Robert Kar
Tue, Jul-08-03, 06:13
----- Original Message ----- From: "Ian Pitchford"
<ian.pitchford@scientist.com> To:
<evolutionary-psychology@yahoogroups.com> Sent:
Wednesday, July 02, 2003 5:19 PM Subject: [evol-psych]
Drenched in Symbolism
Drenched in Symbolism A dazzling record of prehistoric
carvings and paintings testifies to the cognitive complexity
of our species By Ian Tattersall
Prehistoric Art: The Symbolic Journey of Humankind by Randall
White Harry N. Abrams, New York, 2003
About 40,000 years ago the first Homo sapiens--the
Cro-Magnons--began to trickle into Europe, displacing the
resident Neanderthals in the process. The contrast between the
records of their lives that these very different hominids left
behind could hardly be more striking. For no extinct human
species, not even the large-brained Homo neanderthalensis, has
bequeathed us evidence of a complex symbolic existence, based
on the extraordinary cognitive capacities that distinguish us
from all other living species today. In contrast, the lives of
the Cro-Magnons were drenched in symbolism.
Well over 30,000 years ago these early people were creating
astonishing art on the walls of caves. They crafted subtle and
beautiful carvings and engravings and kept records by incising
intricate notations on bone plaques. They made music on bone
flutes, and if they did this, they surely sang and danced as
well. They ornamented their bodies and buried their dead with
elaborate grave goods, presumably to serve them in an
afterlife. Technologically, a cascade of innovations included
nets, textiles and ropes, even the first ceramics. In short,
those Cro-Magnons were us: members of a species whose
relationship with the rest of the world was totally
unprecedented in the entire history of life.
http://tinyurl.com/ft6n
Prehistoric Art: The Symbolic Journey of Humankind by Randall
White Hardcover: 240 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.00 x
10.80 x 8.54 Publisher: Harry N Abrams; (June 1, 2003) ISBN:
0810942623 AMAZON - US http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN-
/0810942623/darwinanddarwini AMAZON - UK http://www.amazon.co-
.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0810942623/humannaturecom
From Publishers Weekly With academic subheadings like "Powers
of Observation and the Space-Time Continuum," this is a
comprehensive overview of prehistoric art, not a casual
coffee-table book. White, director of the nonprofit Institute
for Ice Age Studies, is a New York University anthropologist,
and he offers a history of global excavations, the art and the
peoples who made it, while also exploring the meanings of the
symbols and the social system in which they were crafted. One
of his stated goals with this effort is to "illustrate how a
modern Western notion of `art' impedes an understanding of the
emergence and adaptive value of the earliest representations
in any given region." But 226 full-color illustrations give
plenty of opportunity for simply marveling: a pointillist
bison; face-to-face woolly mammoths in simple black lines; a
26,000-year-old ivory carving of a human skull. The result is
a book that provides a journey as real as it is symbolic,
demonstrating the evolutionary power of imagery. Copyright
2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Scientific American About 40,000 years ago the first Homo
sapiens--the Cro-Magnons--began to trickle into Europe,
displacing the resident Neanderthals in the process. The
contrast between the records of their lives that these very
different hominids left behind could hardly be more striking.
For no extinct human species, not even the large-brained Homo
neanderthalensis, has bequeathed us evidence of a complex
symbolic existence, based on the extraordinary cognitive
capacities that distinguish us from all other living species
today. In contrast, the lives of the Cro-Magnons were drenched
in symbolism. Well over 30,000 years ago these early people
were creating astonishing art on the walls of caves. They
crafted subtle and beautiful carvings and engravings and kept
records by incising intricate notations on bone plaques. They
made music on bone flutes, and if they did this, they surely
sang and danced as well. They ornamented their bodies and
buried their dead with elaborate grave goods, presumably to
serve them in an afterlife. Technologically, a cascade of
innovations included nets, textiles and ropes, even the first
ceramics. In short, those Cro-Magnons were us: members of a
species whose relationship with the rest of the world was
totally unprecedented in the entire history of life. For a
couple of decades now, New York University archaeologist Randy
White has been a leading investigator of how the expression of
the unique human capacity unfolded in Europe during the two
dozen millennia that followed the arrival of the Cro-Magnons.
