Prehistoric Art: The Symbolic Journey of Humankind [Hardcover]

I wasn't sure whether this book or "Journey Through the Ice Age" by Paul G. Bahn would be better, so I bought them both.

It turns out that they are both excellent books. Both are loaded with color photographs of artifacts famous and less well-known. Both have scholarly, informative text, considering anthropological and historical contexts, the techniques and materials used by the artists, the history of the study of prehistoric art, and plenty of cautious speculation about the functions the art had to its artists' communities.

They are organized quite differently: Bahn's moves from topic to topic: chapter 7 is on portable art, chapter 8 on rock shelters and cave art, chapter 9 on outdoors art, and so on. But White's book has a regional arrangement: chapter 4 is on Western Europe, chapter 5 is on Central and Eastern Europe and Sibera, chapter 6 is on Africa, the Near East and Anatolia, and so on.

Obviously you can see that White's book has more of a global focus than Bahn's. In fact, Bahn's third chapter deals with prehistoric art outside of Europe; in every other chapter he focuses on European art, especially the caves.

Although Bahn's book devotes a chapter to "Portable Art" such as jewelry and miniature statues (including the famous "Venus figurines"), White's book has a far superior coverage. On the other hand, Bahn has better coverage of interesting issues such as how to reproduce prehistoric art for public enjoyment, dating issues, and forgeries.

If you are primarily interested in European cave art and will be content with a glance at the rest of the world, then Bahn's book is better for you. Personally, although Bahn deals with some interesting issues that White neglects, ultimately I prefer White's global perspective; further, I appreciate his introductory comments about modern Western art and cultural assumptions, and consideration of what might be universal in human art.

Incidently, when it comes to books about art, for some reason I prefer hardcover to paperback; and at this time White's book in hardcover is available at great discount on Amazon, making it almost as inexpensive as Bahn's.

So, my preference is clear. However, I want to emphasize that despite my partiality to White's book, they are certainly both excellent, and I do not think one of them is clearly, inherently better than the other. It just depends on what you are looking for.

This is a magnificent looking production, with hundreds of ancient items reproduced in extraordinary quality. The captioning, referencing and graphics are excellent. The reader can follow how representational styles and subjects changed over time, and varied between areas of settlement. And many of the objects -- a lion-headed figure, a smoothly carved woman's head, wall-painted images of a horse in different moods -- are breathtaking and memorable.
What I love about this book, though, is that it has changed the way I think about "art", and how I think about my forebears of 10,000-50,000 years ago. It is a risky error to imagine that people in cultures so remote in time from ours would have painted or chiselled or carved for the same purposes that a modern-day Western artist would. Notions of "art" and "beauty", the purposes to which representational objects are put, vary greatly between cultures, and are bound to have varied hugely over such long periods of time. And these were loooong periods of time: "prehistoric" peoples occupied the world for hundreds of generations before the adoption of agriculture and the many changes it brought, and their habits and beliefs and languages would have changed many times. I will never again think of the ancient peoples of the world as a single, unchanging group.
This is a rigorous, beautiful and unforgettable book.

Sometime around forty thousand years ago, our ancestors began to view Nature from a new perspective. Although Homo sapiens and its ancestors knew Nature well in order to survive, a different visual outlook was in the making. Hunting or scavenging prey or dodging predators kept people aware of other animals. As physical changes made speech possible, there must have been some exchange of observations and ideas. With the new outlook, however, came a change in expression. Graphic images, especially those of large and powerful creatures surrounding them, were painted on rock walls. Those images and the models incorporated into tools and weapons, could be seen by all and became part of the society. Since their first known discovery in 1575, but chiefly in the 19th and 20th centuries, a great deal of interpretation and debate has occurred over their antiquity, what prompted their creation, and what they "mean". White, in this superb global survey of "art before writing", dismisses most of the theories, while placing the artworks in their likely social setting.

Even if the author failed to provide new insights into what prehistoric art might convey, the illustrations make this book something special. The images in this collection make it an outstanding example of the new wave of such studies. While there are books on Altamira, Lascaux, Chauvet and other locations, few, if any, offer the comprehensive prospect of so many sites. White devotes chapters to such scattered locations as Siberia, Anatolia, South Asia and the Americas. Each region has its own varieties of art, spanning a particular time-line and incorporating many traditions.

One point White reiterates often is his dismissal of art being "an invention of European civilization". This racist cavil has persisted even among serious scholars until very recently. Although most of the rock and cave art found has been in Western Europe, White notes how "art" in other places predates those creations. Even in Africa, the continent of our origins, South Africa alone holds over thirty thousand "rock or cave art" examples alone. The lack of resources for cataloging and analysing them is shameful. Australia and Africa alike have symbols and images from long before even the outstanding Chauvet and Lascaux depictions were daubed on the cave walls. The scattering of paintings, carvings, and objects from various times and places indicates the diversity of cultures making them.

This diversity leads to another theme White wants dismissed: prehistoric art reflects many ways of thinking and imagining. "Prehistoric" doesn't translate to "primitive" and there is no "universal" style underpinning of the works. More to the point, is how we tend to view the term "art". Our recent history has associated art with hierarchical societies containing a leisure class that could create or promote "art" as a purely creative process. White argues this narrow view obscures the more likely reasons the art was produced. The images would have been highly significant to both artists and viewers. Nature, he contends, was being reconfigured. While the implications of that mental leap remain debateable, the long-term consequences are still with us. The language may have academic tones, but the clarity of the message is not obscured. We need to understand our ancestors far better than we do. The implications for the future are significant. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 6 reviews  5.0 out of 5 stars