But if we want to talk about art, especially primitive art, we need to defined it somehow. So let's assume that in addition to being symbolic communication, to be art the object must a special communication above the level of ordinary discourse. This means that a laundry list, or accounting records are not art. But a wall painting probably is. The current educated guess by anthropologists, who extrapolating backwards from the old fossil remains of early man, put the origins of man between 2,500c and 2,000c in Africa.
Separate development is the called the multi regional model of human origins.
There is a compromise idea which assumes that the hominids from Africa spread throughout the world, met, mated with and conjured or assimilated the local native hominid. European cave painting started around 220c and continued until about 100c. That is a long period of time, the cave painting period in Europe lasted 55 times as long as the period of time since Christ and stopped happening 50 periods before Christ. Prehistoric man painted in caves in Africa, Euro-Asia, Europe, and Australia. In Australia they are still doing it.