In this thoughtful and very beautiful book, White concentrates
on the most dazzling part of this record, the part that
embraces what we would call art--and that includes some of the
most powerful ever made. But he is careful to point out that
"art" is very much a Western concept and that for its
creators, what looks to us like art probably had implications
vastly different from those we impute in our own society to
art and decoration. For while nobody could doubt that
Cro-Magnon symbolic production somehow reflected these
people's conceptions of their place in the natural world, the
Cro-Magnons were hunters and gatherers, with a perceived
relationship to nature that must have been radically different
from our own. For this reason, White eschews the elaborate
explanations that so many authors feel somehow obliged to
bring to the interpretation of prehistoric art and hews to the
facts. He begins with a brief history of the discovery and
interpretation of Cro-Magnon art, as prelude to a largely
chronological account of the evidence for symbolic expression
in Europe and parts of northern Asia between about 40,000 and
10,000 years ago. In these sections, White mostly avoids
stylistic analysis in favor of a focus on techniques, but he
manages to address, if usually briefly, most of the major
questions that Cro-Magnon art elicits. As perhaps befits a
work that grew out of a university survey course, this volume
extends beyond mainly European Ice Age art to consider
prehistoric symbolic and representational traditions (some
earlier, others quite recent) in Africa, southern and western
Asia, Australia, and the Americas. Each of these regional
groupings is treated separately, and White wisely refrains
from drawing close parallels between different regional
traditions. Of course, including all these diverse traditions
between the covers of a single book might be taken to imply a
unity that contradicts White's insistence on the unique
cultural roots and referents of each one of them. But the fact
that all are the products of hunting-gathering peoples serves
very usefully to remind us of the vast range of iconographies
and aesthetics available even to noncomplex human societies.
What White's spectacularly illustrated book does most clearly,
then, is to bring home the astonishing diversity and intricacy
of the representational traditions that the extraordinary
human symbolic spirit has from the beginning produced
worldwide, even in the absence of complex social and economic
structures. The remarkable human cognitive capacity that early
art reflects appeared quite recently, perhaps less than
100,000 years ago. And that appearance set our species on a
course of accelerating technological change and elaboration
that may yet run out of our control. But White shows that
although our economic lives have changed out of recognition in
that time, the potential that underwrites our modern
lifestyles and achievements was there from the very start.
Deep down, human beings haven't changed one whit since
prehistoric times. Ian Tattersall is a curator of physical
anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New
York City. His most recent book is The Monkey in the Mirror
(Harcourt, 2002).
Book Description While some prehistoric sites--notably the
painted caves at Lascaux in France and at Altamira in northern
Spain--are familiar, many more such places are almost unknown.
In fact, remains left by prehistoric men and women are far
more numerous, and have been found over a much greater
territory--including Eurasia, Africa, Australia, and the
Americas--than most people are aware. These remains include
paintings and engravings in caves and rock shelters, but also
decorated tools, weapons, statuettes, personal ornaments, and
even musical instruments made of stone, ivory, antler, shell,
bone, and fired clay.
In Prehistoric Art, anthropologist Randall White presents a
global survey, starting with the first explosion of imagery
that occurred approximately 40,000 years ago but also
including the creations of essentially "prehistoric" peoples
living as recently as the early 20th century. Drawing on the
most up-to-the-minute research, White places these discoveries
in context and discusses possible uses and meanings for the
objects and images, opening a fascinating new window onto the
history of creative expression.
About the Author Randall White, a distinguished authority on
Ice Age art and technology, directs the Institute for Ice Age
Studies in New York and is Professor of Anthropology at New
York University. His field work has taken him to a wide range
of prehistoric sites, from the Canadian Arctic to north
Africa, southern Russia, and the Dordogne Valley in France,
where he now directs an excavation of the 35,000-year old
settlement at Abri Castanet. The author of many books and
articles, White is also a consultant to Time, Newsweek,
Natural History, and other magazines. He lives in New York
City and Montignac, France.
