much later.

The undulating waves of the second pot suggest waves upon the ocean, or perhaps ribbons of cloud. This beautiful new art flowed around the generous swell of the pots, creatin objects that were both practical and aesthetically pleasing. Nor were the neolithic experiments in art confined to pottery – they were the first to use polished stones in jewellery and with no cave walls to decorate, they moved on to decorating their increasingly comfortable homes and temples.

The Neolithic people did not have the reservations about the human form of their Paleolithic ancestors – they delighted in its representation. Naturalistic forms were not forgotten – but the new abstract styles were to have an even more far reaching consequences for artists of the pen and the word processor.

For the writers among us, we found our creative beginnings here, in the simple geometric forms found on these pots. The stylistic simplicity of these symbolic forms led the way directly to the concept of writing. Into this is inextricably woven the development of language.

Neanderthals were not silent, nor did they merely howl and grunt at each other. Soft tissues do not become fossils, but we know neanderthals could speak because of the discovery of a Neanderthal hyoid bone in Israel proved that they were capable of speech, and DNA retrieved from fossils show that they had the genes which make speech possible. So language was born in this most unlikely place, inhabited by creatures we always thought of as utterly primitive.

The paleolithic era saw the development of speech as we know it today, although what languages these early ancestors used is lost in time. That is because nothing was ever recorded of their communication with each other.

But the neolithic became increasingly complex, as communities settled and began trading their surplus produce with each other. The invention of writing was for strictly pragmatic reasons, a way of keeping record by inscribing symbols into clay. This grew out of the creative process of conveying meaning in abstract ways, such as on these pots.

It came from a creative process, and not unexpectedly, it soon went back there and became absorbed by it. The world’s oldest writing, not account keeping, comes from Vedic India. The world’s oldest known creative writing is the Epic Poem of Gilgamesh, written in clay tablets in Ancient Sumer 5000 years ago.

From a pot to an epic poem – from a stylus to a pen to a word processor. The Creative Fire cannot be quenched.

Stitch by Stitch…

The art of the needle: A superb tapestry by Carol Abel

Some 40-50,000 years ago, someone invented the sewing needle. It was made of bone, threaded with tendons or hairs, and used to join pieces of animal skins together to make clothes.

Today, textile art amazes us with its seemingly unlimited creative possibilities in the hands of dedicated artists and home crafters alike. Yet these brilliant works, these fantasies of coloured silk and wool, all began when someone turned a splinter of bone into a needle.

It is common in Paleontology to picture men as the inventors and creators. In artistic representations, they sit stooped over their pieces of flint, chipping away to make the perfect tool or arrow head, while the women patiently gather nuts and berries in the background, filling baskets that men were have presumed to have invented.

But I think this picture is wrong. Tools are invented by those who have need of them. Imagine her, pondering the question of how to make several small pieces of skin into one large and useful one. The leap from a slender, pointed piece of bone to a needle with a hole in the wider end and a thread of some kind going through it is quite a large one, if you think about it. How did she tie it all together?

Perhaps she dreamed the answer to her problem. This would not be unusual, creative people often do dream solutions while they sleep. Ancient societies took great stock in dreams, and discussed them over the morning campfire. Perhaps our Paleontological ancestors did the same.

Perhaps something she saw in nature triggered the creative process. A weaving spider, perhaps, or the clever use of a claw by an animal that hasn’t been seen for 50,000 years. That is not unusual, either – as creative people know, nature is a great source of inspiration.

Or perhaps she just thought about it until the creative process itself unravelled the answer. I imagine she had to experiment quite a bit, to find the right kind of bone, using different materials for thread. Perhaps one night she just reached over and grabbed a few strands of her mate’s hair. These people had laughter, and the sense of fun that goes with it.

Her invention, once mastered, would quickly have caught on. Then perhaps, she, or someone else, invented the button. Bone buttons have also been found at Paleolithic sites. the leap between bone and something used to fasten two pieces of skin together seems even greater – but perhaps it came from the making of jewelery from shells, bone and teeth, already in use. certainly they were busy, these quiet inventors, creating something from the discarded bits of flotsam around the campsite, things their men probably dismissed as too small to be useful.

Their patience, and their experiments, led to the Bayeaux tapestry, and centuries of increasingly skilled and creative needlework. If you ply a needle today to create art, you are part of that line of women who saw creative fire burning in the simplest of things. We should honor them, for the Goddess moved in them.

They are our sisters in stitchery. Our mothers of invention.

You can see a collection of bone needles at the Texas Rock Shop.

Life is Creativity

The Creative Fire rages through the epochs. Evolution is creativity at work. The arthropods adapted to land, creating new forms for an environment so different from the ocean – the first fish grew a brain, creating intelligence and memory – gorgonops grew long sabre teeth and created a weapon – the earth endlessly recreates itself, and creativity burns ever brighter in the survivirs that asapt to the changing conditions.

