What Is Paleolithic Art?: Cave Paintings and the Dawn of Human Creativity

by Jean Clottes, Oliver Y. Martin (Translator), Robert D. Martin (Translator)

The noted archaeologist explores the varieties of prehistoric cave art across the world and offers surprising insights into its purpose and meaning.   What drew our Stone Age ancestors into caves to paint in charcoal and red hematite, to watch the likenesses of lions, bison, horses, and aurochs as they flickered by firelight? Was it a creative impulse, a spiritual dawn, a shamanistic conception of the world? In this book, Jean Clottes, one of the most renowned figures in the study of cave paintings, pursues an answer to the “why” of Paleolithic art. Discussing sites and surveys across the world, Clottes offers personal reflections on how we have viewed these paintings in the past, what we learn from looking at them across geographies, and what these paintings may have meant—and what function they may have served—for their artists.   Steeped in Clottes’s shamanistic theories of cave painting, What Is Paleolithic Art? travels from well-known Ice Age sites like Chauvet, Altamira, and Lascaux to visits with contemporary aboriginal artists, evoking a continuum between the cave paintings of our prehistoric past and the living rock art of today. Clottes’s work lifts us from the darkness of our Paleolithic origins to reveal surprising insights into how we think, why we create, why we believe, and who we are

Genres: History, Art, Nonfiction, Archaeology, Art History, Anthropology, Prehistory

265 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 25, 2016

About the author

Prehistoriador francés. Nació en el Pirineo francés en 19331​ y comenzó a estudiar Arqueología en 1959, durante la enseñanza secundaria. Inicialmente se centró en los dólmenes neolíticos, que eran el tema de su tesis doctoral de 1975 en la Universidad de Toulouse.​ Después de ser nombrado director de las antigüedades prehistóricas de Mediodía-Pirineos en 1971, comenzó a estudiar arte rupestre prehistórico con el fin de cumplir con las responsabilidades de esta posición.

Durante los años siguientes lideró una serie de excavaciones de yacimientos prehistóricos de la región. En 1992, fue nombrado Inspector General de Arqueología del Ministerio de Cultura de Francia y en 1993 también como asesor científico de arte rupestre prehistórico en el Ministerio de Cultura francés. Se retiró oficialmente en 1999, pero sigue estando aun activo como colaborador de campo.

Reviews

[Iset · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, this book wasn’t quite what I expected. Clottes starts out by discussing how there is a reluctance on the part of archaeologists to explore the meaning behind Palaeolithic cave art, largely because art is so interpretative and since the painters are long go we’ll never really know for sure what the original intentions were. But Clottes points out that understanding the way behind such a vital part of Palaeolithic culture – or at least attempting to do so – is valuable for trying to unravel their lives and humanity’s history. The first section of the book mainly presents this argument, and then discusses some previous attempts by archaeologists to interpret the art or else sidestep it entirely, with Clottes pointing out that even archaeologists confining themselves to the hard data are biased in what data they select and leave out. The second section of the book features Clottes’ accounts of visiting modern peoples with surviving traditions of both rock art and shamanism, and how it sometimes led to insights about Palaeolithic art. I found this section a little odd since in the first section Clottes specifically discusses how making analogies between Palaeolithic people and modern tribal people can be utterly nonsensical, with no correlation between the two. In the third section of the book, Clottes discusses the art itself, common features across caves and eras, as well as some past interpretations which he debunks. Unfortunately there aren’t many conclusions to take away from it all, besides the very high likelihood that the artists must have been adults and trained for many years in order to create such skilled works, and that the painting had shamanistic ritual elements to it because it is not readily available in open spaces and it frequently features fantastical aspects. Nevertheless, the book is an important piece of work because it debunks poor interpretations, establishes certain probabilities beyond reasonable doubt, and highlights the need for ongoing work in this field even if definitive proof is beyond our reach.

7 out of 10

[Jacques Coulardeau · Rating 4 out of 5]

SINCE THE YEAR 2000 SO MUCH HAS BEEN DONE!

