the invention of abstraction

The idea of invention, as in originators, doesn't seem very fruitful. At the end of the day it's really an attempt to prove one group is more original and creative-and therefore more human-than another group. Old hat, really. The lack of perspective or realistic representation in an artistic tradition is seen, in this light,as a failing or a sign of immaturity by the particular culture. Russia and Islam must stand suitably condemned if that is so.
There's a great few lines from Chatwin here 

All well and good, you say, but what about Polynesia or some "primitive" tribe that has little art and no written documents. Do they still count as fully human? Of course, one does not to labour the point that 90% of all languages have not taken the written form and that right from the very beginning, if that's when the beginning was, cave paintings indicate that at least at some level abstraction has always existed. Isn't the very concept of a person that of someone who distances himself from his present (his or her present desires and interests), who can take a step outside of himself (to link it to cave art again: ec-stasy).?

Shamanism is a stray descendant of Sufism.

Hans Jonas makes a similar point in his brilliant essay. From the start our thinking, the way we see, was tinged with memories, desires and expectations ("I see everything through the lens of memory" said Hockney). There is no "pure" seeing, no raw data (the pervasive modern notion of how the brain works). What 'looking' can there be if we do not look out for others, with others?

On the other hand, the whole 'colonization' debate in the Huffington makes me slightly queasy. What is original, if that's where you want to go, is the emphasis on finitude, on contingency, a kind of psychological depth and shading...on the weight given to the moral outlook that holds that each and  every particular ordinary individual life is of some worth-and the representation of these facts in films and novels.

(hat tip to Roxana)