When humankind came along, this creative fire found a way to do something unprecedented. It found a host that could make and shape – first stone tools and weapons, for purely practical purposes. Hunters needed tooth and claw to compete. But as these rough hands chipped stone against stone, something happened to these simple tools. They became beautiful.

Neanderthal man learned to speak, laugh and wonder. He buried his dead with compassion, he cared for the sick and wounded, and toward the very end of this species’ brief blaze, there was a glimmering of art. Perhaps it was the influence of Home Sapiens, already on that road – or perhaps, had the Neanderthals survived, they too, would have discovered creativity in their humanity.

but it was Homo sapiens who put the paint on the cave walls, who caught beauty as it passed and transferred it to art. The creative fire that drove life on to create new species to replace the extinguished, burned now in humans very much like us. But it had no practical purpose, like the stone tools. It existed only for its own sake – perhaps life does, too.

The need to create is deep within us, in our cells, in our genes. It comes from the dawn of time into our hearts and hands. It is truly the meaning of life – creation for its own sake, the very essence of being alive.

Without it, there never could have been any life.

A Work in Progress: Geological Time Periods

If you trace the history and pre-history of life on earth, you can see the creative process at work. Life on this planet looks and ore and more like a work in progress.

Pre Cambrian (4 million years ago)

The Pre Cambrian is the longest of the recorded geographical time periods. It covers the formation of the earth to the very beginning of life. The fossil record of this period is very sketchy as early life forms were very delicate in structure. This time period is further divided into:

>The Archeon Eon (4600-2500 million years ago)
During this time the earth is formed – a hot, volcanic and turbulent place. It is believed that during this eon, earth collided with another large body, which led to the formation of the moon. The moon helped to stabilise earth, and created tides and oceans. The oldest signs of life from this time are chemical signatures in Greenland rocks, about 3850 million years old.

>Proterozoic Eon (2500 million-543 million years ago)
This eon saw the development of simple bacteria, the earth’s most successful and persistent life form, to more complex plants and animals. At the start of this eon, life was still in the ocean – the surface could not support life, being too full of carbon, with too little oxygen. But as bacterial activity quickened up in the sea, so more oxygen was formed in the atmosphere. More complex single celled organisms (called eukaryotes) appeared about 1500 million years ago. These organisms had a nucleus that contained DNA. Between 760-600 million years ago, tempteratures dropped to -40c, creating earth’s first Ice Age. 600 million years ago, the fossil record starts to show very simple life forms.

Palaeozoic Era
The name of this era means `Ancient Life”

>Cambrian Period (543-490 million years ago)
In this era, fossils of trilobites and other shelled animals are found. But the land is still barren and hostile, so life remains in the ocean. However, evolution has produced the complex eye in some creatures.

>Ordovician Period (490-443 million years)

The ocean teems with life – there are corals, urchins, soft and hardshelled animals, and some scary creatures like giant scorpions (BrontoScorpio) who crawl onto land for brief periods.

>Silurian Period (443-417 million years ago)
Life is established on shore at the end of this period, with plants, fungi, and large arthropods, such as giant spiders.

>Devonian Period (417-354 million years ago)
This is a time of major evolutionary leaps – plant life becomes lush and well established on land, and taller plants, the fore runners of trees, start to appear. Life on land still consists mainly of insects, but the first fish now move onto land and develop lungs and legs. Possibly this is because the ocean is even more hostile now, with giant sharks.

>Carboniferous Period (354-290 million years)
As the name suggests, plants flourished in a hot, humid greenhouse climate. Earth’s crust was covered in forests of ferns from pole to pole. Trees start to grow very tall, but are still fernlike in appearance. There are still plenty of giant insects and amphibians in the oxygen rich air, and the first reptiles start to appear, laying eggs on land. But at the end of this period, around 290 million years ago, another Ice Age formed and caused many species of plants and animals to become extinct.

>Permian period (290-248 Million Years)
After the Ice Age, there is no more tropical paradise – the earth is cold and dry, with open plains and scattered thickets of ferns and conifers. Reptiles are well suited to these conditions, and began to proliferate. This period also saw the appearance of the first large land animals. Some evolved crafty ways to conserve heat for their larger bodies, such as enormous spinal `sails’ that acted as solar panels. The earth was still a turbulent place – the land masses had formed a giant continent (Pangaeia) with vast deserts caused by a lack of rain. This drought shrank the oceans toward the end of the Permian, again causing many animals to become extinct. This occurred around 248 million years ago and wiped out 95 per cent of all species alive at that time. This is the largest extinction.

Melozoic Era
This is know as the Age of the reptiles.

