Unfortunately, there has been relatively little statistical work done to use distributions of preserved ages to infer the age of origin, and although I recall reading an article in Nature on the problem in the '80's or early '90's it would seem that most of the people working in the field have not really focused on this problem, and instead continue to apply a mixture of "The practice began around the time of the earliest preserved instance of it" and "The practice began earlier by some amount that I will estimate from my gut".
Neither of these is approaches is methodologically sound, and both tend to underestimate the ultimate age of a given practice (or species, in the case of fossils) and tend to underestimate the error bars as well.
Yes the first instance of preserved art is from that date. However, it's a fossil. Do we assume our ancestors sat around the camp fire suddenly decided "hey I'm going to take some berries and plaster them on the wall in the shape of a deer". No one before that took a stick and drew in the dirt?
We're also oblivious to huge amounts of human history. Neanderthals are thought to have lived in groups of about 50 people and there's evidence of them living in everything from open air camps to huts.
What these paintings could well be showing us is merely a record of what they've seen in the area. When you're nomadic it was likely beneficial to leave a reminder of what you hunted in the area.
I expect art started in the Neanderthals, there's evidence they may have practiced medicine. They made tools. It makes sense modern humans would have learnt and improved it like we did everything else.
We took huts and made longhouses. We took fur clothing and sewed them into clothes. We took spears and darts and made atlatl and bows. Why wouldn't we have taken Neanderthals scratchings in the dirt and probably on rocks and we made permanent paintings on the walls with colour and detail.
It seems to me that whilst it is highly likely the first instance is earlier than the first discovered instance and that this is a perfectly valid conjecture I don't think we have any convincing grounds to state that it is 'almost certainly far older.'
I'm very curious about what you say about statistical work. What would such an analysis look like? I don't have a strong background in statistics and I'm confused about how the inference would work.
I showed it to a couple of my friends and every one of them fell asleep. I liked it though, and it gives you an interesting look into the modern day behind-the-scenes work these immensely valuable discoveries bring forth.
The philosopher Walter Benjamin spoke of certain artworks having "aura." That one practically glows.
