Evolution

My daughter is studying Archeology at University and had to give a presentation debating whether our development was due to Darwinistic model of evolution. She is way beyond me in understanding how this this works or most other things by now but it is an interesting notion to throw around. My understanding of the Darwin idea is that things change is the need for adaptation in order to survive. Well that's my simple notion of it anyway. If that's true then all that we are today is the result of the need to adapt.
This is some archaeologists primary interpretative tool - I am told.
I have a problem with that in some ways because while I can accept that paintings like the Lascaux ones above may have been re-enactments to empower hunters I find it a struggle to fit Monet's Lily Pond paintings, a Mozart Symphony or a poem by Walt Whitman as merely a desperate struggle to adapt in order to survive. Change, experimentation yes - survival of the fittest no.
Its just too mechanical for me. It denies that people, whenever, made, created, invented, thought, dreamed or created because they just wanted to and because it excited them and gave aesthetic pleasure for its own sake..
As usual I am probably missing the point and archaeologists would send for warm milk and a blanket for the poor old sod. I just get hacked off sometimes with Science thinking that everything has to be objectively quantified and explained without expression from the soul.
Nobody will ever convince me that the person who painted those wonderful vibrant animals on that cave wall was merely creating a utility wallpaper hunting manual.