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Abstract
The emergence of art and symbolic representations are an enigmatic puzzle from a Darwinian perspective since they could have led primitive humans to waste so much time and energy on abstract things. As Philip G. Chase comments, symbolic culture was never essential for survival. Rather than an adaptation to environment, the extraordinary wastefulness of art may better be explained in terms of sexual or signal selection. By analysing the oldest-known cave art paintings, the ancient hand imprints in France and Spain, archaeologist Dean Snow of Pennsylvania State University found that 75% of the hands are of women as against the previous assumptions that they are of adolescent boys and men.