For most of human history, MONEY wasn't a thing. And yet we still have cave paintings as well as clear evidence that tribepeople and pre-agricultaral societies made music, art, poetry and more.
Consider that this time could have been spent building shelter, or hunting for food. We make art because we enjoy it
You misunderstand my point. I never said we do art only for money. I specifically objected to the idea that artists have only been able to do art for the money for the past few hundred years.
Sumeria had coinage thousands of years before common era. So money has definitely been a thing for more than a few hundred years.
They did not have coinage, but they already had prices and also professional musicians (besides other non-producing professionals which appeared there for the first time, i.e. judges, medical doctors, accountants and prostitutes) (obviously, chiefs and priests existed much time before written history).
Initially the prices were expressed as weights of precious metals.
The coins, which allowed simpler payments, without the use of weighing scales, appeared thousands of years later after the prices, probably in Lydia in the first millennium BC.
Consider that this time could have been spent building shelter, or hunting for food. We make art because we enjoy it