First Contact Drawings

Little Mind Pamphlet 4

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Utrecht, February 200

First Contact Drawings

The Crystalpunk rule of thumb is: the development of a human child into an image maker, from scribbling to representation, recapitulates the growth of the image making faculty in the hominid mind! This opens up the "uestion, what did drawing look like before it had firmly established itself# $y bringing together evidence from archaeology, anthropology and psychology First Contact Drawings shows the connections that bind the first drawing of the genus, the species and the individual!

The common e%perience of seeing faces where there are none shows the insistence of our brain to create meaning if it cannot find some! The & million year old 'akapansgat cobble, its (face( shaped by nature, was transported over great distances by )ustralopithecus africanus, or other hominids, presumably for the hypnoti*ing power of its staring eyes! +ecognition of images preceded, or perhaps spawned, the creation of images!

The first (first contact drawing( may well pre date the human line but the trail of evidence begins with these engraved corte%es, appro%imately ,--!--- years old! There is little doubt that these were made by humans .almost/ like us!

Finger Flutings, trac0s digitau%, finger tracings, meanders, macaroni, or serpentines are created by moving fingers through a soft surface! They are found at nearly every rock art site in the world! Their function and intent remains an open "uestion!

This musk o% drawing in )ltamira .&-!--- year old/ has been suggested as the oldest known e%ample of an image discovered in, or, liberated from, a fluting!

1ainted and incised che"uered pattern in 2ascau%, ,3,--- to ,4,--- years old! The oldest known independent abstract form!

5ncised script like signs found in 6ugoslavia and western +omania on artefacts appro%imately 7--- years old ! 8ne e%ample of marks somewhere between image and writing!

)ustralian aboriginal people while talking draw on the sand, smoothing it over when they(ve finished a story! The sand talk may recount places along a 9ourney, draw maps, or describe the movement of characters in a story! Evidence by analogy about the function of fluting!

5n the beginning is the scribble! The development of drawing in children pass through a se"uence of steps! Children do not make pictures, they en9oy moving their hands and following the trail of their movements!

) ta%onomy of scribbles found in children(s drawings compiled by +hoda :ellog!

Entoptic phenomena, visual effects originating within the eye itself, have been claimed to be the impetus behind image making! The elegance of this theory is that it e%plains the occurrence of form constants found in art since prehistory as a result of the anti"uity of the nervous system! !

;adia, severely retarded, had by the age of si% still failed to develop any spoken language! $ut already in her third year she had begun to show an e%traordinary drawing ability! 8ne famous study uses ;adia(s condition as an analogous e%planation for the emergence of neolithic rock art!

S!D! was a man born in ,<-= who lost effective sight in both eyes at about ten months of age, after fifty years as a blind person received corneal grafts to restore his sight! These are some of the first images he made!

>emineglect is a condition in which patients fail to be aware of items to one side of space! Their drawings may fail to include items towards the neglected side, for e%ample when placing the numbers in a drawing of a clock!

These are representational drawings of a person by ? year old 6a"ui children from the valley and foothills of Sonora, 'e%ico! The valley children have been e%posed to pesticide!

) cat and a tapir drawn by members of the )ma*onian 1irah@ tribe new to pen and paper!

) Danish e%plorer introduced Areenland hunter and shaman )9ukuto" to pencil and paper! )9ukuto" immediately started drawing lines! >e said they were a womanBs thoughts and a dogBs thoughts!

The )ma*onian Caduvoe had no problem at all when drawing their elaborate body paint motives on paper, something which they had never seen before!

The :adiw0u used insignia or property marks, printed in fire or painted in their ob9ects and animals, especially in cattle! )t some point, these marks were combined to form a proto alphabet!

Signatures inscribed by the 'aori Chiefs in ;ew Cealand on the Treaty of Daitangi made with the English in ,E?-!

E%perimental work with pigment uncovered from French ;eanderthal sites has given substance to the idea that the ;eanderthal had body paint =-!--- to ?-!--- years ago! 5t is uncertain if ;eanderthal art, if any, was an independent invention or borrowed from >omo sapiens!

Elephants have long been known to draw with sticks and straws in the sand of their enclosures! Dhen presented with pen and paper they can work out for how to use them to draw! This is a scribble by 5ndian elephant Siri!

1rimates of all sorts have been given access to drawing materials! Some people working with apes have claimed that apes are capable of representational drawing but conclusive proof for this in not available! )s a genre ape art has long gone beyond first contact!

>arold Cohen was the first to try to construct an e%pert system that mimics some aspects of human drawing! >ere his software is instructed to draw animals in a typical rock art fashion! The new minds promised by artificial intelligence have never arrived and this avenue of first contact remains desolate!