During the class “Consuming Images Part 1 Understanding Images in Context” which talked about what is the meaning of images, does the photograph represent the truth and image as representation of things, I start to wonder how images were discovered in the ancient times and why did people start creating images.
After I searched through the internet, I found an episode “The day pictures were born” from a documentary series, How art made the world, which truly answered my question. And this is the summary of this episode.
One of the skills that everybody have today is to look at lines and shapes that we see around us and give meaning to them. This ability to read images is an essential part of our lives. If we didn't have it, life, as we know it, would be impossible; our world would be unrecognizable. For example, the 3 below sign even without description, we can instantly know the meaning of them. The first sign is no smoking, the second one is information center and the last one is toilet sign. But at some point in our ancient past, that's what the world was like imageless. And then something changed. At some point in our human history, we began to create pictures and to understand what they meant. But why did people suddenly decide to start creating images of the world around them?
At First, 19th century experts get a clue to this question from the discovery of the prehistoric cave paintings of Altamira and believed that prehistoric humans painted simply to represent the world around them which is the same reason for people today. But that was not a real answer, for these early artists, they only seemed to paint one thing which is animal. In addition they only painted their pictures in dark caves.
Altamira cave paintings
Scientists who study altered states of consciousness suggest the answer lies in the hard-wiring of the brain. People didn't just one day decide to invent making pictures. But when they are in dark caves, they were in a trance state seeing spiritual experiences and felt compelled to paint them on the walls. According to this theory, these artists were not copying nature but reproducing vision created inside their heads.