Upper Palaeolithic Art Quotes

Sexual arousal and penal erections are associated with both altered states of consciousness and sleep.

Rock art sites were symbolic vaginas, and entry into the wall of a rock art site was thus akin to intercourse.

Consciousness has evolved biologically and can therefore be explained biologically.

I believe it is reasonable to assume that higher-order consciousness developed neurologically in Africa before the second wave of emigration to the Middle East and Europe.

Shamans submit to death in order to serve their communities.

It is the task of San shamans to activate their supernatural potency, to cause it to ‘boil’ up their spines until it explodes in their heads and takes them off to the spirit realms – that is, they enter a state of trance at the far end of the intensified trajectory.

Primary consciousness is a kind of ‘remembered present’…

The portable animal statuettes were therefore far more than decorative trinkets: they were reified three-dimensional spirit animals with all their prophylactic and other powers.

In Lascaux and other sites, hoofs are depicted to show their underside, or hoofprint.

The behaviour of the human nervous system in certain altered states creates the illusion of dissociation from one’s body (less commonly understood in hunting and gathering shamanistic societies as possession by spirits).

To understand the ‘wounded men’ of Upper Palaeolithic art, I now consider somatic hallucinations; these include attenuation of the body and limbs, polymelia (having extra limbs or digits), and, the one on which I focus, pricking and stabbing sensations.