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

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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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