This website sets out one case for routine and intentional production of iconicity dating tentatively to the Lower Palaeolithic.

On the valley edge of the former proto-Thames at a time when it ran north-east toward the Rhine, hominids chipped stones together creating tools and leaving behind cores and flakes in the process. Approximately half a million years later my children stumbled upon a few of these in our back garden.

One of the first artifacts found appears to incorporate a skull like face. There were other recognisably iconographic forms. A pattern of themes emerged; face or mask like, primate, feline and avian. Could it really be true, our ancient ancestors creating and incorporating imagery into their lives?

"No", cried the archaeologists in unison and then, "it's just pariedolia". "Coincidence". "Nature".... And that is where this story begins.