This book is fundamental about the period of archaeological research that comes to an end at the beginning of the 21st century because as it says in its conclusion: “It is that experience [his research in the archaeology of Paleolithic art from 1971 to the end of the 20th century] that led me to write the present account that retraces the genesis, development, and outcome of those questions [“the ‘why’ of the art and associated actions”]” (page 172) This retrospective (going back in time and following the timeline from a beginning date to an ending date) is reinforced by the assumptions of some colleagues in their books published in the early 1980s can still be accepted today. This brings up an important consideration about the publication date. In 2011, when the book was first published in French and in France, many capital fields of research had been fulfilled in the general domain of “Old Europeans” or the Paleolithic human occupation of Europe. We knew for sure that these Old Europeans who arrived in Europe around 50,000 years BCE, maybe slightly earlier, but not much since they had left Black Africa around 70,000 BCE, and had settled in the Middle East, mostly Anatolia for, those concerned here, were all speaking languages that were of the vast Turkic agglutinative family, third-articulation languages in phylogenetic linguistic terms. Hence, they all were able to communicate, even if their dialects might have been different over the vast territory that goes from the Russian plains to the British Isles. They were also all coming from one culture represented and constructed in one single linguistic family with at best a few variations from one dialect to another and one of these would have been ergativity or transitivity. Some third articulation languages, like Sumerian for instance, are ergative though most of them are transitive.

And that is important, capital even, because it controls and manages the relationship between the speaking/thinking agent and the object of his/her discourse – or art because art is discourse, is communication (the author says as much), is informed by the language of the artist and its conceptualizing power (the author never takes into account the language of the artist and the discourse of this artist while he/she is painting or carving, a discourse to an audience via the work of art, and first of all to him/herself while painting or carving). Though we can express anything in any language, each language has a particular conceptualizing power that can be essential in the way a speaker of this language sees the world. It is well-known that Arabic has a great number of words for sand, conceptualizing this single entity in many different ways. In the same way, Eskimos and Sami people have many words for snow, hence conceptualizing this single item in many different ways. But I am suggesting here that syntax is a way to conceptualize the world. Ergativity versus transitivity is typical. The basic syntactic structure like “Paul gives a book to Mary” is conceptualized differently in the two cases.

Transitive Actant 1 - RELATION - Actant 2 - Actant 3
Main Secondary
Agent R Theme Goal
[Source]
Ergative Actant 1 - RELATION - Actant 2 - Actant 3
Secondary Main
Agent R Theme Goal
[Source]

That makes the relation between the artist and the bison he/she is painting or engraving different. In a transitive language and syntax, the painter controls and dominates the bison. In an ergative language, the bison comes first and hence controls and dominates the painter. A transitive painter is really the master of his/her art whereas and ergative painter is mastered by his/her art, by what he/she paints. If we state the painter paints on his/her own initiative and under his/her own control, the painter is not possessed by his/her art and he/she is in a transitive relation with his/her art. If we state the painter is in an ergative relation to his art, then he/she is possessed by his/her art, the subject or object he/she is trying to represent in his/her art. You may say the two relations can simultaneously occur in the artistic act. This would prove that this basic relationship is deeper than the linguistic syntax of the language of the artist, and this is probably true but complex to explain. This leads me to another element. The author says the artistic value of the artist and his/her work is innate, and the artist is born with some artistic potential, and this is partially wrong. It is not genetic, it is not attached to one particular gene: there are very few dynasties of artists from father to son, and why not from father to daughter, and from mother to son or daughter. It is the same thing with music: the son of a musician can be a musician, J.S. Bach had sons who were composers too, but I would not say they reached the same level of creativity as their father. On the other hand, W.A. Mozart had a musician father who pushed him into music, but I would say that the son was a lot more powerful and more creative than the father. It is the result of the existential experience of the fetus, the baby and the child. A baby is born tense or relaxed, but this is not the result of a gene, rather of the long domination of the fetus by the mother and it is this experience that will make him/her tense or relaxed. In a family with five children, only one may be born severely visually impaired because that is the result of something that happened during the pregnancy of the mother, though the mother may have worn glasses in her adult age, but for a common visual impairment, nothing dramatic. That may have made the concerned child apter to develop a severe visual handicap when the traumatic event occurred, rather than an auditory or physical handicap. And the same child may develop a thoracolumbar type of scoliosis or adolescent idiopathic scoliosis like Richard III due to the same traumatic experience that could be anything including some restricted diet due to a war situation.

