Tag: European prehistory

Pieter Breugel, the Elder, “The Peasant Wedding”

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Thanksgiving Day is America’s incarnation of the traditional harvest festival, a celebration of the end of the summer harvest, often marked by lavish feasts. (more…)

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Richard M. Weaver
Ideas Have Consequences
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948
Expanded edition, with a Foreword by Roger Kimball and an Afterword by Ted J. Smith III, 2013.

The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture …. (more…)

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Part 7 of 7 (other parts here)

7. The Aim of the Universe

I have argued that man’s nature is to be the mirror of nature, and that this begins in the European caves. As Aristotle and Pico have taught us, man is, in a way, nothing — and all. (more…)

Man as microcosm

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Part 6 of 7 (other parts here)

6. All and Nothing

In my account of ekstasis, I have drawn principally on two philosophers: Heidegger and Schopenhauer. And Hegel has been peeping out at certain points in my discussion (he will have a much bigger role to play very soon). But the truth is that the ideas I have been expounding in this essay have deep roots in the Western tradition, and are much older even than Hegel.

(more…)

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Part 5 of 7 (other parts here)

5. Can Biology Explain Ekstasis?

I have already mentioned that scientists speculate that cave art (and religion, language, etc.) comes about as a result of some kind of genetic mutation, perhaps a “sudden, serendipitous, genetically-based brain reorganization.” (more…)

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Part 4 of 7 (other parts here)

4. “To be human means to be a sayer”

The ability to perceive essences (“Ideas,” as Schopenhauer puts it) plays a role in other human activities besides art. (more…)

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Part 3 of 7 (other parts here)

3. Art Begins in Wonder

My thesis, quite simply, is that art, religion, and language are all made possible by a mental or cognitive act which I have called elsewhere ekstasis.[1] To better understand what this consists in, I will ask the reader to consider a simple (or, perhaps, not so simple) question. (more…)

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Part 2 of 7

2. Theories of Stone Age Cave Art

One of the first attempts to explain the origin of Upper Paleolithic cave art was formulated by the French paleontologist Édouard Lartet (1801–1871), (more…)

Lions, Chauvet cave, France, painted around 35,000 years ago

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Part 1 of 7

1. The Problem

Men first began to paint about 40,000 years ago, during a period of our pre-history referred to as the “Upper Paleolithic” (which lasted from about 50,000 to 10,000 years ago). This was the period in which fully anatomically and behaviorally “modern” Homo sapiens appeared. (more…)

Avebury Henge, Wiltshire, au sud-ouest  de l’Angleterre

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English original here

Quand je lis des études sur la préhistoire européenne, j’ai souvent une impression de déjà-vu – sans cesse des souvenirs de la conquête blanche de l’Amérique du Nord sont réveillés.  (more…)

Avebury Henge, Wiltshire, southwest England

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French translation here

When reading accounts of European prehistory I am often struck by a sense of familiarity—time and again glimmers of the white conquest of North America are awakened. (more…)

Pieter Breugel, the Elder, "The Peasant Wedding"

1,183 words

Thanksgiving Day is America’s incarnation of the traditional harvest festival, a celebration of the end of the summer harvest, often marked by lavish feasts. (more…)

Zoomorphic vessel, neolithic, Linear Pottery Culture, National Archaelogical Museum, Bratislava

1,194 words

In the attempt to understand who we are and where we came from, history takes us only so far. Once the written record thins and ends—not far back in time, evolutionarily speaking—we are left primarily with archaeological evidence and inferences from linguistics. (more…)