Was it a trick of the light that drew our Stone Age ancestors into caves to paint in charcoal and red hematite, to watch the heads of lions, likenesses of bison, horses, and aurochs in the reliefs of the walls, as they flickered by firelight? Or was it something deeper--a creative impulse, a spiritual dawn, a shamanistic conception of the world efflorescing in the dark, dank spaces beneath the surface of the earth where the spirits were literally at hand? In this book, Jean Clottes, one of the most renowned figures in the study of cave paintings, pursues an answer to this "why" of Paleolithic art. While other books focus on particular sites and surveys, Clottes's work is a contemplative journey across the world, a personal reflection on how we have viewed these paintings in the past, what we learn from looking at them across geographies, and what these paintings may have meant--what function they may have served--for their artists. Steeped in Clottes's shamanistic theories of cave painting, What Is Paleolithic Art? travels from well-known Ice Age sites like Chauvet, Altamira, and Lascaux to visits with contemporary aboriginal artists, evoking a continuum between the cave paintings of our prehistoric past and the living rock art of today. Clottes's work lifts us from the darkness of our Paleolithic origins to reveal, by firelight, how we think, why we create, why we believe, and who we are.

Proceedings of the XV UISPP World Congress (Lisbon, 4-9 September 2006), Vol. 35. Contents: Introduction (Marc Groenen & Didier Martens); 1) Application de la methodologie de lHistoire de lart a letude de lart paleolithique: lattribution des oeuvres anonymes a ses auteurs (Juan-Maria Apellaniz); 2) Les peintures de la grotte de la Pasiega A (Puente Viesgo, Cantabrie) a lepreuve de la methode de lattribution (Marc Groenen, Didier Martens); 3) The recognition of diversity through style in the Saharan rock-art research: an historiographic approach from the Western Sahara (Joaquim Soler Subils); 4) The rock art of South-Morocco revisited: On surprising stylistic and thematic characteristics of the so-called Pseudo-Bovidien and Tazinien rock art from the mid valley of Wadi Draa (Renate Heckendorf); 5) Spirals in Humahuaca and in the NW of Argentina (South America) Alicia Ana (Fernandez Distel, Jose Luis Mamani); 6) Spirals at Sturts Meadows (John Clegg); 7) Circular elements in the rock art of the State of Bahia, Brazil (Guilherme Albagli de Almeida); 8) Spirals of the prehistoric Open Rock painting from Kosova (Edi Shukriu); 9) To be or not to be Palaeolithic, that is the question (Robert G. Bednarik); 10) The Margot Cave (Mayenne): a new palaeolithic sanctuary in West France (Romain Pigeaud et al.) 11) Fluted Animals in the Zone of Crevices, Gargas Cave, France (Kevin Sharpe, Leslie Van Gelder); 12) Schematic panel with paleolithic punctuation and other questions of Paleoastronomy and Philosophy of Antiquity (Jose Fernandez Quintano); 13) Epipaleolithic and Mesolithic Burials from 12.000 to 7.000 BP in Llevantin Territory Art Rock (Carme Olaria, Francesc Gusi, Jose Luis Lopez); 14) Gravuras serpentiformes na regiao de Tras-os-Montes (Maria Fernanda Ferrato Melo de Carvalho); 15) The Camera Obscura and the Origin of Art: The Case for Image Projection in the Paleolithic (Matt Gatton, Leah Carreon, Madison Cawein, Walter Brock, and Valerie Scott); 16) Etude et presentation de lart rupestre en Iran (exemple detude dans les regions du province central et Kerman dIran) (Elyas Saffaran; 17) Archeological Use of Caves on the Northwestern Plains, USA (John Greer and Mavis Greer); 18) Mogollon rock art and the status of the flute player (Maarten van Hoek); 19) The findings of the presence of the sabre toothed tiger (Beltrao, M. C. M. C. and Locks, M.).