The History of Entertainment and Its Impact

Post date: February 6, 2024

By Peter Wolff

Entertainment is an art at its very core. From the earliest cave paintings to the newest technological innovations, entertainment has worked ever so tirelessly throughout the course of time to convey significant and prominent information of historical events and ideas to the masses of the public. And yet, despite different forms of entertainment growing obsolete as time ticks on, it is never less relevant to a functioning society than it was at its start. To truly comprehend the sheer scale of the topic that is modern day entertainment and form a notion of its global impact in the modern era, one must first be able to reflect upon how far it has come from its early roots. 

Do note; while it may seem as though some forms of entertainment may have been neglected to be discussed, they were not. Entertainment by definition is to captivate an audience and therefore, many different forms of art do not technically qualify as entertainment.

Sponge Carvings

The earliest record of entertainment that still remains today was uncovered following a geological excavation in the Asian nation of Morocco less than a century ago. Dating over 50 thousand years of age, the objects in question, dubbed the Tan-Tan sculptures, appear to be made of a sponge like material with visible limbs resembling that of early humans despite their rather weathered appearance. It is believed that these effigies were meant to be used in a way that is similar to the modern day equivalent of a doll.

Cave Art

As films and big motion pictures love to depict all so commonly, the cave paintings were the second oldest form of media that can still be found to this day. Often in deep caves, these images were protected from weathering such as erosion and the ultraviolet light of the sun due to their location often being in deep winding caves. These images date between 40,000 and 20,000 years of age and often showcased various different animals to warn of both dangers and tell tales of events that unfolded throughout the day.

Music

Music is the third oldest form of entertainment. More specifically, vocally organized concerts that can be understood by all despite language barriers. Around 30 thousand years ago, this music prominently was used for war cries to intimidate other native tribes and would eventually evolve to instrumentally organized music that used tones rather than sounds to convey emotions and tell stories through actions rather than lyricism, and yet presently, the inverse would become the more common of the latter (Lyricism over instrumentals).

Books

Books are an escape from reality. They also happen to hold some of the earliest examples of humans developing a written language. The first written text, that we now consider to be books, was developed as early as the 1st century. While papers  have been transcribed much earlier, by definition, a book must have multiple pages in a commingled manner and hence, certain texts do not qualify under these such strict standards.

Television

Television, the fifth on the long list of entertainment outlets, allowed people to not only better educate the rest of society, but also enabled a rather rapid system of spreading rather important information.

Social Media

The newest form of entertainment is social media. Post 2000, social media and the internet in general have become very popular amongst the people and has helped to rally citizens of a similar cause as well as kept users occupied.

The Impact

Today, entertainment has made an everlasting impact on the average person's life especially with outlets such as social media due to their intrinsic nature being to not only entertain, but also spread word about social injustices and allows fast and easy access to information making an impressionable mark on today’s youth as news is no further than one’s own finger tips from a screen. And as this trend continues, it will only become more and more accessible allowing easier connection to those around us, only furthering how far we shall fare as a society.