<ian.pitchford@scientist.com> To:
<evolutionary-psychology@yahoogroups.com> Sent:
Wednesday, July 02, 2003 5:19 PM Subject: [evol-psych]
Drenched in Symbolism
Drenched in Symbolism A dazzling record of prehistoric
carvings and paintings testifies to the cognitive complexity
of our species By Ian Tattersall
Prehistoric Art: The Symbolic Journey of Humankind by Randall
White Harry N. Abrams, New York, 2003
About 40,000 years ago the first Homo sapiens--the
Cro-Magnons--began to trickle into Europe, displacing the
resident Neanderthals in the process. The contrast between the
records of their lives that these very different hominids left
behind could hardly be more striking. For no extinct human
species, not even the large-brained Homo neanderthalensis, has
bequeathed us evidence of a complex symbolic existence, based
on the extraordinary cognitive capacities that distinguish us
from all other living species today. In contrast, the lives of
the Cro-Magnons were drenched in symbolism.
Well over 30,000 years ago these early people were creating
astonishing art on the walls of caves. They crafted subtle and
beautiful carvings and engravings and kept records by incising
intricate notations on bone plaques. They made music on bone
flutes, and if they did this, they surely sang and danced as
well. They ornamented their bodies and buried their dead with
elaborate grave goods, presumably to serve them in an
afterlife. Technologically, a cascade of innovations included
nets, textiles and ropes, even the first ceramics. In short,
those Cro-Magnons were us: members of a species whose
relationship with the rest of the world was totally
unprecedented in the entire history of life.
http://tinyurl.com/ft6n
Prehistoric Art: The Symbolic Journey of Humankind by Randall
White Hardcover: 240 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.00 x
10.80 x 8.54 Publisher: Harry N Abrams; (June 1, 2003) ISBN:
0810942623 AMAZON - US http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN-
/0810942623/darwinanddarwini AMAZON - UK http://www.amazon.co-
.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0810942623/humannaturecom
From Publishers Weekly With academic subheadings like "Powers
of Observation and the Space-Time Continuum," this is a
comprehensive overview of prehistoric art, not a casual
coffee-table book. White, director of the nonprofit Institute
for Ice Age Studies, is a New York University anthropologist,
and he offers a history of global excavations, the art and the
peoples who made it, while also exploring the meanings of the
symbols and the social system in which they were crafted. One
of his stated goals with this effort is to "illustrate how a
modern Western notion of `art' impedes an understanding of the
emergence and adaptive value of the earliest representations
in any given region." But 226 full-color illustrations give
plenty of opportunity for simply marveling: a pointillist
bison; face-to-face woolly mammoths in simple black lines; a
26,000-year-old ivory carving of a human skull. The result is
a book that provides a journey as real as it is symbolic,
demonstrating the evolutionary power of imagery. Copyright
2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Scientific American About 40,000 years ago the first Homo
sapiens--the Cro-Magnons--began to trickle into Europe,
displacing the resident Neanderthals in the process. The
contrast between the records of their lives that these very
different hominids left behind could hardly be more striking.
For no extinct human species, not even the large-brained Homo
neanderthalensis, has bequeathed us evidence of a complex
symbolic existence, based on the extraordinary cognitive
capacities that distinguish us from all other living species
today. In contrast, the lives of the Cro-Magnons were drenched
in symbolism. Well over 30,000 years ago these early people
were creating astonishing art on the walls of caves. They
crafted subtle and beautiful carvings and engravings and kept
records by incising intricate notations on bone plaques. They
made music on bone flutes, and if they did this, they surely
sang and danced as well. They ornamented their bodies and
buried their dead with elaborate grave goods, presumably to
serve them in an afterlife. Technologically, a cascade of
innovations included nets, textiles and ropes, even the first
ceramics. In short, those Cro-Magnons were us: members of a
species whose relationship with the rest of the world was
totally unprecedented in the entire history of life. For a
couple of decades now, New York University archaeologist Randy
White has been a leading investigator of how the expression of
the unique human capacity unfolded in Europe during the two
dozen millennia that followed the arrival of the Cro-Magnons.