>Triassic period (248-206 million years ago)
The earth was left barren by the mass extinction, but a few plants survived. In the early and middle triassic, the few animals that remained had no predators and so proliferated. Evolution was accelerated during this time, with many new species appearing. Furthermore, Pangaeia began to break up, and new larger reptiles appeared. The end of this period is marked by another, smaller extinction, but it is not known what may have caused it.

Jurassic period (206-144 million years)
After the false start of the triassic, this era saw the large reptiles come into their own. Everything was right for them – a more humid atmosphere, lots of rain and flooding, all caused by the movement of the new continents. The dinosaurs and other large animals spread across the land masses, and pleisiosaurs and other water dwellers filled the oceans. With little to hinder them, the land and sea creatures grew gigantic.

>Cretaceous Period (144-65 million years ago)
The late Jurassic was pleasant, with flowering plants starting to evolve, but the cretaceous was Eden-like. But every Eden attracts danger – in this case, the freely roaming herds of huge herbivores spurred the rise of terrible predators, such as T-Rex and raptors. However it was not to last – at the end of the Cretaceous, another mass extinction wiped out both predators and prey, 40 per cent of the earth’s species. This extinction is believed to have been caused by an asteroid.

Cenozoic Era
This is known as the Age of Beasts. The last extinction wiped out the huge dinosaurs and their kin, leaving the land and sea to the smaller animals. Because the continents had drifted apart, animals now started to specialise in their local areas.

>Paleocene Epoch (65-55 million nyears ago)
Now the earth grew humid again, with jungles and swamps over most continents, and birds became the dominant species, with predators like gastornis. However, the end of the reptiles made way for the mammals to explode into the gaps, with many new species appearing and mammals we know today (elephants, rodents, primates) coming to the fore.

>Eocene Epoch (55-34 million years ago
Early mammals proliferated in the greenhouse atmosphere at the beginning of the Eocene, but 43 million years ago, earth cooled down, and lush tropical jungles gave way to open plains and forests. 36 million years ago, earth had cooled to the extent of another Ice Age, and one again extinction occurs – a fifth of all species on earth.

>Ogliocene Epoch (34-24 million years ago)
In the cooler, dryer climate, mammals proliferate and grow gigantic – the indrichotherium grey as big as a dinosaur. In their isolated continents, South America and Australia went the way of the Marsupial. Plant life began to change, with grasses predominating.

>Miocene Epoch (24-5 million years ago)
Once again the climate becomes pleasant, with wet and dry seasons, and grasslands to feed the growing mammalian herbivores. These animals have to evole new teeth and digestive systems to become roving herds of grazing animals. Dogs and cats arise as predators, and the earth undergoes some major changes as well, such as the formation of the Himalayas, which affects weather patterns.

>Pliocene Epoch ( 5-1.8 million years ago)
The earth is sorting itself out into different climatic regions, but North and South America collide, causing an interchange of animal species.

>Pleistocene Epoch (1.8-10,000 years ago)
The earth cools off and another Ice Age forms, leading to alternating hot and cold weather patterns. The cold lasts about 40,000 years, with the ice sheets reaching Europe, with warmer periods in between. Thick fur is the evolutionary order of the day, with animals like the woolly mammoth and woolly rhino making an appearance. In the late pleistocene, Neanderthals covered Eurasia but dies out about 30,000 years ago. This species of human co-existed with Homo Sapiens for a while, and then was replaced by the latter group. About 10,000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age, Homo Sapiens began farming.

>Holocene Period (10,000 years ago-present day)
Our current epoch is the holocene, which has seen the rise of humankind to become the dominant animal on earth. Like previous dominant species, we are growing enormous, but not in individual bulk – rather in numbers and impact on the earth. Paleontologists say we are living through another extinction event.
As Man proliferates, builds and alters the environment, we may be just another animal facing extinction. Life is like a work in progress that keeps getting rubbed out – but it is never snuffed out. It rises again from the ashes of extinction like a blazing fire that won’t quit – a phoenix constantly reborn – the creative fire is life itself.

The Earliest Known Literary Work

The Sumerians in Mesopotamia built the first known civilization. Their city of Ur was built on the delta of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The Sumerians created a city of art, craft and commerce based on a thriving agricultural economy.

They also invented writing, impressing wedge shaped symbols on tablets of clay. The first known literary work was printed in this way. It is the epic story of a Sumerian King, Gilgamesh. The version that exists today was written on 12 clay tablets around the 27th Century BC. The story tells of Gilgamesh searching for immortality after the death of his friend, Enkidu.

These ancient things are our heritage as creators, artists and writers.

Earliest Known Work of Art?

Is the so called Venus of Tan Tan the earliest known piece of art? Found in Morocco in 1999 on the north bank of the Draa River south of the town of Tan Tan, the figure has been dated between 300,000-500,000 BC. It is made from quartzite and appears to have been painted with red ochre.

Some believe it was deliberately carved – others believe that natural weathering produced this form.