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Cave Paintings and the Human Spirit: The Origin of Creativity and Belief

by David S. Whitley

The palaeolithic cave paintings of France and Spain have long proved inspirational and controversial. In this intriguing book David Whitley provides his own highly personal take on the origins of the art, its meaning and on the birth of religion. He interweaves his own thoughts and argument concerning the art with a kind of archaeological diary come travelogue, charting his experiences at different sites and the development of his theories. Whitley follows David Lewis-Williams in seeing the paintings as the result of shamanistic activity, but also introduces his own findings as a result of anthropological work with native Americans. At the heart of his argument lies what he describes as the "heretical" proposal that Native American shamanism provided a formative influence on the Old World, and there are also fascinating new ideas about shamanic possesion derived from neuroscience. 322p b/w illus, col pls (Prometheus Books 2009)

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