Primary Urges

Humanity’s instinctual need to make art

About 26,000 years ago, a human being belonging to a clan of mammoth hunters sits down on the ground, or perhaps a worn stone, with a fragment of an ivory tusk in one hand and a carving implement in the other.

Perhaps he, or she, takes advantage of a brief morning lull as smoke from cooking fires drifts across the season’s settlement. Or perhaps it’s dus…