Inside The Neolithic Mind Consciousness Cosmos And The Realm Of The Gods

Author : David Lewis-Williams,David Pearce
Publisher : Thames & Hudson
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2005-10-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780500770450

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Inside the Neolithic Mind: Consciousness, Cosmos, and the Realm of the Gods by David Lewis-Williams,David Pearce Pdf

An exploration of how brain structure and cultural content interacted in the Neolithic period 10,000 years ago to produce unique life patterns and belief systems. What do the headless figures found in the famous paintings at Catalhoyuk in Turkey have in common with the monumental tombs at Newgrange and Knowth in Ireland? How can the concepts of "birth," "death," and "wild" cast light on the archaeological enigma of the domestication of cattle? What generated the revolutionary social change that ended the Upper Palaeolithic? David Lewis-Williams's previous book, The Mind in the Cave, dealt with the remarkable Upper Palaeolithic paintings, carvings, and engravings of western Europe. Here Dr. Lewis-Williams and David Pearce examine the intricate web of belief, myth, and society in the succeeding Neolithic period, arguably the most significant turning point in all human history, when agriculture became a way of life and the fractious society that we know today was born. The authors focus on two contrasting times and places: the beginnings in the Near East, with its mud-brick and stone houses each piled on top of the ruins of another, and western Europe, with its massive stone monuments more ancient than the Egyptian pyramids. They argue that neurological patterns hardwired into the brain help explain the art and society that Neolithic people produced. Drawing on the latest research, the authors skillfully link material on human consciousness, imagery, and religious concepts to propose provocative new theories about the causes of an ancient revolution in cosmology and the origins of social complexity. In doing so they create a fascinating neurological bridge to the mysterious thought-lives of the past and reveal the essence of a momentous period in human history. 100 illustrations, 20 in color.

Author : J. David Lewis-Williams
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2005
Category : Antiquities, Prehistoric
ISBN : OCLC:1285653155

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Inside the Neolithic Mind by J. David Lewis-Williams Pdf

Author : David Lewis-Williams
Publisher : Thames & Hudson
Page : 350 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2011-07-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780500770306

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The Mind in the Cave by David Lewis-Williams Pdf

The art created in the caves of western Europe in the Ice Age provokes awe and wonder. What do these symbols on the walls of Lascaux and Altamira, tell us about the nature of ancestral minds? How did these images spring into the human story? This book, a masterful piece of detective work, puts forward the most plausible explanation yet.

Author : Tamora Pierce
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2009-12-08
Category : Young Adult Fiction
ISBN : 9781439132098

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The Realms of the Gods by Tamora Pierce Pdf

During a dire battle against the fearsome Skinners, Daine and her mage teacher Numair are swept into the Divine Realms. Though happy to be alive, they are not where they want to be. They are desperately needed back home, where their old enemy, Ozorne, and his army of strange creatures are waging war against Tortall. Trapped in the mystical realms Daine discovers her mysterious parentage. And as these secrets of her past are revealed so is the treacherous way back to Tortall. So they embark on an extraordinary journey home, where the fate of all Tortall rests with Daine and her wild magic.

Author : David Lewis-Williams
Publisher : Thames & Hudson
Page : 330 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2011-07-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780500770320

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Conceiving God by David Lewis-Williams Pdf

At once polemical, insightful and thought-provoking, Conceiving God is essential reading for all those interested in the origins of religious thought, and the respective roles of science and religion in contemporary society. Building on the insights and discoveries of his two earlier books, The Mind in the Cave and Inside the Neolithic Mind, cognitive archaeologist David Lewis-Williams explores how science developed within the cocoon of religion and then shows how the natural functioning of the human brain creates experiences that can lead to belief in the supernatural realm.

Author : Dimitra Papagianni,Michael A. Morse
Publisher : Thames & Hudson
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2013-10-07
Category : History
ISBN : 9780500771808

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The Neanderthals Rediscovered: How Modern Science Is Rewriting Their Story by Dimitra Papagianni,Michael A. Morse Pdf

“Even-handed, up-to-date, and clearly written. . . . If you want to navigate between the Scylla and Charybdis of Neanderthal controversies, you’ll find no better guide.” —Brian Fagan, author of Cro-Magnon In recent years, the common perception of the Neanderthal has been transformed thanks to new discoveries and paradigm-shattering scientific innovations. It turns out that the Neanderthals’ behavior was surprisingly modern: they buried the dead, cared for the sick, hunted large animals in their prime, harvested seafood, and spoke. Meanwhile, advances in DNA technologies have forced a reassessment of the Neanderthals’ place in our own past. For hundreds of thousands of years, Neanderthals evolved in Europe very much in parallel to the Homo sapiens line evolving in Africa, and, when both species made their first forays into Asia, the Neanderthals may even have had the upper hand. Here, Dimitra Papagianni and Michael A. Morse look at the Neanderthals through the full dramatic arc of their existence—from their evolution in Europe to their expansion to Siberia, their subsequent extinction, and ultimately their revival in popular novels, cartoons, cult movies, and TV commercials.

