“Pareidolia”

The Americas’ oldest known artist may have been an Ice Age hunter in what is now Florida, according to an anthropologist who examined a 13,000-year-old bone etching. Read the full June 2009 story: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/06/090610-oldest-art-mammoth-picture.html

Photograph courtesy Mary Warrick, Florida Museum of Natural History

"The very first presentation I witnessed was from Patricio Bustamante, and it got right to the question of how and why was this art made.

He pointed out that art is in many ways in the eye of the beholder (or in some cases, simply the “holder”). This process stars with “pareidolia,” where someone looks at a naturally occurring form and sees the image of something else entirely. Finding pictures in clouds is probably the best known example of this, though perhaps finding them in rocks is the oldest example we will ever find."

(I 'behold' a bird ~ Tim)

http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2010/09/08/new_way_of_looking_at_art_and/