A few months ago, the cognitive archaeologist David Lewis-Williams published Conceiving God: The Cognitive Origin and Evolution of Religion. When I saw the title, I worried that perhaps I had been scooped. Now that I have nearly finished the book, my worry has passed. Lewis-Williams’ title is a bit deceiving, given that the book combines [...]
Tags:A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness·altered states of consciousness·cognition·consciousness·David Lewis-Williams·Francis Crick·Gerald Edelman·Merlin Donald·Richard Dawkins·Sam Harris·supernatural thinking·The Conscious Brain·Thomas Nagel·What Is It Like To Be a Bat?
You would have to be living on a deserted island not to know that yet another transitional hominid fossil was unveiled yesterday. The new species, dated to approximately 2 million years ago, has been named Australopithecus sediba.
Just as evolutionary theory predicts for this period in time, these new fossils have some traits that are more [...]
David Lewis-Williams, Professor of Cognitive Archaeology at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, has for decades studied Paleolithic rock art across the world. His scholarly output has been not only been prodigious, but also provocative. Because rock art constitutes some of the oldest evidence we have for symbolic thinking, its importance to understanding Paleolithic [...]
Tags:altered states of consciousness·David Lewis-Williams·entoptic forms·rock art·shamanic practices
