A CHOICE OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC TITLE
The earliest rock art - in the Americas as elsewhere - is geometric or
abstract. Until Early Rock Art in the American West, however, no
book-length study has been devoted to the deep antiquity and amazing
range of geometrics and the fascinating questions that arise from their
ubiquity and variety. Why did they precede representational marks? What
is known about their origins and functions? Why and how did humans begin
to make marks, and what does this practice tell us about the early human
mind?
With some two hundred striking color images and discussions of
chronology, dating, sites, and styles, this pioneering investigation of
abstract geometrics on stone (as well as bone, ivory, and shell)
explores its wide-ranging subject from the perspectives of ethology,
evolutionary biology, cognitive archaeology, and the psychology of
artmaking. The authors' unique approach instills a greater respect for a
largely unknown and underappreciated form of paleoart, suggesting that
before humans became Homo symbolicus or even Homo religiosus, they
were mark-makers - Homo aestheticus.