Stuart Jeffries

Meet Congo, the Leonardo of chimps, whose paintings sell for £14,500

Picasso, Miro and Dali all owned Congo's paintings. Stuart Jeffries talks to Desmond Morris, who discovered the chimp's talent in the 1950s

Three million years ago one of our ancestors, Australopithecus africanus, picked up a pebble and took it home to its cave, most likely because the pattern of lines and holes on its surface looked beguilingly like a face. Perhaps this was the birth of art.

Or perhaps not. Maybe art arrived in this world later.

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