Author : David Lewis-Williams,Sam Challis
Publisher : Thames & Hudson
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2011-06-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780500770467

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Deciphering Ancient Minds: The Mystery of San Bushmen Rock Art by David Lewis-Williams,Sam Challis Pdf

Goes to the heart of contemporary arguments about the "primitive" and the "modern" minds, and draws new social, anthropological, and ethnographic conclusions about the nature of ancient societies. How did ancient peoples—those living before written records—think? Were their thinking patterns fundamentally different from ours today? Researchers over the years have certainly believed so. Along with the Aborigines of Australia, the indigenous San people of southern Africa—among the last hunter-gatherer societies on Earth—became iconic representatives of all our distant ancestors and were viewed as either irrational fantasists or childlike, highly spiritual conservationists. Since the 1960s a new wave of research among the San and their world-famous rock art has overturned these misconceived ideas. Here, the great authority David Lewis-Williams and his colleague Sam Challis reveal how analysis of the rock paintings and engravings can be made to yield vital insights into San beliefs and ways of thought. This is possible because we possess comprehensive transcriptions, made in the nineteenth century, of interviews with San informants who were shown copies of the art and gave their interpretations of it. Using the analogy of the Rosetta Stone, the authors move back and forth between these San texts and the rock art, teasing out the subtle meanings behind both. The picture that emerges is very different from past analysis: this art is not a naive narrative of daily life but rather is imbued with power and religious depth.

Author : Michael J. Winkelman
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 334 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2010-08-05
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 9780313381829

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Shamanism by Michael J. Winkelman Pdf

This book examines shamanism from evolutionary and biological perspectives to identify the origins of shamanic healing in rituals that enhance individual and group function. What does the brain do during "soul journeys"? How do shamans alter consciousness and why is this important for healing? Are shamans different from other kinds of healers? Is there a connection between the rituals performed by chimpanzees and traditional shamanistic practices? All of these questions—and many more—are answered in Shamanism, Second Edition: A Biopsychosocial Paradigm of Consciousness and Healing. This text contains crosscultural examinations of the nature of shamanism, biological perspectives on alterations of consciousness, mechanisms of shamanistic healing, as well as the evolutionary origins of shamanism. It presents the shamanic paradigm within a biopsychosocial framework for explaining successful human evolution through group rituals. In the final chapter,"the author compares shamanistic rituals with chimpanzee displays to identify homologies that point to the ritual dynamics of our ancient hominid ancestors.

Author : David Lewis-Williams
Publisher : Thames & Hudson
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2010-03-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780500770436

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Conceiving God: The Cognitive Origin and Evolution of Religion by David Lewis-Williams Pdf

A controversial exploration of the origin of religion in the neurology of the human brain. In this book the noted cognitive archaeologist David Lewis-Williams confronts a question that troubles many people in the world today: Is there a supernatural realm that intervenes in the material world of daily life and leads to the evolution of religions? Professor Lewis-Williams first describes how science developed within the cocoon of religion and then shows how the natural functioning of the human brain creates experiences that can lead to belief in a supernatural realm, beings, and interventions. Once people have these experiences, they formulate beliefs about them, and thus creeds are born. Forty thousand years ago, people were leaving traces in the archaeological record of activities that we can label religious, and Lewis-Williams discusses in detail the evidence preserved in the Volp Caves in France. He also shows that mental imagery produced by the functioning of the human brain can be detected in widely separated religious communities such as Hildegard of Bingen’s in medieval Europe or the San hunters of southern Africa.

Author : David S. Herrstrom
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 203 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2017-09-26
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781683930952

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Light as Experience and Imagination from Paleolithic to Roman Times by David S. Herrstrom Pdf

This book is an interdisciplinary synthesis and interpretation about the experience of light as revealed in a wide range of art and literature from Paleolithic to Roman times. Humanistic in spirit and in its handling of facts, it marshals a substantial body of scholarship to develop an explication of light as a central, even dramatic, reality of human existence and experience in diverse cultural settings. David S. Herrstrom underscores our intimacy with light—not only its constant presence in our life but its insinuating character. Focusing on our encounters with light and ways of making sense of these, this book is concerned with the personal and cultural impact of light, exploring our resistance to and acceptance of light. Its approach is unique. The book’s true subject is the individual’s relationship with light, rather than the investigation of light’s essential nature. It tells the story of light seducing individuals down through the ages. Consequently, it is not concerned with the “progress” of scientific inquiries into the physical properties and behavior of light (optical science), but rather with subjective reactions to it as reflected in art (Paleolithic through Roman), architecture (Egyptian, Grecian, Roman), mythology and religion (Paleolithic, Egyptian), and literature (e.g., Akhenaten, Plato, Aeschylus, Lucretius, John the Evangelist, Plotinus, and Augustine). This book celebrates the complexity of our relation to light’s character. No individual experience of light is “truer” than any other; none improves on any previous experience of light’s “tidal pull” on us. And the wondrous variety of these encounters has yielded a richly layered tapestry of human experience. By its broad scope and interdisciplinary approach, this pioneering book is without precedent.

