Art, in its many forms, is practised by almost all human cultures and can be regarded as one of the defining characteristics of the human species. In all societies today, the visual arts are intimately intertwined with music, dance, ritual (marking life landmarks, death, religion and politics) and language (poetry, song and story-telling). Vocalization, ritualized movement and visual display are part of animal courtship and dominance competition as well as human ritual and communication, so it is likely that the roots of music, dance and body decoration lie deep in the evolutionary history of the animal kingdom. Nevertheless, with the evolution of human cognition, they were deployed in new ways, with complex symbolic meaning becoming attached to them.
