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By chance on Tuesday night Bill and I came across a program on Neanderthals done by Nova. It was very good, instead of a bunch of people saying, "Well this is what Neanderthals were like, and this is why" it had some people saying, "well some people think Neanderthals are like this, and some people think the exact opposite. This is how people's cultural and societal backgrounds affected what they were thinking about at the time, and this is how a scientists own background can affect his interpretation of what he's seeing. It was very interesting, and made me want to go out the next day and get a book about them, alas I couldn't find anything at half price books, but what I did find was a very nice anthropology book called The Dawn of Belief, Religion in the Upper Paleolithic of Southwestern Europe by D. Bruce Dickson., published in 1990
I know next to nothing about early cave men so this book was a very good place to start. It was more a literature review than any independent research, but it gave a good overview of a bunch of different theories, what their evidence was, and what their shortcomings were. It made an interesting change for me to have a bunch of authors quoted and I'd never heard of them before, instead of just having read one of their books as has been happening with my study of Chinese religion lately. The book was obviously designed to be an introduction, though written for a more scholarly audience. It started with an overview of anthropology and how that can be used with archeology for reconstructing cultures of the past. It then had a nice chapter overview of the Upper Paleolithic period and of the hominids that had gone before and what happened with them. It did talk a little about Neanderthals, particularly about the evidence for burial among them, and also the fact that what was assumed to have been a skull cult among them now looks like it wasn't Which I found a bit disappointing.
The book went on to look at the different art in the period, whether it was moveable art objects, or whether it was cave paintings. What people's different theories about the paintings were and what different religious significance had been attributed to the paintings over time. To me one of the most interesting things that I didn't know before was that the paintings were not done where the people were living. But rather a lot of the paintings were done in the depths of the caves in places that were very hard to get to, I think some were a mile deep and involved climbing and crossing underground lakes or rivers to get too. Though the author did point out that access could have changed over time. But it made it seem very mystical and something rare.
Dickson spent most of the book describing the people, rather than talking specifically about their ideas about religion. But considering how little is know about these people it's a much safer and more reasonable thing to do. And I probably enjoyed it a lot more than a book that was just full of wild cases and pronouncements. The last chapter he looked at hunter gatherer societies and what was common among them, but pointed out different types of these societies and their great diversity, then he pointed out how the people living in the Upper Paleolithic were different. Despite living in a near ice age, Europe at the time still received the same amount of light that it does today, so their culture would not have matched the culture closely of other people living in the same climate. But the biggest difference was that they were living in an era where game was very plentiful, much more than the hunter gatherer societies that have been studied in recent times. They also tended to hunt animals that gave a much greater yield of food than animals hunted today, which also could have affected the size of their groups or organizations.
It was all very interesting. I haven't had much of an interest in early man before, but it's definitely something that I might want to look at more. And I do still want to find a good book on Neanderthals. I feel like with so much reading and things to do before graduate school that I don't have time to read much else. But I so enjoy other things too sometimes, besides fiction before bed
I know next to nothing about early cave men so this book was a very good place to start. It was more a literature review than any independent research, but it gave a good overview of a bunch of different theories, what their evidence was, and what their shortcomings were. It made an interesting change for me to have a bunch of authors quoted and I'd never heard of them before, instead of just having read one of their books as has been happening with my study of Chinese religion lately. The book was obviously designed to be an introduction, though written for a more scholarly audience. It started with an overview of anthropology and how that can be used with archeology for reconstructing cultures of the past. It then had a nice chapter overview of the Upper Paleolithic period and of the hominids that had gone before and what happened with them. It did talk a little about Neanderthals, particularly about the evidence for burial among them, and also the fact that what was assumed to have been a skull cult among them now looks like it wasn't Which I found a bit disappointing.
The book went on to look at the different art in the period, whether it was moveable art objects, or whether it was cave paintings. What people's different theories about the paintings were and what different religious significance had been attributed to the paintings over time. To me one of the most interesting things that I didn't know before was that the paintings were not done where the people were living. But rather a lot of the paintings were done in the depths of the caves in places that were very hard to get to, I think some were a mile deep and involved climbing and crossing underground lakes or rivers to get too. Though the author did point out that access could have changed over time. But it made it seem very mystical and something rare.
Dickson spent most of the book describing the people, rather than talking specifically about their ideas about religion. But considering how little is know about these people it's a much safer and more reasonable thing to do. And I probably enjoyed it a lot more than a book that was just full of wild cases and pronouncements. The last chapter he looked at hunter gatherer societies and what was common among them, but pointed out different types of these societies and their great diversity, then he pointed out how the people living in the Upper Paleolithic were different. Despite living in a near ice age, Europe at the time still received the same amount of light that it does today, so their culture would not have matched the culture closely of other people living in the same climate. But the biggest difference was that they were living in an era where game was very plentiful, much more than the hunter gatherer societies that have been studied in recent times. They also tended to hunt animals that gave a much greater yield of food than animals hunted today, which also could have affected the size of their groups or organizations.
It was all very interesting. I haven't had much of an interest in early man before, but it's definitely something that I might want to look at more. And I do still want to find a good book on Neanderthals. I feel like with so much reading and things to do before graduate school that I don't have time to read much else. But I so enjoy other things too sometimes, besides fiction before bed