The meaning of art in its present-day usage by modern societies has not started as adornment, amusement, or an aesthetic delight. The foundations of art are closely related to the survival, communication, identity, and human want to leave a trace of existence. Early human beings were making pictorial impressions on the cave walls, rocks, bones, and tools long before the existence of written language, organized religions and formal education systems. These prehistoric images are among the earliest efforts of human beings to convey thoughts, feelings, experiences, and beliefs in visual terms. The appearance of art is one of the important events in the history of the humanity as it shows the evolution of symbolic thinking and abstract consciousness.

Early man existed in a world full of insecurity and threat. The only way to survive was to know how animals acted, weather, seasons and the topography. With the time, man acquired more advanced cognitive capacities like imagination, memory and planning. Such skills enabled man to get out of merely reacting but reflecting. This mental growth seems to have resulted in art. At the time when humans started to make pictures, they did not just copy what they saw. They were choosing, blowing out of proportion and systematizing visual information in substantial manners.

The working of the images was both a calculated and deliberate process. Artists were forced to select surfaces, to make pigments out of natural substances (minerals, charcoal, etc.), and to add marks with fingers, sticks, or crude brushes. Such steps are signs of intentional action as opposed to coincidental scribbling. This implies that early art was not a blind process but an intentional one over which people were driven by internal forces and not by the unconscious urge.

The symbolic quality of early art is one of its features. Symbols are thought of as concepts instead of material things. A painted animal might not have been an actual animal, but the concept of animals, success in hunting, or spirituality. Creation and knowledge of symbols are an indicator of higher cognitive levels. It demonstrates the fact that an ancient human being could think beyond bare physical reality.

Social bonding may be another way that art was involved. The process of making image collectively or telling visual stories might enhance group identity. Art was able to express collective experiences, beliefs and values among a community. Without a written language, visual representation would have been a potent means of remembering a community of people.

There is another theory that early art was related to ritual and spirituality. A great number of cave paintings are found in remote and hard to reach places implying that they were not intended to be viewed on a daily basis. These places could have been spiritual. The process of painting could have been included in the ceremony to guarantee successful hunts, danger, or communication with unknown powers.

In addition to cave paintings, the early humans made small sculptures, carvings and ornaments. It is found that figurines of human beings, and mostly female figures have been discovered in other prehistoric sites. These numbers might have symbolized the fertility, motherhood or symbolic depictions of existence and survival. Similar forms appearing in many regions imply the existence of common symbolism.

Art did not consist of representational imagery. In early art, there is the recurrence of abstract patterns, lines and geometric forms. These designs could have been symbolic or were used decoratively. Existence of abstract art proves that the primitive man was not only preoccupied with realistic representation. Exploring visual forms, they were looking at visual forms as a means of expressing and conceptualizing.

With the development of human societies, art was becoming more complicated. The rise of agriculture and permanent settlements led to human beings building built environments and producing more durable works of art. Pottery, textile and architectural decoration were introduced. Such advances show that art had become part of everyday culture and no longer of special places or events.

In antiquity, it is clear that people are always storytellers. People wanted to have means to record the experiences and express the ideas even without the written language. Information flow was through visual storytelling which enabled the transfer of information over generations. A painting was capable of holding knowledge of animals, scenery and even events even after the original artist was gone.

The study of early art is useful in making modern viewers realize the common humanity that unites the current people with the ancient ancestors. In many aspects, the same desire to visualize the ideas can be traced back to these early beginnings even nowadays, as the tradition of modern art was beginning. The desire to make pictures, narratives and to find meaning in the visual expression remains cross cultural and cross-temporal.

Art history never starts with great museums or great artists. It starts with anonymous people who painted the walls of natural rocks with natural pigments.The initial marks are the beginning of the time when humans started to make experience a visual language.The initial marks mark the origin of creative consciousness.They are the earliest marks of the beginning of human story-telling.