The Nature of Paleolithic Art
Starred Review.Guthrie, professor emeritus of zoology at the University of Alaska, is not the typical art historian, and this is not a typical art history book. Guthrie brings his expertise in zoology, paleontology and modern hunting to the study of cave paintings and other preserved remnants of our Paleolithic ancestors, proposing a revolutionary re-thinking of how our ancestors lived. Guthrie examined thousands of works, from the famous to the fragmentary, and concludes that rather than being the special province of a narrow group of shamans or seers, as many anthropologists had supposed, Paleolithic art was made by adults and children of both genders and depicts a primitive incarnation of the contemporary family. Readers with some art or anthropology background will find this book appealing, though layreaders can find much here to appreciate. (For instance, Guthrie's discussion of how cave paintings parallel in many ways the photographs found in Playboy and Hustler.) This immensely thought-provoking book will challenge readers' preconceptions about the origin of art and the provenance of our family and social structures.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.