Author : Vesa-Pekka Herva,Antti Lahelma
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2019-06-28
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780429783500

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Northern Archaeology and Cosmology by Vesa-Pekka Herva,Antti Lahelma Pdf

In its analysis of the archaeologies and histories of the northern fringe of Europe, this book provides a focus on animistic–shamanistic cosmologies and the associated human–environment relations from the Neolithic to modern times. The North has fascinated Europeans throughout history, as an enchanted world of natural and supernatural marvels: a land of light and dark, of northern lights and the midnight sun, of witches and magic and of riches ranging from amber to oil. Northern lands conflate fantasies and realities. Rich archaeological, historical, ethnographic and folkloric materials combine in this book with cutting-edge theoretical perspectives drawn from relational ontologies and epistemologies, producing a fresh approach to the prehistory and history of a region that is pivotal to understanding Europe-wide processes, such as Neolithization and modernization. This book examines the mythical and actual northern worlds, with northern relational modes of perceiving and engaging with the world on the one hand and the ‘place’ of the North in European culture on the other. This book is an indispensable read for scholars of archaeology, anthropology, cultural studies and folklore in northern Europe, as well as researchers interested in how the North is intertwined with developments in the broader European and Eurasian world. It provides a deep-time understanding of globally topical issues and conflicting interests, as expressed by debates and controversies around Arctic resources, nature preservation and indigenous rights.

Author : Michael J. Benton
Publisher : Thames & Hudson
Page : 310 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2021-11-23
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9780500777084

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Dinosaurs: New Visions of a Lost World by Michael J. Benton Pdf

The world’s leading paleontologist takes us on a visual tour of the latest dinosaur science, illustrated with accurate and stunning paleoart. Dinosaurs are not what you thought they were—or at least, they didn’t look like you thought they did. Here, world-leading paleontologist Michael J. Benton brings us a new visual guide to the world of the dinosaurs, showing how rapid advances in technology and amazing new fossil finds have changed the way we see these extinct beasts forever. Stunning, brand-new illustrations by paleoartist Bob Nicholls display the latest and most exciting scientific discoveries in vibrant color. From Sinosauropteryx, the first dinosaur to have its color patterns identified—a ginger-and-white striped tail and a “bandit mask”—by Benton’s team at the University of Bristol to recent research on the surprising mixed feathers and scales of Kulindadromeus, this is one of the first books to include cutting-edge scientific research in paleontology. Each chapter focuses on a particular extinct species, featuring a specially commissioned illustration by Bob Nicholls that brings to life the latest scientific breakthroughs, with accompanying text exploring how paleontologists have determined new details, such as the patterns on skin and the colors of feathers of animals that lived millions of years ago. This visual compendium surprises and challenges everything you thought you knew about what dinosaurs looked like and how they lived.

Author : David S Whitley,Kelley Hays-Gilpin
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 310 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2016-09-16
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781315433073

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Belief in the Past by David S Whitley,Kelley Hays-Gilpin Pdf

Human actions are often deeply intertwined with religion and can be understood in a strictly religious context. Yet, many volumes and articles pertaining to discussions of religion in the archaeological past have focused primarily on the sociopolitical implications of such remains. The authors in this volume argue that while these interpretations certainly have a meaningful place in understanding the human past, they provide only part of the picture. Because strictly religious contexts have often been ignored, this has resulted in an incomplete assessment of religious behavior in the past. This volume considers exciting new directions for considering an archaeology of religion, offering examples from theory, tangible archaeological remains, and ethnography.

Author : Roy A. Rappaport
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 566 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 1999-03-25
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0521296900

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Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity by Roy A. Rappaport Pdf

Roy Rappaport argues that religion is central to the continuing evolution of life, although it has been been displaced from its original position of intellectual authority by the rise of modern science. His book, which could be construed as in some degree religious as well as about religion, insists that religion can and must be reconciled with science. Combining adaptive and cognitive approaches to the study of humankind, he mounts a comprehensive analysis of religion's evolutionary significance, seeing it as co-extensive with the invention of language and hence of culture as we know it. At the same time he assembles the fullest study yet of religion's main component, ritual, which constructs the conceptions which we take to be religious and has been central in the making of humanity's adaptation. The text amounts to a manual for effective ritual, illustrated by examples drawn from anthropology, history, philosophy, comparative religion, and elsewhere.

Author : Jacques Cauvin
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 290 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2000-07-27
Category : History
ISBN : 0521651352

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The Birth of the Gods and the Origins of Agriculture by Jacques Cauvin Pdf

A study of social and economic transformations in the Near East during Palaeolithic-Neolithic transition, first published in 2000.