By not taking this into account all archaeologists have missed a point. They say a horse in caves is masculine and a bison is feminine. But in the Turkic languages (the first half of the last phase of the phylogeny of human language, hence a very advanced phase that we know perfectly well since there still are hundreds of Turkic languages in the world from the Americas, where they arrived last to Europe with Basque or Finnish or Suomi language or Hungarian, to quote only a few that have very different histories) gender is a basic category and we could find the gender of the word these Paleolithic artists would have used to designate their drawings. That would only be an indication because in German “der Mond” is masculine in gender and yet a feminine motherly figure, the Moon, and “die Sonne” is feminine in gender and yet a manly masculine figure, the Sun. That’s rather easy yet, though the words corresponding to the geometric or semi-geometric i.e. nonfigurative motifs cannot be associated with words, though we could try for some of them. Along the same line it is too easy to count one-two-many, and when in some cases the author mentions “six dots” it is quite obvious that six must have a meaning. He also mentions the importance of the number three, we’ll see some cases later, but does not explore the meaning of that trinity, ternariness, triad (though we may think it is in his mind because his presentation is very often presenting things in ternary sets). We will come back to it. But let say that all studies on European DNA have proved that this Old European population – of Turkic language and origin – represent 75% of European DNA. Plus, most rivers and valleys still have Turkic names or names that can be traced to Turkic roots. This has a crucial consequence. The words these people would have used to designate their drawings would have been nouns or eventually verbs fully equipped for discourse in all parameters, including functions. And these artists would have spoken, even if it were only to themselves, and to an audience within a ceremony or ritual, in full sentences, agglutinative sentences; Hence the pictures would have been associated to functional cases. That’s what I have already explained about ergativeness and transitiveness. Of course, we should refer to another concept here: transference. What kind of functional position does the artist project onto the object of his/her work? The author deals with this phenomenon but without referring to this fundamental concept. There is no art, no communication, no discourse nor action from any human person without such transference phenomena. That would have opened many cans of worms, and it is another approach to what I have said about ergativeness and transitiveness, another way to capture the artist’s work.

He discards the sex of the hands in the caves, though the research was vastly advanced in 2011, and concluded in 2016 (when the book was published in Chicago and when at least a note should have been added) proving, thanks to modern technology, that both in Europe and Indonesia in such parietal cave art where such imprints or stencil hands can be found, 75% of these hands are female, and the rest are young people, children, and among them some men. When he discards this fact as being only “politically correct” because of the development of “schools of feminism and changing mentalities” he is simply sexist (and here typically French) and concludes that “this standpoint is no better supported than its predecessor [“the artists could only have been men”]” (page 158). His cautious kicking the ball out is simply unrealistic: “They simply indicate that both sexes had access to the walls and ceremonies.” (page 158). In fact, the author rejects any real consideration of what was the position of women before, during and after the peak of the Ice Age, before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans who brought agriculture, among many other things, and a whole set of languages though their share of our DNA is only 25%: there was no demographic invasion but a very complex cultural and economic process.

Women are definitely neglected in this approach. For an expanding species that is migrating over long distance with a 29-year life expectancy and with an over 50% infantile death rate, plus the death of women in childbirth, for most women who were and still are, fertile at the age of 13, it meant that they had to bring to procreation age at least three children, which means at least seven or eight pregnancies per woman, which means probably ten or more for the fertile women and the women who lived longer. That means women had a child in their womb, a child at their breast (for at least one year) and small children around from 13 to 29, a pregnancy every 18 or 20 months. This could only be feasible within a social organization based on a division of labor giving women the responsibility of the survival of the species, the expansion of the community and the possibility of migrating. They had to organize themselves so that at least half the women on a rotation plan had to take care of the children permanently every day, and we assume here a woman could feed two children instead of one. The other women were free to go, collect and gather what could be prepared and eaten, along with the older children (4 to 10 or 6 to 10, speaking of child work…). The only positive mention of women’s position in this paleolithic society is the following: “Thorough studies showed long ago that the contribution by women was more consistent and more important in the long term, covering about two-thirds of the group’s food requirements.” (page 159-160) and that does not erase the sentence before where he declares: “It is more spectacular to bring back a bison than a basket of edible roots or berries.” (page 159) And of course, he does not mention that these human beings ate their food cooked which implied processing the roots or fruit or meat, hence cooking it all properly. We know a lot about the Gravettians for instance and that is nothing new indeed.

