The Nature of Paleolithic Art

by R. Dale Guthrie

The cave paintings and other preserved remnants of Paleolithic peoples shed light on a world little known to us, one so deeply embedded in time that information about it seems unrecoverable. While art historians have wrestled with these images and objects, very few scientists have weighed in on Paleolithic art as artifacts of a complex, living society. R. Dale Guthrie is one of the first to do so, and his monumental volume The Nature of Paleolithic Art is a landmark study that will change the shape of our understanding of these marvelous images.

With a natural historian's keen eye for observation, and as one who has spent a lifetime using bones and other excavated materials to piece together past human behavior and environments, Guthrie demonstrates that Paleolithic art is a mode of expression we can comprehend to a remarkable degree and that the perspective of natural history is integral to that comprehension. He employs a mix of ethology, evolutionary biology, and human universals to access these distant cultures and their art and artifacts. Guthrie uses innovative forensic techniques to reveal new information; estimating, for example, the ages and sexes of some of the artists, he establishes that Paleolithic art was not just the creation of male shamans.

With more than 3,000 images, The Nature of Paleolithic Art offers the most comprehensive representation of Paleolithic art ever published and a radical (and controversial) new way of interpreting it. The variety and content of these images—most of which have never been available or easily accessible to nonspecialists or even researchers—will astonish you. This wonderfully written work of natural history, of observation and evidence, tells the great story of our deepest past.

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

520 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2006

Reviews

[christinemm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Used book for college course that required use of at least one book plus published journal articles only. I learned a lot more from the journal articles. Giving 3 stars for the quality of the book's printing and for the massive amount of reproduction hand drawn illustrations to replicate cave paintings and other art findings such as sculptures of goddess figures. The author seems to not realize his own bias such as when describing that he personally never saw a nude female body until he viewed x rated material as a teen and using this modern experience in his own culture to guess that paleolithic boys also never saw a female nude, and the continued statement that cave art was done by young boys with raging testosterone (horny)...over and over his assumptions about human reproduction permeated this book and made me shake my head. Also after reading a long journal article about the proof of using cordage plant fibers for weaving and creating fiber clothing and headdresses, in this book there are illustartions of woven pieces in process and he calls them proof for hair in the genital region! They are squares and rectangles with fibers hanging off all four sides and resemble not a single thing that is the correct shape for female genitals and hair. Another example the continued discussion of why a goddess figure has that belly and elongated belly button. Here is your answer: women with fat bellies wind up with a stretched out belly button. Period. Men who have no clue about the female body making these guesses just is so crazy, for example, to debate if these goddesses with a fat belly are pregnant: the belly button either goes flat or pops outward when pregnant and is a firm ball up front not a loose hanging down fat blob that goes forward and all around the middle like a tire. I read this as I had to for the paper. I learned more from the professional journal articles. This is a case of a person who is good at school learning writing a book but being so wrong about some very basic facets of the female human body's basic workings. Cannot believe he did not research more about the general female body before writing this book. Wow.

[Linda Dielemans]

I was really excited for this book about parietal art. Finally, someone who wasn't going on about shamans and drug-induced visions and what not. Someone who would be approaching the art of our ancestors from a clean, sensible point of view. It started out good, but pretty soon I started to get annoyed. First of all, all of the art presented is a rendition by the author. It's his interpretation. If you have ever seen cave art, you know it's almost always covered in all kinds of scratches and lines. How do we know mr. Guthrie didn't just pick the lines that would best fit his own hypotheses? We can't decide for ourselves, because there are no photographs. For a work of science, that is a serious flaw. Also, all of the art is presented as if it's all the same. Mr. Guthrie makes no distinction between cave art, portable art, engravings or paintings. He doesn't even care about the datings. Drawings or paintings could have been made tens of thousands of years apart, but everything gets chucked together onto one big heap. Context matters! It's not good science. Not to mention questionable and rather (surprisingly) old-fashioned deductions and conclusions. I remember shouting 'no!' at the book several times while reading. So, two stars. One for the trouble of drawing all of the art. It looks nice. And one for shaking things up a bit. That I do appreciate.

[Reader Girl · Rating 1 out of 5]

I admittedly only read one chapter while researching a paper however it is very misguided and outdated. Guthrie argues without reference that testosterone causes violence and lust. Which is why men murder and r*pe (which bizarrely he does not connect r*pe to violence just lust). So testosterone fueled teenage boys create wall art of hunting and nakedness. To support thus Guthrie grossly exaggerates how much art is of genitalia and there are none conclusively being hunting. If that does not convince you then since this has been released every article on the subject which mentions his assumptions critisizes it and all the evidence shows that all ages and sexes took part in cave art. So there just really is not a point of buying this book or reading it if you intend to learn about palaeolithic art. Just felt like a lecture from a kooky old person you meet at a family gathering going all the wrong places.

[David Chaffetz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an immensely thought-provoking book that asks us to imagine life in Paleolithic times, centered on hunting large mammals.

The author graduated from U of C in the 60s and taught anthropology at U Alaska. He had a Tom Sawyer childhood in downstate Illinois and spends his winters hunting moose. He has also hunted with bushmen, eskimos and Siberians. He has visited every Paleolithic art site in Eurasia. Using his experience of hunting and hunters, combined with a deep background in ethology, ecology, evolutionary biology and anthropology, he convincingly debunks previous explanations of cave art.

Although well grounded in research, many of his conclusions reflect personal experience and observations- a little like the writings of 19th century naturalists like Darwin and Humboldt. Surely much of what he writes will be subject to reexamination,but he writes with elegance and wit - a rare thing in academia.

[Colin Freebury · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thoughtful, well-researched and well-written book.

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am hardly an expert on this topic, so I probably don't know what I'm talking about, but I found this book to be fascinating. In it, Guthrie poo-poos much of what I'd previously read about European paleolithic cave art. Again, I'm not an expert, but personally I think his ideas, which I imagine must be controversial, are quite plausible. In any case, it's not necessarily bad to shake things up a bit every now and then. In fact, it can be an inspiration.