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3 unusual facts about The Mind in the Cave


The Mind in the Cave

The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art is a study of Upper Palaeolithic European rock art written by the archaeologist David Lewis-Williams, then a professor at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Lewis-Williams goes on to discuss structuralist interpretations of the artworks, such as those first advocated by Giambattista Vico and Ferdinand de Saussure, and later reformulated by the likes of Max Raphael, Annette Laming-Emperaire and André Leroi-Gourhan.

In the first chapter, entitled "Discovering Human Antiquity", Lewis-Williams explores the early scholarly understanding of Upper Palaeolithic art, stemming from the increased interest in the origins of the human species sparked by the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species.



see also

David Lewis-Williams

His book, The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art (Thames & Hudson) won the American Historical Association’s 2003 James Henry Breasted Award.