Those remarks are my main criticism of the book that should have been written differently in 2011 to take into account the giant progress in archaeology that occurred after the year 2000, and the Chicago edition should have been vastly edited to add notes, footnotes for comfort if you please, updating our knowledge on the various questions in the book. For instance, we have today clear collections of most of the geometric figures and it is too easy, and simple, to discard their importance in a fuzzy non-enumeration. We sure don’t know what they mean, what the words attached to them are, though we could maybe try to see what a dot, a circle, and a square are in Turkic languages. Note I take here a stance that is purely hieroglyphic because I think that in Aurignacian times “spelling” was still out, though it might have been in its pre-birth infancy with the Magdalenians. All that makes this book some kind of nostalgic sweeping of the author’s life and career but by the author himself without any stepping back distance that could bring new elements and ideas he could not know in the 1980s and the 1990s, though Theo Vennemann was in full swing in Munich, and he commonly published in German and in English.

That brings me to a remark on the translation; The job is a very good job and for once the authors of the translation seem to know that in English “the Dordogne” is a river and “Dordogne” is a department or administrative unit that can be rendered as “the Dordogne region.” Yet, there is one relapse. Page 135: “… as well as in the caves of the Dordogne… the Lot … the Aveyron… Sainte-Eulalie in the Lot…” This relapse on only one page, but four times is surprising. Apart from that, the translation is extremely good, though at times surprising. The original title is “Pourquoi l’Art Prehistorique?” I understand and accept the “mis”-translation of “prehistorique” as “Paleolithic” because it only concerns the period that is before the arrival of metal and agriculture in Europe, hence the Aurignacians, the Gravettians, the Solutreans, and the Magdalenians. This practice of cave painting stopped then around 12,000-10,000 BCE though the practice of carving or painting for some ritual and maybe decorative reasons is still present in Gobekli Tepe (9,500 BCE), to quote one case. In fact, we should even question more the word “préhistorique” because it blocks the main question: where did these Homo Sapiens who came to Europe come from? We know it is Anatolia and the Middle East, but we can also ask where these Homo Sapiens in the Middle East came from. The answer then is Black Africa, and the migrations out of Black Africa started around 200,000 BCE, probably even earlier, first to Northern Africa, and later only, these will go on, for a short period up to 80,000 BCE, to the Middle East, and then 50,000 years after this failed first attempt (they went back to Northern Africa around 80,000 BCE); and then later, Homo Sapiens went out of Black Africa in at least two successive migrations via the horn of Africa and the Hormuz Strait to Asia in general as for the first one around 120,000 BCE, maybe earlier, and as for the second to Asia Minor and then Europe around 70,000 BCE with one post Ice age double migration around 12,000 BCE from the Iranian Plateau, one to Europe (Indo-Europeans) and one to the Indian subcontinent (Indo-Aryans). Those three vast migrations correspond to the three phases of the phylogeny of language. So, Paleolithic is a lot better. Yet the original title was wondering “Why Prehistoric Art” which does not mean much both in French and in English and this time the “mis”-translation “What is …” is a lot more meaningful because we are trying to describe this form of art and not to look for “pourquoi” in one word, that is to say the cause of its existence though the author did and yet treated that interrogative as being also “pour quoi” in two words that would target the objectives of this form of art. The translators remained neutral between causes and objectives and the title in English is mostly descriptive.

Many more remarks should be discussed, but I am kind of limited in space and time.

Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU

[s ☭ · Rating 3 out of 5]

while i still don't fully agree with clottes' shamanism hypothesis (for lack of a better phrase) of paleolithic art, i thought this was an engaging and relatively accessible look into archaeology/paleolithic art history and the questions surrounding why we create art (and what art is) in the first place. i also think clottes could have engaged with scholars and hypotheses that are like... from places that aren't europe lol

[Frank Ashe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very slow to start. But well worth it once you're past the long chapter on the philosophy of science as applied to the analysis of paleolithic painting.

