No artists created the first cave art

There WERE no artists in paleolithic times, in medieval either, though that is another post. Any account of paleolithic drawings as being caused by artists, is wrong before that sentence is finished.

If these human being were not making art, what were they doing. To call their product art, because that is how WE would produce something similar, is to preclude understanding, to be on the level of comprehension of a Degrassy Knollson--that is having just a few alphabet blox in your toybock.

What was going on was brave people trying to grasp to comprehend themselves as part of a world: That they were a world, a world -- within a world. To explore that world, and their own part in it.

Which is to say, they glimpsed the nature of human thought, perhaps in creating it, but certainly in being aware of cerebral function, and the power and awe of such a comprehension. A comprehension, perhaps, of THEMSELVES, (plural, not singular) as  a separate species, with certain powers. They were not just pebbles for humanoid powers to trip on, but, themselves had some agency.

The drawings then, were a stage in conceptual thinking. A stage we mythologize, and about which we probably miss a lot.