“Rock art sites were symbolic vaginas, and entry into the wall of a rock art site was thus akin to intercourse.” — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“A lack of methodology in Upper Palaeolithic art research has led to confusion of priorities.” — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“Sexual arousal and penal erections are associated with both altered states of consciousness and sleep.” — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“Seeing’ two-dimensional images is therefore something that we learn to do; it is not an inevitable part of being human.” — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“For the makers, the paintings and engravings were visions, not representations of visions.” — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“Shamans submit to death in order to serve their communities.” — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“In Lascaux and other sites, hoofs are depicted to show their underside, or hoofprint.” — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“Art was not simply a foregone conclusion, the final link in a causal chain. It was not the inevitable outcome of an… — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“According to Martindale’s view, as we drift into sleep we pass through: – waking, problem-oriented thought, – realistic fantasy, – autistic fantasy,… — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“San religion is built around belief in a tiered universe. As do other shamanistic peoples throughout the world, the San believe in… — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“The behaviour of the human nervous system in certain altered states creates the illusion of dissociation from one’s body (less commonly understood… — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“The notion that an image is a scale model of something else (say, a horse) requires a different set of mental events… — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“Primary consciousness is a state of being aware of things in the world – of having mental images in the present.But it… — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“I now argue that entry into Upper Palaeolithic caves was probably seen as virtually indistinguishable from entry into the mental vortex that… — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“I believe it is reasonable to assume that higher-order consciousness developed neurologically in Africa before the second wave of emigration to the… — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“In southern Africa, a great many figures are ithyphallic. This feature has generally – and rather vaguely – been taken to refer… — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“The picture of change in human society that emerges from this recent research throws new light on that aspect of the Transition… — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“I suggest that the type of consciousness – not merely the degree of intelligence – that Neanderthals possessed was different in important… — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“To understand the ‘wounded men’ of Upper Palaeolithic art, I now consider somatic hallucinations; these include attenuation of the body and limbs,… — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“Perhaps the most striking feature of the west European Upper Palaeolithic, one on which many writers comment, is a sharp increase in… — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“The first point to notice is that the Transition cannot be explained by climatic change alone: human change was not the direct… — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“Under certain social circumstances, which may have varied from time to time and place to place, certain people (shamans) saw a relationship… — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“It is the task of San shamans to activate their supernatural potency, to cause it to ‘boil’ up their spines until it… — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“The elaborately executed art on the ceiling in the Altamira cave did not fit current notions of Palaeolithic ‘savagery’; it was too… — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“The principal aim of a vision quest is to ‘see’ a spirit animal that will become the quester’s animal-helper and source of… — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“Shamanism is not simply a component of society: on the contrary, shamanism, together with its tiered cosmos, can be said to be… — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“In altered states of consciousness, the nervous system itself becomes a ‘sixth sense’ that produces a variety of images including entoptic phenomena.” — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“The cerebral cortex, the outer ‘skin’ of the brain, contains as many as ten billion neurons. This complexity is daunting. Yet it… — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“Entering a cave” or rock was a metaphor for a shaman’s altered state; therefore, caves (and rocks more generally) were considered entrances… — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“I argue that the first image-makers were acting rationally in the specific social circumstances ... they were not driven by ‘aesthetics’.” — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“The Upper Palaeolithic figures known as ‘wounded men’ occur at Cougnac and Pech Merle, two sites in the Quercy district of France.” — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“The first two-dimensional images were thus not two-dimensional representations of three-dimensional things in the material world, as researchers have always assumed. Rather,… — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“The portable animal statuettes were therefore far more than decorative trinkets: they were reified three-dimensional spirit animals with all their prophylactic and… — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“Certainly, the sensory deprivation afforded by the remote, silent and totally dark chambers, such as the Diverticule of the Felines in Lascaux… — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“Primary consciousness is a kind of ‘remembered present’…” — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“Consciousness has evolved biologically and can therefore be explained biologically.” — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
“A shaman’s activities as a sorcerer, or his own conscious act of entry into the supernatural world, were a kind of “killing”.” — James David Lewis-Williams Copy Share Image
