Product Description

The breathtakingly beautiful art created deep inside the caves of western Europe in the late Ice Age provokes awe and wonder in equal measure. What do these animals and symbols, depicted on the walls of such caves as Lascaux, Chauvet and Altamira, tell us about the nature of the atavistic mind? How did these images spring, sophisticated and fully formed, seemingly from nowhere into the human story? The Mind in the Cave puts forward the most plausible explanation yet proposed for the origins of image-making and art. David Lewis-Williams skilfully interweaves a lifetime of anthropological research with the most recent neurological insights to offer a convincing account of how we became human and, in the process, began to make art. This is a masterful piece of detective work, casting light on the darkest mysteries of our ancestors and on the nature of our own consciousness and experience.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #110934 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
`The publishing house has rarely put a foot wrong in its 60-year history' --GQ

Review
`You will refer back to these precious books again and again'

Customer Reviews

Art and the evolution of the mind
The author posits a fascinating explanation for the origin of art and the creation of images by early mankind: the evolution of the human mind. He theorizes that the people of the Upper Paleolithic harnessed altered states of consciousness to fashion their society an used imagery as a means of establishing and defining social relationships. Cro-Magnon man had a more advanced neurological system and order of consciousness than the Neanderthals, and experienced shamanic trances and vivid mental imagery. It was important for them to paint these images on cave walls which served as a membrane between the everyday world and the realm of the spirit. Hallucinations were instrumental in personal advancement and the development of society. He refers to the pioneering psychologist William James who already in 1902 pointed out the different states of consciousness and to Colin Martindale who identified the following different states: Waking, realistic fantasy, autistic fantasy, reverie, hypnagogic and dreaming. The sense of absolute unitary being (transcendence/ecstasy ) is generated by a spillover between neural circuits in the brain caused by factors like meditation, rhythmic stimulus, fasting etc. The essential elements of the religious experience are thus wired into the brain. Two case studies are used in support of this theory: South African San rock art and North American rock art. Chapter 8 is especially fascinating since it offers possible solutions to certain puzzles of cave art, like the mixture of representational and geometric imagery. The author believes that the trail of images from the cave entrance to the dark, almost inaccessible recesses represents a connecting link beween the two elements of an "above/below" binary opposition. Physical entry into the caves reflected the entry into the mental vortex that leads to the hallucinations of the deep trance state. In other words,the trail from the conscious mind to the deep recesses of the subconscious. This book provides much food for thought about our earliest ancestors and about the evolution of consciousness. I would like to recommend William James' "The Varieties of Religious Experience" and R M Bucke's "Cosmic Consciousness" as background reading to Lewis-Williams' fascinating text. The book includes many figures and 97 illustrations of which 27 are in colour.

Thrilling: a work of rare genius
I couldn't understand why a book ostensibly about cave art and anthropology was getting such rave reviews in the general reading sections of the book press. Throughout 2002, newspapers and literary magazines across the world were giving five stars and must read reviews to Lewis Williams' study of the prehistoric mind.

That was before I read it. To call The Mind in the Cave a book about anthropology is a bit like calling Gibbons' Decline and Fall a book about the Romans. This is one of those rare books one comes across that one knows will forever remain amongst the nine or ten best books one will ever read.

The Mind in the Cave is a work of genius that convincingly binds the threads and fragments linking prehistoric rock art across the continents. Lewis Williams' expertise on South African and Botswanan rock paintings and the shamans who created them allows him insights into the Magdalenian creators of the rock art in southwest Europe unreachable by previous commentators. His theories are being discussed with great excitement by the curators at prehistoric cave sites such as Lascaux. Anyone with the remotest interest in anthropology, history, art or religion should read this book.

Michaelangelo's Palaeolithic roots
Any book challenging Established Truths deserves a place in your library. This exquisite example closely and vividly investigates the world of Western European rock art. Not an "art critic's" analysis, Lewis-Williams explains the roots of this enigmatic form of human expression. In so doing, he offers new insights into the idea of "spiritual realms" and the formulation of religions. With research delving in areas ignored or forgotten, the author demonstrates why our views of our Paleolithic forebears needs revision. Of foremost importance is the need to shed the notion of "primitive" as a quality attributed to our ancestors. The cave artists were "modern" humans in every sense of the term.

Lewis-Williams opens his study with a review of the first overturning of how we view humanity's track. Cave art had been found as early as the 17th Century, but the discoverers had no idea of the stretch of time those pictures had crossed. Not until the great insight of Charles Darwin, relying on Lyell's vast idea of an ancient earth, did it become possible to view cave art as remnants of prehistoric human life. The technology that could accurately date these pictures pushed the date of their creation back thousands of years. New finds set human artistic expression to more than 75 thousand years ago.

Lewis-Williams contends that these artefacts are the result of a sharp change in human intellect. About 75 thousand years ago, in various places at different times, the human consciousness experienced an elaboration. The immediate environment no longer was the limit of experience. Humans added what is known as "higher order" consciousness to the "primary consciousness" that allowed us, along with most other animals, to survive. Now, the more developed brain could achieve new levels of thought - "altered states of consciousness" in the author's term. Under certain conditions, the brain might even be imaging itself. Without any means of understanding the images they seemed to be "seeing", Paleolithic humans interpreted these visions as representing a "spirit" world. That world might be "above" in the skies or "below" in the earth. Caves acted as the perfect intermediate place to try to comprehend and react to these phenomena. The more tactile of these "vision-seers" would use the cave walls to depict their visions. Ultimately, the rocks became viewed as a "membrane" between the real and spiritual worlds. The spirits, or "gods" could now be portrayed visibly and even communicated with.

Lewis-Williams meticulously details how many of the paintings and symbols were rendered. The harsh glare of modern electrical lights, he reminds us, obscure the shifting and apparent "movement" that would be observed by people bearing the flickering oil lamps and torches into the caves. That "reality" gave the images greater impact on the artists and viewers as they worked and communed with the spirit world. No universal pattern emerges from these cave "studios", the author makes clear. Some may have allowed a large gathering to participate, either in the creation of images or in supplementary rituals. Others clearly allowed but one or a few attendees due to the restricted nature of the passages or the rooms containing the graphics. These are not, he says, the renderings of a Paleolithic leisure class, but working images vital to the population concerned. Some may have been strictly local, while others served wide-spread communities at various times and circumstances.

With many excellent renderings of cave art images, some in colour, to enhance the text, Lewis-Williams presents a logically developed and well-substantiated scenario. He stops his analysis at what can be seen and inferred from what we know of Paleolithic people. Yet, if you wonder what would drive people into the deep and darkened recesses of a hillside cave, just walk into the nearest cathedral or even small community church. These are dark, quiet places, severing the visitor from the travails and pressures of daily living. Communing with spirits is the raison d'etre of such temples. Are they the modern expression of the forces that drove our Paleolithic ancestors? [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]