Customer Reviews

Inside the Neolithic Mind: Consciousness, Cosmos, and the Realm of the Gods

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A praiseworthy attempt to understand what was going on in the Neolithic era - in particular the thinking behind the construction and decoration of megaliths.
The authors take us from Turkey to Ireland, from Neolithic to Bronze Age. They investigate the "religious" thinking of the era. We are frequently reminded that the three dimensions of religion are "experience, belief, and practice". Neolithic monuments and often houses are related to the cosmos in its separate layers.
Catal Huyuk, Bryn Celli Ddu, Newgrange and Knowth, and Brittany are given particularly detailed treatment. The rock scribings of these and other monuments are looked at in depth. The explanation is put forward that the designs represent the visions experienced by people undergoing a "religious" experience as in a trance-like state. In this the authors reject the concept that the designs relate to astronomical phenomena.
At the end a comparison is made between the age of the neolithic and our own times with our reliance on science, and the part played by Aristotle and the Greek philosophers in changing human thinking.
The book is very readable,well presented and illustrated.
Desmond Johnston.

It wasn't until having completed this book and put it away when I realized the full impact of it's narrative. Mostly, because it is so understated. It's speculations about the Neolithic psyche are compelling and with the reminder that we can't underestimate in our secular world-view the interweaving of altered-states, cosmological beliefs, and eventual early human advancements. For example, we like to think of early domestication as a reasoned development to provide easy availability of food, milk and hides. Yet, it is likely, if not highly probable that domestication of aurochs, for example, was a product of a dominating supernatural cosmology. To quote the authors, "The associated assumption that rational decision-making and processes, such as sensible adaptation to the environment, can account for all past human behaviour is groundless. It imputes contemporary Western values to past societies. We must be more alert to the irrationality of the past (and of the present.)"

The main thesis of this book is that altered-states of consciousness and our beliefs in and attempts to control supposed supernatural forces may have played a significant role in some major technological advancements from the Neolithic age. Moreover, these altered state experiences are not only central to the development of religious beliefs, but are also neurologically hard-wired into our central nervous systems. The archeological evidence and arguments are worth the effort of understanding, if just to get a speculative glimpse of the Neolithic world. What is less convincing, however, is the scant neurological backing the authors provide. This is one of the major shortfalls of this book.

Still, the argument that stayed with me was the one suggesting that religion as we know it entails an often unquestioning belief in the supernatural and supernatural forces, and this belief, albeit universal across the peoples and across the ages, is a misreading of what is simply our own neurological processes. Our march as a species is toward giving up our superstitions, our beliefs in the supernatural, and recognizing them for what they are -- anachronistic resonances from the neolithic mind. The authors end with the question, "Is it possible to have a religion that does not entail a belief in the supernatural?" If you have an interest in religion, human prehistory, and even cognitive psychology I'd highly recommend this book. If you are coming at it with an interest in neuroscience, however, you'll be more than likely disappointed in its offerings.

The book is definitely an intriguing one. I was impressed with the amount of newer information on the Neolithic, especially that about Mellaart's old site at Çatalhoyuk in Turkey. I had read something of it in another book, but Lewis-Williams' work definitely gave me more of a sense of venue.

The discussion of modern work on hallucinogens and what it has to say about the neurology of perception and spiritual experience was very interesting also and in line with some of the books on mind/brain studies I've read. That one can look at the development of religious experience in an evolutionary manner has been suggested by other authors as well, most notably by Newberg in Why God Won't go Away.

I do have some reservations with respect to the author's approach, however. While I can appreciate that Neolithic thought made no distinctions between the spiritual world and the natural one, since many present people still don't, I find it difficult to accept that we can actually "know" the content of their thoughts, especially the emotional significance of them.

The author insists that by examining the cultural remains left by Neolithic groups one can come to an understanding of how they thought about their world. He uses the frequency of specific concepts in art found among a variety of people, both past and present, which suggest a degree of continuity. Somehow I'm doubtful.

First and foremost, one culture often has no real understanding of the significance of cultural items outside of their specific culture. Sometimes we don't even know how different individuals perceive these items within a shared culture.

For instance, my feelings about Christmas and Christmas icons, like pine trees, wrapping paper and blinky lights, are very upbeat. This is because I had a happy childhood and Christmas was a very special time at our house, one to which I enjoy returning in my mind's eye when I'm feeling a little blue. However, I have a friend whose family was very dysfunctional and who hates Christmas and it's various paraphernalia. This is because during her childhood, the holiday meant discord and unpleasantness because she had alcoholic parents. Even as a young child she ended up the peacemaker and referee. We share the same culture, but we don't have the same feelings about Christmas and its visible cultural insignia.

