Pareidolia is treated here as a threshold concept linking early hominins, modern perception and the origins of art. From the Makapansgat pebble to Cycladic figures, emoticons, urban marks in Quimper and the prohibition of divine images, the article argues that art may begin before fabrication: when a perceived form seizes the gaze, provokes the hand and changes status. The image first appears as a perceptual event, then becomes selection, support and transmission. Exactly at
