Art is not even exclusive to human-like species in general. Just to give an example, check out the mating ritual of puffer fish.
https://www.livescience.com/63627-pufferfish-sand-art-video-reddit.html
If fish show an interest in creating visually appearing structures, why should it be any different for early primates? I would rather expect that more or less each species has individual forms of art. Although we as humans might not be capable to understand them.
How do we know if a dog peeing in the park is really just marking the area as its own? What if they’re on purpose creating some kind of smelly art for their fellow doggos?
Birds are to me the perfect candidates:
Nest decoration
Birds steal shiny things because… they’re shiny, no real utility.
Self decoration.On stealing: Some studies says that they also gain pleasure from stealing challenging objects, specially from humans, and that they treat the object as a kind of trophy.
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Our dogs arrange bones as art, every day a new configuration. Sometimes they even look pleased to show me. They also sing, together with other dogs, and some of this singing gets really complex. (If life gives you howling dogs at night, you enjoy the show.) Expression takes all sorts of forms.
The land I live on looks a little bleak and remote, but there’s art everywhere! It is covered in boulders, some shaped, and lots of them have intricate hollows in them. Looks like they could have been made by rubbing a smaller rock against the boulder. There’s one such composition shaped like a hand. There’s some holes so large you can sit in them, right next to a water source, perfectly fitted for two people and a child. I imagine the large flat bits might have been painted at times. The landscape must have looked beautiful back then!
With how specific my dog is for choosing where to potty, I’m inclined to believe she can smell the missing nutrients that her pee will restore
Plot twist, there was a previous human civilization that got wiped out almost completely. The few that survived were trying to communicate to later generations and are called “Neanderthals” by us now.
It seems to me that artistic expression is directly connected to the ability and desire to make and use complex tools, a lot like the ones that we see from the Acheulean period. If that’s correct, it’s potentially way older than even the shell in the article, being instead from a million and half, perhaps two million years ago.