In this thoughtful and very beautiful book, White concentrates
on the most dazzling part of this record, the part that
embraces what we would call art--and that includes some of the
most powerful ever made. But he is careful to point out that
"art" is very much a Western concept and that for its
creators, what looks to us like art probably had implications
vastly different from those we impute in our own society to
art and decoration. For while nobody could doubt that
Cro-Magnon symbolic production somehow reflected these
people's conceptions of their place in the natural world, the
Cro-Magnons were hunters and gatherers, with a perceived
relationship to nature that must have been radically different
from our own. For this reason, White eschews the elaborate
explanations that so many authors feel somehow obliged to
bring to the interpretation of prehistoric art and hews to the
facts. He begins with a brief history of the discovery and
interpretation of Cro-Magnon art, as prelude to a largely
chronological account of the evidence for symbolic expression
in Europe and parts of northern Asia between about 40,000 and
10,000 years ago. In these sections, White mostly avoids
stylistic analysis in favor of a focus on techniques, but he
manages to address, if usually briefly, most of the major
questions that Cro-Magnon art elicits. As perhaps befits a
work that grew out of a university survey course, this volume
extends beyond mainly European Ice Age art to consider
prehistoric symbolic and representational traditions (some
earlier, others quite recent) in Africa, southern and western
Asia, Australia, and the Americas. Each of these regional
groupings is treated separately, and White wisely refrains
from drawing close parallels between different regional
traditions. Of course, including all these diverse traditions
between the covers of a single book might be taken to imply a
unity that contradicts White's insistence on the unique
cultural roots and referents of each one of them. But the fact
that all are the products of hunting-gathering peoples serves
very usefully to remind us of the vast range of iconographies
and aesthetics available even to noncomplex human societies.
What White's spectacularly illustrated book does most clearly,
then, is to bring home the astonishing diversity and intricacy
of the representational traditions that the extraordinary
human symbolic spirit has from the beginning produced
worldwide, even in the absence of complex social and economic
structures. The remarkable human cognitive capacity that early
art reflects appeared quite recently, perhaps less than
100,000 years ago. And that appearance set our species on a
course of accelerating technological change and elaboration
that may yet run out of our control. But White shows that
although our economic lives have changed out of recognition in
that time, the potential that underwrites our modern
lifestyles and achievements was there from the very start.
Deep down, human beings haven't changed one whit since
prehistoric times. Ian Tattersall is a curator of physical
anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New
York City. His most recent book is The Monkey in the Mirror
(Harcourt, 2002).
Book Description While some prehistoric sites--notably the
painted caves at Lascaux in France and at Altamira in northern
Spain--are familiar, many more such places are almost unknown.
In fact, remains left by prehistoric men and women are far
more numerous, and have been found over a much greater
territory--including Eurasia, Africa, Australia, and the
Americas--than most people are aware. These remains include
paintings and engravings in caves and rock shelters, but also
decorated tools, weapons, statuettes, personal ornaments, and
even musical instruments made of stone, ivory, antler, shell,
bone, and fired clay.
In Prehistoric Art, anthropologist Randall White presents a
global survey, starting with the first explosion of imagery
that occurred approximately 40,000 years ago but also
including the creations of essentially "prehistoric" peoples
living as recently as the early 20th century. Drawing on the
most up-to-the-minute research, White places these discoveries
in context and discusses possible uses and meanings for the
objects and images, opening a fascinating new window onto the
history of creative expression.
About the Author Randall White, a distinguished authority on
Ice Age art and technology, directs the Institute for Ice Age
Studies in New York and is Professor of Anthropology at New
York University. His field work has taken him to a wide range
of prehistoric sites, from the Canadian Arctic to north
Africa, southern Russia, and the Dordogne Valley in France,
where he now directs an excavation of the 35,000-year old
settlement at Abri Castanet. The author of many books and
articles, White is also a consultant to Time, Newsweek,
Natural History, and other magazines. He lives in New York
City and Montignac, France.