The dawn of patterns

Patterns are everywhere: the prints on your shirt, the tiles in a bathroom, and on a thousand other objects around us. This human fascination with creating repeating shapes goes far back, maybe further than you think.

Our ancestors were in fact making patterns long before they developed written language. Early humans in caves scratched rhythmic lines and dots onto walls, expressing something deeply human: our desire to find meaning in repetition and create beauty through order.

Archaeological evidence shows humans have been pattern-makers for at least 100,000 years. Before agriculture, before cities, before most of what we consider "civilization", people were already creating… geometric designs.

These early patterns were more than decoration and captured the world the early humans saw around them. Here’s what I find fascinating... Even though their surroundings was all nature and nothing like our largely manmade world of today, they still leaned towards the abstract: lines, dots, regular repeats. It’s like this visual language has always been within us.

Take for example the cross pattern in the soft stone below, the oldest known carving. What they mean has been lost to time, but it’s an interesting exercise to imagine what it might have meant to the person who made it. Fish scales? Counting days? A pattern for weaving twigs?

Already in those first moments of creativity, abstract patterns and figurative imagery came together elegantly, like in these cave drawings of horses. See, for example, at how the dotted pattern extends from the horse out onto the backdrop.

Crafts like wood work and basket weaving emerged and provided a canvas for people to explore the many forms that patterns could take. In weaving, a method inherently repetitive, we see endless variations in both the weaving patterns and the color patterns across the surface.

The basket below is over 3 millennia old, but still looks surprisingly modern. Still beautiful, still appealing, after all this time.

Pottery is another craft that lend itself well to patterns. Motifs follow and interact with the shape of the clay objects to create artful goods.

As humans moved from tribes to civilizations, their patterns grew more sophisticated. Agriculture and the formation of cities allowed some people to dedicate their lives to art. They found an audience in organised religion and rulers of the day, for whom the patterns carried deep meaning: sometimes of knowledge, sometimes of power.

In Ancient Egypt, artists drew lotus and papyrus motifs to celebrate the spoils of their Nile, but were also already discovering the famous wallpaper groups (which we’ll discuss in a later chapter) and created abstract patterns from those.

On the other side of the Mediterranean Sea, Greeks created the classic meander pattern you've likely seen before, even if you didn't know its origin.

I promise the rest of this masterclass will be about visual patterns, but for a brief moment, let’s take a step back. Because we humans really love every kind of pattern.

We love them in other forms of art…

…but we even love patterns in unexpected places…

…and the more you think about it, it’s in almost everything we do. This yearning for repetition probably has some survival benefit, which has spilled over into an aesthetic preference for it as well.

But how does this help us practically in our creative quest for visual patterns? It shows us inspiration can come from anywhere, especially other art forms.

In the next chapter, we’ll look at how pattern styles developed across the world, and how culture and technology pushed patterns into every part of life.