The Origins of Monsters: Image and Cognition in the First Age of Mechanical Reproduction

by David Wengrow

It has often been claimed that "monsters"--supernatural creatures with bodies composed from multiple species--play a significant part in the thought and imagery of all people from all times. The Origins of Monsters advances an alternative view. Composite figurations are intriguingly rare and isolated in the art of the prehistoric era. Instead it was with the rise of cities, elites, and cosmopolitan trade networks that "monsters" became widespread features of visual production in the ancient world. Showing how these fantastic images originated and how they were transmitted, David Wengrow identifies patterns in the records of human image-making and embarks on a search for connections between mind and culture.

Wengrow asks: Can cognitive science explain the potency of such images? Does evolutionary psychology hold a key to understanding the transmission of symbols? How is our making and perception of images influenced by institutions and technologies? Wengrow considers the work of art in the first age of mechanical reproduction, which he locates in the Middle East, where urban life began. Comparing the development and spread of fantastic imagery across a range of prehistoric and ancient societies, including Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and China, he explores how the visual imagination has been shaped by a complex mixture of historical and universal factors.

Examining the reasons behind the dissemination of monstrous imagery in ancient states and empires, The Origins of Monsters sheds light on the relationship between culture and cognition.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Archaeology, Anthropology, Art History, Theory, Cultural

184 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

David Wengrow is a British archaeologist and Professor of Comparative Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London.

Reviews

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wengrow's contribution to the Yale University's Rostovtzeff Lectures and as such the first few chapters engage Rostovzeff's thought. Wengrow attempts to salvage Rostovtzeff's socio-economic analysis of cultural transmission. It is not a half-hearted gesture.

Wengrow's critique is best when he returns to his own familiar footing - the mechanical reproduction that sprang up along with the development of urban centers. The most compelling theory put forth is that monsters traveled along trade routes on ledgers and other forms of commercial recording - as a sort of economic shorthand. Ultimately, as cylinder seals became the norm, the composite creatures took a swift turn toward ubiquity. Glancing mention is made of the artisan classes affect upon the elite class, with the emphasis placed less on the aesthetic value and more upon the status seeking nature of acquisition over display.

Wengrow attacks the “epidemiological” approach to explain the spread and universality of monster images. The “epidemiological” refers to the idea that monsters are cognitively catchy - they spread through populations because of their universal appeal as recognizably disturbing.

Wengrow counters the "epidemilogy" with a three pronged analysis that unpacks cultural transmission of monsters based in the images' transformative, integrative, and protective natures. By assigning these criteria he is able to local particular instances within the archeological evidence of specific image translation/transmission. Ultimately, providing the locus for more study, but establishing firm ground on which to construct that study.

Interesting argument of one of my favorite subjects.

[Ryan Denson]

Reviewed for the Journal of Cognitive Historiography: https://doi.org/10.1558/jch.33784

[Alex Tsankov · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book tells the marvelous story of the earliest depicted composite imagery and delves into different modes of transmittion of how the socio-cultural situations influenced the way those images were being adopted. As a historical account for the movement of imagery, the book does an awesome job, yet the chosen methodology of "epidemiology of culture" ends vague and fails to prove why it was there in the first place. What was missing for me for the most of the book (except the Protective images) was the actual stories behind the visuals, as those most likely rarely were going without somekind of symbolic meaning even if they were strongly ceremonial objects.
Overall, a great book that gets you thinking about the interconnectedness of the Ancient World.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not very satisfying, though I guess that's more my problem than Wengrow's. I'm used to a certain amount of history, archaeology and even neurology jargon in these situations, but psychology and art history lingo are beyond me. That and the two chapters of throat-clearing before Wengrow gets fully underway, and his dismissal of "monsters" as a useful term for the composite beasts he's discussing despite putting the word not only in the title but in a chapter subheading after he states his objection to it.

His main point seems to be that chimeras (a perfectly good word he could have used) were, as far as we can tell, vanishingly rare in the Paleolithic and Neolithic eras, despite the famed lion-man ivory figurine from the cave of Hohlenstein-Stadel in Germany and the eminently creepy painted "Sorcerer" from Les Trois-Frères cave in France. The lion-man, which the ancient-shamanism school of archaeologists makes so much of, has been pieced together, possibly incorrectly, from innumerable tiny fragments and in any case looks to a fair number of people like a plain old lion, or a man, or perhaps a bear standing on its hind legs, as bears often do. My faith in the "shamanism was our species' first religion" faction, or "shamaniacs" as Paul G. Bahn enjoys calling them, was already shaken by Bahn's "Prehistoric Rock Art: Polemics and Progress," and this isn't helping salvage it.

It took urbanization, long-distance trade and advances in technology to make chimeras a common motif in seals, cult objects and art throughout the Middle East and the Eastern Meditteranean, Wengrow says, although if he explains not how the images grew in popularity in the Bronze Age but why -- what was it about cities, state formation and the bureaucratic mind that lent itself to imagining these strange beasts? -- then I missed it. And while he includes Adrienne Mayor's "The First Fossil Hunters" in his bibliography, he doesn't address her argument that ancient Greeks and others believed in the existence of griffins, cyclopses and the like because the appearance of certain fossils they were aware of made it seem plausible.

[Birch · Rating 4 out of 5]

:D

[David Romero · Rating 3 out of 5]

It can be grating to hear people criticize deconstructionism, but then there are books like this which make me wonder if the outcry should be amplified.

[Arjun · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Origins of Monsters" provides a fascinating exploration of how ancient civilizations perceived and represented monsters through art and cognition. Carroll's analysis of cultural and cognitive factors shaping these depictions offers a thought-provoking perspective on early human imagination. An insightful and engaging read for those interested in art history and anthropology.