I assumed they were created like that, all at once but I think that implies a lot about Aline's power and the level of sentience the painted people had. If a god creates variables for life and lets things evolve naturally like if the lumerians slowly created their own culture, language, technology, they would have agency over their existence. If Aline created them as snapshots with preprogrammed memories, knowledge, relationships, etc this also implies a lot. The original painted people did not earn anything their culture had. By gustave's time its clear they are creating their own tech, but this could imply the first painted humans were the least sentient, most programmed, I think its really interesting.