[Neil MacDonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Around 33,000 years ago, Palaeolithic people, physically and mentally just like us, began to paint animals, geometric shapes and handprints on the walls of caves in southwest Europe. Why did they do this? Art for art’s sake? Totemism? Magic to aid the hunt? This is the question Jean Clottes addresses. Curiously, for the English translation of his book, the title was rendered as “What is Palaeolithic Art” rather than the “Why is” in the original French.

Drawing on his own extensive researches, as well as visits to other rock art around the world and ethnological research, he proposes another, fascinating answer. The art, he says, was part of shamanistic spiritual beliefs. He recognises that we will never know precisely what these beliefs and associated practices were. But he suggests there were three major elements to the Palaeolithic shamanism. Firstly, fluidity – everything is connected and creatures can transform into other creatures. Secondly, complexity – unlike our way of seeing things as examples of general categories (deer, human etc.), the particularities such as sex, age, location were recognised as creating distinct entities. Thirdly, permeability – the world allows the entry of spirits and supernatural forces into the everyday world, and allows adepts to enter the spirit world. In this belief system, images have an affinity with the reality they describe and can be used to change this reality.

Is he right? There is no way we can ever know for sure. But his suggestion, at once human and scholarly, is fascinating and compelling. It makes a plausible story, and that may be all we can achieve.in bridging the thousands of years that separate us from our ancestors. I was thrilled by it.

[Sonja · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a while a particular interest of mine has been cave paintings, especially the cave paintings of Cantabria near where I live for part of the year in Spain. I have visited many of them. I loved seeing the works of art in caves that are not only paintings but, sculpture-like, emerge from the shapes in the caves. Jean Clottes has confirmed and added so much to my thinking about Paleolithic Art.
First of all, we are so far, not only in years but in culture from the people who made this art and it is so hard to know how they thought no less think like them to interpret this art. The author refers to this often. The question of why the art would be painted in caves is explored tentatively and without the characteristic certainty of academics.
Second, the human connection with animals rather than their dominance over animals is seen again and again. This points to a shamanistic view which Clottes explains through comparison with older indigenous cultures we can currently communicate with.
“…the fundamental characteristic of many traditional societies, and in particular of those that practice shamanism is fluidity: fluidity between the real world in which they live, and the spirit world that one can enter through visions or, more concretely, by visiting the subterranean depths; fluidity too between the human and animal worlds, so that constant interactions are induced between them, interactions that are recounted in myths.”
Thirdly, although we don’t know about the sex of the artists but of course both sexes had access to the caves so what else can one imagine? However, beyond that, the caves themselves had a female meaning. And this has also been seen in Mayan culture and art, not only in the European caves. This repetition of this art and the female aspect in ancient cultures across the globe indicates a connection in thinking and/or mythmaking.
The book is really a must if you are at all interested in Paleolithic times or the origin of humans. It is well-written and not academic. There are lots of references and an index in the back but the book is short and readable, only 174 pages. A brilliant telling of the important story of Paleolithic Art!

[Nathan Ridings · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a definite add to your collection if you are interested in learning more about our Paleolithic ancestors and the artwork that they’ve left behind. This is an academic work, but is written in a very readable fashion and is almost story-like. The author has done a wealth of study and research on the topic and visited numerous sites first hand. He is very open minded and relays the difference between facts we can ascertain and theories both current and past detailing how they MAY be correct or were determined to be lacking. Highly recommend this read.

[Samuel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really hoping that this book would lay out the answer to the question that the title poses, especially since no one on earth knows more about cave art than Jean Clottes. But instead, this particular volume meanders around, mixing information about cave art with Clottes' suppositions about what the art means, based on things like "asking people who live around there now" and "picking other examples for comparison separated by thousands of both years and miles" or just "guessing." He tries to give himself some caveats and some outs, and he lampshades what he's doing at the beginning, but way more of this book is Clottes just freestyling than I really wanted.

The book is also aggressively unfriendly to the nonspecialist. Want to know, say, when the Magdalenian was, or what the order of material cultures in paleolithic Europe were? Want a map of the cave sites that Clottes discusses? Better have some other reference materials handy, because there's nothing here that would help, not even a footnote or a timeline in the appendix.

