I'm skipping ahead to post this without reading all of the intervening answers. I watched a fascinating program perhaps as many as 8 or 10 years ago (on PBS, probably) with information about Islamic art, and one of the central principles was that the art was not to compete with god for perfection. So there was an imperfection built in. That program was so compelling that I've used that annecdote--about building in the imperfection so as not to offend the god, as a sort of whimsical excuse for not worrying too much about occasional typos in print documents we produce at the university librayr library. :)

I have a feeling this information came through in a program like Nature, one that examined life in the north African desert and how both animals lived and humans arose there. Lots of discussion of living with very little water, and of life at an oasis, and of the cultures living in that environment.

SRS