upper-palaeolithic-art

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

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

Around 30,000 years ago, in the Aurignacian, at the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic, someone or some group in the Eyzies region invented drawing, the representation in two dimensions on the flat of the stone of what appeared in the environment in three dimensions.

The notion that an image is a scale model of something else (say, a horse) requires a different set of mental events and conventions from those that perceive the social symbolism of red marks on someone__ chest.

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

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, they were __ixed_ mental images.

It is the task of San shamans to activate their supernatural potency, to cause it to __oil_ 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.

The __ounded men_ may, I argue, represent a form of shamanistic suffering, __eath_ and initiation that was closely associated with somatic hallucinati

A shaman__ activities as a sorcerer, or his own conscious act of entry into the supernatural world, were a kind of __illing_.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the west European Upper Palaeolithic, one on which many writers comment, is a sharp increase in the rate of change. Compared with the preceding Middle Palaeolithic, a great deal happened in a comparatively short time.

The cerebral cortex, the outer __kin_ of the brain, contains as many as ten billion neurons. This complexity is daunting. Yet it is out of complex interactions between the billions of neurons that consciousness arises.

There were at least four contexts in which San shamans acquired insights into the spiritual world: _ the trance dance, _ special curing rituals, _ viewing rock art, and _ dreams.

The principal aim of a vision quest is to __ee_ a spirit animal that will become the quester__ animal-helper and source of his power.

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.

Consciousness has evolved biologically and can therefore be explained biologically.

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

Primary consciousness is a kind of __emembered present__