“When we consider the  creative arts today, we tend to think that culture is a prerequisite for artistic activity.  In Greek mythology, however, the order is reversed, and the arts and crafts are credited with having civilized the human race.. Athena and Hephaestos, the blacksmith god, were said to have fostered the transition from a wild to a civilized state by bringing the arts and crafts to mankind.  One subtext of these myths is thus the equation of artistic  creativity with civilization.

The early history of art, as far as we know it , is a combination of the modern and the mythological points of view. No visual arts have been found from the Neanderthal era.  It is not until HOMO SAPIENS that the earliest traces of art appear.  By the Paleolithic period, artists were making sophisticated sculptures and painting cave walls.  And with the development of  agriculture in the Neolithic period, people began to produce monumental  stone architecture.  The evident relationship of the creative arts to human evolution resonates with the myth of Arachne‘s challenge.  For it equates artistic creatvity with the human condition, in constrast to the spider , which weaves by rote.”

The Methodologies of Art – An Introduction  by Laurie Schneider Adams

Just from one lowly artist and professor of the arts may I just say….. let’s not go back to caveman days and PROMOTE more arts in schools at EVERY level !!