Palaeolithic Quotes by James David Lewis-Williams

“I now argue that entry into Upper Palaeolithic caves was probably seen as virtually indistinguishable from entry into the mental vortex that leads to…

— James David Lewis-Williams

“For the makers, the paintings and engravings were visions, not representations of visions.”

— James David Lewis-Williams

“The principal aim of a vision quest is to ‘see’ a spirit animal that will become the quester’s animal-helper and source of his power.”

— James David Lewis-Williams

“I suggest that the type of consciousness – not merely the degree of intelligence – that Neanderthals possessed was different in important respects from…

— James David Lewis-Williams

“To understand the ‘wounded men’ of Upper Palaeolithic art, I now consider somatic hallucinations; these include attenuation of the body and limbs, polymelia (having…

— James David Lewis-Williams

“The picture of change in human society that emerges from this recent research throws new light on that aspect of the Transition that has…

— James David Lewis-Williams

“Perhaps the most striking feature of the west European Upper Palaeolithic, one on which many writers comment, is a sharp increase in the rate…

— James David Lewis-Williams

“The first point to notice is that the Transition cannot be explained by climatic change alone: human change was not the direct result of…

— James David Lewis-Williams

“The world’s oldest ‘art’ (77,000 years old) comes from Blombos Cave on the southern coast of South Africa.”

— James David Lewis-Williams

“Improved memory made possible the long-term recollection of dreams and visions and the construction of those recollections into a spirit world.”

— James David Lewis-Williams

“Under certain social circumstances, which may have varied from time to time and place to place, certain people (shamans) saw a relationship between the…

— James David Lewis-Williams

“Primary consciousness is a state of being aware of things in the world – of having mental images in the present.But it is not…

— James David Lewis-Williams

“Art was not simply a foregone conclusion, the final link in a causal chain. It was not the inevitable outcome of an evolving ‘aesthetic…

— James David Lewis-Williams

“Once human beings had developed higher-order consciousness, they had the ability to see mental images projected onto surfaces and to experience afterimages.”

— James David Lewis-Williams

“The ‘wounded men’ may, I argue, represent a form of shamanistic suffering, ‘death’ and initiation that was closely associated with somatic hallucinati”

— James David Lewis-Williams