This journey through the history of ancient art is not straight forward. Very little of the art remains, researchers make mistakes and disagree with each other, and the development of art seems to ebb and flow, appearing, disappearing before returning again. Also I found it a little difficult to orientate myself amongst references to dating, sometimes using numbers of years ago, mostly using names of historical periods – early, middle, late Palaeolithic, Neolithic, Mousterian, Aurignacian, and so on – lots of looking things up there.

But reading on, a feeling did emerge of people first noticing interesting details about their world, curious shapes in rocks, or scratch marks on cave walls, and then working to tweak them. For example, some enterprising early artist noticed a patch of bear scratch marks on a wall, and then inscribed the outline of a mammoth around them, the scratches becoming the mammoth’s shaggy coat.

And in creating stone tools, their makers seemed to look at the stone they were using, and wonder if some modifications could be made in the interests of beauty. They’d make tools out of rock that was attractive but perhaps more difficult to work than plain, ordinary rock. They would either buy in, or travel to find exotic material. Or maybe they’d make a tool from a rock featuring a fossil. So art began to emerge from pre-existing natural forms, and from the practical business of living.

The first widely used paint was derived from an iron rich clay called ochre. When heated, powdered and combined with water, the resulting red pigment, was used to create images, probably as body paint, and as a nutritional supplement, being rich in iron. Or you might think of it as a very early form of ink, and the pictures created with it as an ancient writing.

This quote from researcher Leroi-Gourhan:

‘At its start, figurative art was directly linked to language, and much closer to writing in the broadest sense than to a work of art; it is a symbolic transposition and not a copy of reality.

So not only is this book about early art, it’s also about the earliest stages of the writing you are reading now.

The First Artists is an interesting book, a bit confusing maybe, which is an expression of the complicated story it tells as much as anything else. Overall, however, I gained a feeling of art not as something that people did in their spare time when more basic needs were met, but as an activity firmly rooted in nature and practicality.