The breathtakingly beautiful art created deep inside the caves of
western Europe in the late Ice Age has the power to dazzle even the
most jaded observers. Emerging from the narrow underground passages
into the chambers of caves such as Lascaux, Chauvet, and Altamira,
visitors are confronted with symbols, patterns, and depictions of
bison, woolly mammoths, ibexes, and other animals.
Since its discovery, cave art has provoked great curiosity about
why it appeared when and where it did, how it was made, and what it
meant to the communities that created it. In the most convincing
explanation for Upper Palaeolithic art yet proposed, David
Lewis-Williams describes how nineteenth-century beliefs that the
drawings were "art for art's sake, " or totemism, were supplanted
in the wake of Darwinian evolutionary theory. The earliest human
beings had a more advanced neurological makeup than their
Neanderthal neighbors, allowing individuals to induce altered
states of consciousness during which they experienced vivid mental
imagery. It became important for people to "fix, " or paint, these
images onto cave walls, which they perceived as the membrane
between their world and the spirit world from which the visions
came. Over time, new social distinctions developed as individuals
exploited their hallucinations for personal advancement, and the
first truly modern society emerged.
Illuminating glimpses into the ancient mind are skillfully
interwoven with the still-evolving story of modern-day cave
discoveries and research. The Mind in the Cave is a superb piece of
detective work, casting light on the darkest mysteries of our
earliest ancestors while strengthening our wonder at their
aestheticachievements.
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