One of the animations in the Chicago screening I participated in Sunday was a goat decorating a clay pot found in Iran's Burnt City architectural dig. Its five sequential "frames" comprise the earliest known animation--about 5000 years old.
The "official" GIF version of it I found online seemed too static--the tree did not move, prompting one internet skeptic to denounce the pot as a fraud. Made the version above to see what would happen if you made no editorial decisions other than centering the goat and tree within a roughly 4:3 frame window. It becomes more dynamic. And of course trees move, because of the wind, inner spirits in an animist universe, and goats yanking their branches to get fruit. At any rate, big shout to our sisters and bros in the ancient GIF community, the continuity is consoling somehow.
[revised, reposted]
Update: Neil Cohn [updated link 1 / 2] has the original "Xtreme artistic license" animation and some discussion.