The Mind in the Cave by David Lewis-Williams, Thames & Hudson, 拢18.95, ISBN 0500051178 Reviewed by Mike Pitts
鈥淭here are art historians today,鈥� said John Berger, re-enacting the discovery of the Chauvet cave in a disused train tunnel, 鈥渨ho marvel at the fact that the prehistoric cave painters discovered, 30,000 years ago, the rudiments of perspective. To think like this is to ride in the train facing where you have come from, instead of where you are going. So please face the right way.鈥�
Tricky, that. Archaeologists are as guilty as anyone, measuring and counting with backs to the engine. Yet not to look is to deny. Which is why we need writers like David Lewis-Williams.
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In this provocative, carefully-written book, The Mind in the Cave, he explores the world of late ice age France and Spain through both their extraordinary art and his research into the rock art of southern Africa. Many will know his thesis: the ancient cave artists were modern humans, and their art reflects their (our) ability to enter altered states of consciousness and a need to make sense of what they experienced there.
Studies of chimpanzees, current human thinking and artificial intelligence are not enough, he says, to understand how the human mind came to be 鈥� so evolutionary psychology fails to deliver. Homo sapiens evolved, physically and intellectually, in Africa, entering Europe to find it dominated by Neanderthals. The two species co-existed for 10,000 years. Here, he says, is a unique opportunity to explore our emergent intellect.
It is a compelling case. If the outcome is occasionally wanting, it is because Lewis-Williams develops his arguments inadequately. His inspired archaeological review shows that Neanderthals adopted from H. sapiens certain tricks, such as types of stone tool, while ignoring others, including representational art. This indicates, he says, not just a gap in intelligence, but different kinds of consciousness. Where he disappoints is that he then just assumes the new consciousness is identical to ours and claims all hunter-gatherer societies are 鈥渟hamanistic鈥�.
Nonetheless, his exposition leads to a brilliant analysis of two painted French caves. This is undoubtedly one of the most significant studies of the world鈥檚 first great art to have appeared for a long time.