At last we have an authoritative book on the story of art from its first emergence as human mark-making to contemporary works. Iain Davidson is Emeritus Professor of Archaeology in the School of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences, University of New England, Australia.
I consider Davidson to be the foremost authority on the evolution of art from the origins with both modern humans and Neanderthals through to contemporary contexts.
Davidson argues convincingly that
‘art is too important to be left to those who are interested in art’.
What I love most about this book is the way Davidson acknowledges the intellectual capacities of human species throughout time and across the world. He doesn’t just pay lip service to their intelligence, he thoroughly investigates the implications of considering art as a fundamental human activity.
Too often, our ancestors are presented as lacking the intellect to store knowledge and act upon collections of data. Art is then seen as mere scribbles or purely for entertainment. This book challenges the common trivialising of artistic achievements with great success.
Art or Scribbles? In the Eye of the Beholder: The Evolutionary Emergence of Visual Communication
by Iain Davidson (Springer Nature, 2025).
The title arises from a conversation Davidson had with Bill, a grazier, over 35 years ago. In reference to Aboriginal art on his property, Bill quipped ‘Not that I would call them art, so much as scribbles’.
This statement has occupied Davidson ever since. He sees art across all media and throughout time as related to the stories humans need to tell.
The book asks: what is the difference between art and scribbles, and why?
This book is timely, as attitudes to the purpose of art has expanded hugely in recent decades, especially with relation to the work of First Nations artists.
‘Different types of definition of art, then, might not help very much if they are confined to descriptions of the state of a thing, without taking into account its contexts in evolutionary or developmental terms.‘ (p. 62)
The book is heavily illustrated. I must confess that the first thing that I did when I finally had a copy in my hands was to flip through looking at all the pictures.
Vulture Stone, Gobekli Tepe, Sanliurfa, South-east Anatolia, Turkey. It depicts a human
head in the wing of a vulture and a headless human body under the stela. There are various figures
like cranes and scorpions around this figure. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vulture_
Stone,_Gobekli_Tepe,_Sanliurfa,_South- east_Anatolia,_Turkey.jpg. Sue Fleckney, CC BY-SA
2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by- sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (p. 195)
My interest is primarily on the role of art in oral cultures and then the changing role as literacy emerges. I learnt a great deal from the book as Davidson not only broadened my current knowledge, but expanded it by considering contemporary art.
“The big question becomes how, in the course of history, did stuff that was so widespread turn into the stuff that artists, critics, curators, philosophers or other interested people call art today?” (p. 69)
Davidson also explored the uniquely human activities which can be defined as art. I have been hugely influenced by Davidson’s research over my past decades of research, especially in terms of the role of art as a knowledge system in oral cultures. I was really impressed by his extensive and robust arguments showing that hominins are the only species to have produced art.
‘I think we can be sure that art, as I have defined it, is a distinctively human achievement.‘ (p. 144)
‘As a result, I am happy to argue that art appeared at some stage, along the human line but not the chimpanzee line, nor among the many other species that evolved during those millions of years.‘ (p. 83)
Humans and their ancestors—whom I will call hominins—seem to be the only communicators who repeatedly interact with persistent material culture, beginning with the carrying of stone raw material in early hominin sites from 3.4 Million years ago. (p. 128)
The transition of the role of art as writing emerged is also explained and wonderfully illustrated. I found Davidson’s definitions of writing, and clarity about the changes it instigates in human communication, to be really enlightening.
Writing uses visual means to make an oral communication permanent. Once writing existed in those places where it emerged, the message of the story could be written down and understood by another person who had learned to read it. And it did not matter when this reading happened—it was part of what has been called “asynchronous communication”—such that the communication or story that accompanied the visual message was less ambiguous and could be read at any time. Writing could transmit the message across great distances because it was not tied to time or place. (p. 143)
The book then considers the role of recent historical and contemporary art in the context of all that has gone before.
Art or Scribbles? is an expensive book, an academic tome destined for universities. I suggest every academic request their university purchases it. Yet, academic tome it is, does not mean it is not highly readable. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the entire book, when usually I would seek out what I need from academic references.
I highly recommend Art or Scribbles? In the Eye of the Beholder: The Evolutionary Emergence of Visual Communication.
Dr Lynne Kelly AM, March 2026.