To our western eyes, the painted images are the most prominent component of a corpus of artistic expression… — Richard E. Leakey
To our western eyes, the painted images are the most prominent component of a corpus of artistic expression. This Western bias, a particularly Eurocentric bias, has been pervasive and deep. ...it has resulted in a lack of attention to, and concern about, prehistoric art of equal and sometimes greater antiquity in eastern and southern Africa.
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More from this book
The question... is whether Upper Paleolithic art bears the telltale signs of Lewis-Williams' three stage neuropsychological model, and could thus be shamanistic art.
Dots are just one example of an element in Lascaux art, and in all cave art... This is a profusion of nonrepresentational, geometric patterns. In addition to dots, there are grids and chevrons, curves and zigzags, and more. ...The coincidence of these geometric motifs with representational images is one of the most puzzling aspects of Upper Paleolithic art. ...images, six different kinds in all, are shimmering, incandescent, mercurial—and powerful. Called entoptic images—which means "within vision"—these phenomena are products of the basic neural architecture of the human brain.
Next to the discovery of the Turkana boy, the visit to Lascaux ranks as one of the great moments of my life.