Additionally, I know that this isn't a coffee-table book, but the fact that the illustrations are all either tiny black and white photos or line drawings doesn't help. On multiple occasions, I found myself completely unable to make out whatever it was that the pictures were supposed to illustrate.

Anyway, this one seems like a missed opportunity to me. Maybe I'll be able to find a better introductory work.

[Stephen Palmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jean Clottes has worked in the field of Palaeolithic art for most of his life, and is an acknowledged expert. In this volume he gives an overview of what he thinks this extraordinary art signifies. First, he gives an overview of older, less sophisticated European interpretations, before giving his own, which chimes in with the work of David Lewis-Williams, who strongly supports the shamanic view of such art. A longer section on ethnographic comparisons follows, and it's notable that Clottes is very careful to disentangle inappropriate comparisons between modern "primitive" tribal peoples and human beings of 40,000 years ago. However, he does think that useful comparisons can be made, not least in the area of constantly being surprised as to what certain aspects of rock art might mean. A final section ties everything up and gives the man's credo. This is a fascinating work; thoughtful, sophisticated, and imbued with much experience.

[Carol Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting series of observations and ideas about cave art. I found some of the speculations a bit troubling, but I bow to M. Clottes superior knowledge and experience. Except, I think we're pretty certain the creator of the bas reliefs at Cap Blanc was a woman....However, those are not, strictly speaking, cave paintings, so I'll let it go.

Still, an excellent overview over the process of prehistoric image-making and an extremely well- informed speculation about the possible reasons for the creation of the images.

[Dennis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a wonderful introduction to the science and history of paleo art history, and a personable history of Clottes live long passion and intellectual history.

[Wendelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extraordinarily wonderful book about cave art. Chapter 1 analyses the pros and cons of different theories on cave art ('art for art's sake', for graffiti, for communication, as totemism, as sympathetic magic and shamanic purposes). Chapter 2 relates the author's personal stories about the cave art places he has visited and the practices of the guides who took him there (Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians, Indians, Tuareg Africans, and Siberians) Chapter 3- general remarks

[Guido Beauchez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book for everyone who are really into cave art and dying to know all about it. In mere 175 pages Jean Clottes reviews the series of concepts developed, since its discovery 2d half of the 19th century, to explain the why of cave paintings and the major research conducted into the subject. That is the true value of the book. As a bonus he puts his idea forward why he thinks shamanism explains best all material aspects of cave art.

[William Greer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating & Illuminating

No one seems to know the caves and their art like M. Clottes.
This book is instructive, illuminating, and fascinating. It's well written, as well. I'll probably read it again.
The conclusions are sensible, and seem to fit well with other things I think I understand.
I have read several books on cave art; this is one of the best (so far).

[Peter Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jean Clottes writes in a style that is easy to read and easily draws you into his journey through the ancient art of our distant ancestors.
There is something of the friendly old mentor assisting you to understand the detail, complications and extraordinary beauty that is captured within paleolithic art. This does not stop him from pulling us into the present and understanding how some cultures have maintained their own style of connections and culture with their distant kin.
If you an interest in art, history, culture, archaeology or simply enjoy well crafted and informative prose, then I would strongly encourage you to read this book.

[LRKK · Rating 4 out of 5]

worthwhile

Somewhat of a hodgepodge this is still a very worthwhile contribution to the field. Written with respect and a humility rare to the academy, this work is ideally read as a second or third book on the history of paleolithic art, but not as an initial foray into the caves.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The obvious conclusion is that this is a religion with conceptual foundations that remained sufficiently stable across more than twenty millennia to generate identical behaviors on the scale of Europe as a whole. In consequence, it is legitimate to seek those foundations, which constitute a particular way of thinking and perceiving the world. This is the task that we have just undertaken." p166

[Trenton Twining · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exposition of modern theories regarding paleolithic art: carvings; cave paintings; etc. Well-written by an author clearly enthusiastic about the phenomenon. If pre-history interests you, this ought to serve.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good. I was an anthropology student so I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend to anyone that is curious about the art of the past that you might see in the media or books. Enlightening.

[Valentín Serrano García · Rating 5 out of 5]

Indispensable for all those interested in art, anthropology or shamanism

[Mills College Library]

709.012 C646 2016