Likewise, I have lived in Saudi Arabia during Ramadan and shared, to the best of my understanding, the events of the holiday. I've watched the TV shows about the followers of Mohamed, shared the special holiday treats, and gave and received gifts. I've read somewhat extensively, at least for a Westerner, about Islam and have Egyptian friends who are Moslem. But my take on Islam is not my friend Fatma's. Nor is hers necessarily like those of other members of the Islamic community.

I think that the degree to which we clearly don't understand another culture's feelings about their spiritual and social artifacts is abundantly apparent by the recent upsurge in intolerance for the "different," particularly in the realm of religion and behavior. This given for modern times with living people, I find it difficult to believe that the situation can possibly be improved by up to 10,000 years of separation, an incomplete data set, and no written information!

My second objection is that the data used to propose some degree of continuity between now and the past, especially in religious concepts, is highly selective. If one wishes to exclude all the data points that don't agree with ones theories, one can "prove" just about anything. A sounder position might be one that looks at all extant examples of cultural artifacts and the degree to which they correlate to one another and to the past. To make a valid statement about what is "common" among humans, the research must look at what all humans do. There has been a fairly extensive attempt in anthropology over the past 100 years to study what is common to the human as creature. Perhaps that is the data to which we must look in making statements about shared meaning.

My final objection to the author's position is that it cannot be proven wrong. By this I don't mean that he is actually correct, and I have nothing with which to refute it, but that there is simply no definitive evidence at all. At present we cannot go back in time to verify the author's beliefs about the Neolithic mind. One could say almost anything from negative evidence. For all I know, he could be entirely correct. It would be nice to think that we could "connect" with past people in this way. Unfortunately, especially in the realm of the human mind, there is no way of proving that he's right either. Note that the interpretation of the cultural meaning of Stonehenge is also very vague and changes through time. The interpretations in vogue at any given time, however, have had more to say about the people making them than about the builders of the monument.

In general, I find the author's proposals intriguing. There is something very attractive about the notion that one can share meaning and experience with people from the past by way of their artifacts. I certainly enjoyed the book--but I'd still advise the reader to proceed with caution.

If anything jars your sensitivities, it's the claim that your brain is driving you instead of the other way around. Yet, many cognitive studies suggest that's often precisely the case. If David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce are correct, then mentally-driven activities have contributed to the making of many social conditions. One of those conditions, a universal which provides support for their thesis, is religion. The definition of "religion" has been subjected to some drastic changes lately. It's been broadened to encompass many "spiritual" themes. Today's spiritual movements tend to hark back to earlier, simpler modes. The authors assert that some of these can be traced to the Neolithic period in Europe and Western Asia.

Using the recent finds of archaeology and the cognitive sciences, the authors postulate that Neolithic society developed the foundations of religion. Moreover, religion pre-dated the adoption of agriculture and husbandry. Archaeology has revealed sites in Asia Minor suggesting that hunter-gatherer groups built shrines, seasonally visited for ritual purposes. Communities grew around these shrines and agriculture was developed to support them. The shrines marked a departure from earlier practices of dealing with the spirit realm in caves, represented by such sites as Lascaux and Chauvet as described in Lewis-William's previous book, "The Mind In the Cave" [2002]. The above-ground shrines allowed greater community participation and a new social structure. One aspect of that change was the burial of heads beneath the floors of houses. Some of the corpses may indicate more than just ancestral burial, and represent sacrifices. Was spiritual power derived from those buried heads, the authors query?

In moving communication with spirits out of caves and involving more of the community, religious figures - shamans - assumed a different role in society. The authors note that all religions possess an ecstatic component, and nearly every individual has experienced various forms of altered consciousness. From this, the authors postulate "the consciousness contract" in which those who could experience and interpret the results of altered consciousness rose to become religious and community leaders. Instead of waiting for visions to occur, the shamans came to prompt them through physical exertion or psychotropic drugs. Thus supercharged, the visions seemed more intense, hence, more meaningful. Even if the community shared but a lower-level version of the visions, they were sufficiently aware of them to understand what the shamans described. What was already lodged in the mind emerged with greater force and wider acceptance.

Group activities reached peaks of drama and expression with the establishment of burial sites and stone shrines in Western Europe and the British Isles. Although the best known today, Stonehenge is but a small facet of what belief produced in shrines and burial places. Lewis-Williams and Pearce provide an impressive guided tour of the sites, their structure and arrangement. There is a good deal here to indicate how altered states of consciousness can be transformed into the physical world. Spirals, for example, often seen by those in trance or other altered states, are a fundamental component of many burial and shrine sites. The illustrations, including colour plates, depict these and other manifestations to greatly enhance an already vivid text. Although, the reader's preconceptions about religion or early societies may be challenged, but they will have no difficulty in understanding the evidence or conclusions the authors provide. A truly stimulating and provocative book, well worth the time and investment to understand thoroughly. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Speculation, conjecture, supposition, and thin hypotheses. Not to mention occasionally misleading in its assertions. You would learn more by re-reading C.J. Jung's classic works on the same subject matter and then re-read some of Mircea Eliade's own excellent and well-regarded work. This text makes me think more of Joseph Campbell's musings.

