brain chemistry, and therefore utterly irrational, may strike some researchers, like
me, as being too reductive.
The Aurignacians who produced and viewed the cave images were
essentially modern humans, anatomically exactly like us. Until about 30,000 years
ago, however, they shared their habitat with another species of human, the
Neanderthals but had a more advanced neurological make-up than them (Lewis-
Williams, 2004:85, 91, 205). As far as we know the Neanderthals, though their
brains were as large, or even larger than ours, did not make any complex form of
art. Lewis-Williams believes that this indicates that they possessed a different form
of consciousness and probably a less complex language (2004:88-89). He seems to
think that, at least to start with, the Aurignacians developed their art, including
body painting as well as cave art, in order to emphasize their distinctness from their
less advanced neighbours (2004:95, 196). Up to this point I agree with Lewis-
Williams but find that his thesis is unable to address an important implication.
Lewis-Williams suggests that entry into the caves constituted entry into part of the
spirit world (2004:282), and that this was also a form of social control by the
Aurignacians over the Neanderthals, but he fails to explain why the cave
pictographs are located in such inaccessible places “... deep, often small,
underground contexts to which no light penetrates and which people seem to have
seldom visited” (2004:208).
I n a postscript to his study Lewis-Williams offers his thoughts on what this
means for us and suggests that the capacity for transcendental experience seems to
be wired into our brains, but was not so in the Neanderthals. I ndeed, although
Lewis-Williams uses the term ‘transcendental’ he does so without any metaphysical
or parapsychological connotation and reaches his conclusions purely on the basis of
his neuropsychological model (Lewis-Williams, 2004:126-135). Even so, that
‘capacity’, must reflect some metaphysical constituent, a transcendence that may be
seen replicated throughout history in mythopoeic literature and visual art, and in
eras when public art and literature were absent, in myth and storytelling. At this
point it is crucial to pause and consider certain useful examples of how these
shamanic and mythopoeic transcendent capacities weave their way through the
fabric of human history since they first appeared in the Palaeolithic caves thirty-five
thousand years ago.
ron
(Ron)
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