In this collection of folk stories that float to us from afar, the voices of long-dead 'Bushmen', or San people, of Southern Africa speak to us about their lives and beliefs. We are given glimpses into their thought-world. We listen to them recounting their poignant myths and beliefs. We hear them speak of their tormented lives as the early colonists expanded into the semi-arid interior. All these stories have lain hidden since they were first collected more than a hundred years ago by a remarkable family in Cape Town who devoted their lives to recording the life-ways of the /Xam San before their disappearance. Today there is a need for us to listen to these voices from the past. They fill in one of the tragic blanks in South Africa's history. Suddenly a people who have spoken only through others' voices now speak out and come alive.

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. David Lewis-Williams proposes that the explanation for this lies in the evolution of the human mind. Cro-Magnons, unlike the Neanderthals, possessed a more advanced neurological makeup that enabled them to experience shamanistic trances and vivid mental imagery. It became important for people to "fix," or paint, these images on 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 here 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 aesthetic achievements.

This fascinating book continues the story begun in the bestselling and critically acclaimed book The Mind in the Cave. Drawing on the latest research and recent discoveries, the authors skilfully link material on human consciousness, imagery and belief systems to propose provocative new theories about the causes of an ancient revolution in cosmology, the origins of social complexity and even the drive behind the domestication of plants and animals. In doing so they create a fascinating neurological bridge to the mysterious thought-lives of the past and reveal the essence of a momentous period in human history.

The rock paintings and engravings of southern Africa have long been considered obscure, yet research has managed since to piece together that message, and we now know that this beautiful and detailed art tells us about the religious experiences of the San (bushmen) who made it: centuries ago the San believed that the art carried messages from the spirit world. This book traces the story behind that research, how it started, its failures and successes, and some of its debates, linking the art to the people who made it.

The Desert Turned to Glass is a place where the cosmic and chthonic collide. Commemorating the centenary of the planetarium as an architectural type, this book collects a new body of work by acclaimed Canadian artist Charles Stankievech. Thematically, the project explores alternative theories concerning the origin of life, consciousness, and art—bridging the cosmological visions of cave art and the modern technology of the planetarium. Richly illustrated, the book pairs images of Stankievech’s installations and cinematic works with newly commissioned writings by geologists, exobiologists, philosophers and archeologists. Spanning the abyss of space and the depths of the earth, The Desert Turned to Glass is an epic meditation on origins, endings, and infinity.

Rock art images around the world are often difficult for us to decipher as modern viewers. Based on authentic records of the beliefs, rituals and daily life of the nineteenth-century San peoples, and of those who still inhabit the Kalahari Desert, this book adopts a new approach to hunter-gatherer rock art by placing the process of image-making within the social framework of production. Lewis-Williams shows how the San used this imagery not simply to record hunts and the animals that they saw, but rather to sustain the social network and status of those who made them. By drawing on such rich and complex records, the book reveals specific, repeated features of hunter-gatherer imagery and allows us insight into social relations as if through the eyes of the San themselves.

This book chronicles the history of All American Aviation of western Pennsylvania, a commercial airline pioneer. The brainchild of self-styled inventor Dr. Lytle S. Adams and Richard C. du Pont, the company began as an airmail delivery carrier, taking advantage of the Experimental Air Mail Act passed by Congress in 1938. "T""he Airway to Everywhere "relates the exciting early days of airmail delivery--hair-raising tales of courageous pilots who scooped mail bags tethered to wires strung between poles on makeshift airfields. The story of this airline is placed within the context a typical twentieth-century American business pattern-where technological innovation is followed by development and commercial application, followed by government subsidies and corporate takeovers. In that vein, All American Aviation would become Allegheny Airlines, and later, U.S. Air.