3.8 David Lewis-Williams Part 2: North American Shamanic Rock Art and Other Ways to Conclude Homo Sapiens is Homo Aestheticus

Dilettantery

(episode 3.7 is part 1)

“People did not ‘invent’ two-dimensional images; nor did they discover them in natural marks. On the contrary, their world was already invested with two-dimensional images...The first two-dimensional images were thus not two dimensional representations of three-dimensional things in the material world, as researchers have always assumed...For the makers, the paintings and engravings were visions, not representations of visions – as indeed was the case for the southern African San and the North American shamans...They were not inventing images. They were merely touching what was already there.”

-David Lewis-Williams

From far, from eve and morning/

And yon twelve-winded sky,/

The stuff of life to knit me/

Blew hither: here am I./

Now—for a breath I tarry/

Nor yet disperse apart—/

Take my hand quick and tell me,/

What have you in your heart./

Speak now, and I will answer;/

How shall I help you, say;/

Ere to the wind's twelve quarters/

I take my endless way.

~A.E. Housman

Rock art links to explore: https://old.reddit.com/r/DilettanteryPodcast/comments/y1i1x6/rock_art_threads/

Sources: https://old.reddit.com/r/DilettanteryPodcast/comments/10hcgaw/38_david_lewiswilliams_part_2_north_american/?