L’art com a element humà

150 years ago, when Charles Darwin wrote his groundbreaking book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, there was no reason to expect that the search of the origins of art and symbolic behavior would end up playing a key role in debates about the emergence of modern human behavior. Particularly considering that, as discussed in this paper, none of these singular aspects of human behavior called his attention. Interestingly, though, his theories on human evolution stand behind two major controversies in research on prehistoric art that have divided the international scientific community: the authenticity of Altamira’s paintings and its prehistoric chronology, back in 1879, and the current controversy over the artistic and symbolic capacity of Neanderthals. In this paper we will reflect on these two issues, summarizing current debates on the origins of art and symbolic behavior.
Keywords: prehistoric art, origins, artistic capacity, symbolic behavior, Neanderthal.