When the authors do venture out of the realm of occasionally entertaining and sometimes New Age style 'what if?' discussions, their source analyses and conclusions are at least worth consideration. However, I spent too much time trying to find some of their terms in dictionaries (which turned out to be entirely idiosyncratic words for the authors) than I did in thoughtful contemplation of their ideas since it was frustrating to try to pry away the fluff-talk and get to the actual information.

This seems to be one of the books that is coming out of a fairly recent trend in archaeology where a vaguely appropriate adjective is applied to 'archaeology' and thereby used to justify so-called 'groundbreaking' or 'cutting edge' research. That in turn usually works out be at least substantially speculative fluff which cannot be adequately proven or disproven, but certainly does help to fill white space on pages.

I finished the book, but I regret the time that I spent on it. It could have been reduced by around 100 pages and become a much better book.

Simply the best introduction to new, often ground-breaking research on Neolithic Mind on the market today. Well written and well illustrated it is the follow-up to the highly acclaimed "The Mind in the Cave" by David Lewis-Williams, which dealt with remarkable Upper Paleolithic art depicted by Shamans on the walls of caves. "Inside the Neolithic Mind" applies a neuropsychological model of altered states of consciousness to explain cosmology and architecture of famous Catalhoyuk in Turkey, one of the first cities people founded, and monumental, mysterious tombs in Ireland.

I love this book. I've had it for years now, and I've read it more than once. I've visited some of the places covered in the book (Bryn Celli Ddu, Bru Na Boinne) and this book certainly helped to open my mind to other angles of the cognitive and historical puzzle that these places represent. I especially love how the authors try to create a cohesive argument for reasons behind the commonalities of human ecstatic visions and primal cosmologies across cultures. They did what I consider a marvelous job in this, and even dipped into one of my favorite pieces of primordial human literature- The Epic of Gilgamesh- to make supporting illustrations. This book really made me see the Epic of Gilgamesh in a whole new light, actually.

There are only two really dissatisfying things about this book; first is the clear atheistic perspective that the authors are writing from- actually, in many parts of the book (growing more obvious as you near the end) the authors steadily insist on abandoning any and all possibilities that human neurology or psycho-physiology may contain within it the seed or trace of some experience of extra-sensory reality, or the possibility of there being any reality beyond the basic atheistic/materialistic worldview at all. The authors end the work with a dull and flat statement about how none of the spirits or supernatural powers that people believed in so long ago (or now) are anything but neurological phenomenon.

And they aren't making suggestions in any attempt to be open-minded about the mere possibility of realities beyond the ken of modern science; they are directly stating their belief in the "neurology only" paradigm for the ancient roots of spirituality as though it were an incontestable fact. A brief review of David Abram's two excellent books (The Spell of the Sensuous and Becoming Animal) will provide you with the most poetic and scholarly rebuttal to these two atheist authors that you could imagine- and provide you with a better, more authentic and naturalistic basis for spirituality in human history, which doesn't preclude any hint of the numinous or the divine.

Secondly, the authors have a strong Marxist slant on their work- suggesting that most (if not all) of the Stone Age monuments were created as ploys of the economically powerful to control "the masses"- whether by co-opting control of the people's beliefs about the afterlife, the gods, or sanctioning their power over the land. These authors take the Marxist idea of "class struggle" and apply it generously (and I think wrongly) to prehistory. The main argument that I (or anyone) could make against this aspect of their writing boils down to how overly simplistic it is.

The authors spend a good deal of time discussing the amazing differences between how stone age people saw and experienced this world, compared to people now- but clearly, where Marxism is concerned, they are comfortable assuming that these great ancient cognitive and social differences were negligible enough to justify implanting the Marxist dialectic in ancient times.

I'm sure there was a time when Atheist Marxist writers and scholars were quite stylish and quite the rage, but now, I think, that age has passed. It's been replaced by systemic thinking, phenomenology, deep ecology, mind-bending explorations into the radical spheres of theoretical physics, and countless other good disciplines that reveal to us how intellectually dishonest it is to reduce our world to anything, whether it be genes, neurons, or dialectical socio-political theories.

Those are my only two complaints. If you can read this book while keeping in mind that the atheist propaganda and the Marxist readings are simply the interpolations of the personal views of the authors, you can get a great amount of insight into the Neolithic origins of human culture from this book, and the neolithic technologies of the soul and spiritual experience.

This book is the sequence of the excelent Mind In the Cave book. But this book isn't so good than the original. Some points of view seems forced and don't have the same appeal that the original's ones.