[empath75]

I think the paper was just an exploration of various possibilities and doesn't come to any firm conclusion, because there isn't enough information to conclude anything.

I would assume that people in the past generally did things because they found it useful, though, and the idea that they were merely idly creating art is a more remarkable claim than that they were doing something primarily utilitarian, at least from their point of view.

To me, all of it seems like tally marks and counting and tally marks are among the earliest forms of writing we have in pretty much every case that I am aware of.