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

by David Lewis-Williams (Author), David Pearce (Author)
4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Thames & Hudson (19 Sep 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0500051380
  • ISBN-13: 978-0500051382
  • Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16 x 3.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 144,551 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #25 in  Books > History > Archaeology > By Period > Prehistoric
    #67 in  Books > Religion & Spirituality > Other Religions > Ancient European & Mediterranean Religions

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Product Description

Review
"Advance praise for Inside the Neolithic Mind: 'Wonderful' - Dr Christopher Chippindale, Cambridge University; 'An important book' - Professor Richard Bradley, University of Reading; 'Compelling... an exciting read' - Professor Andrew Sherratt, Oxford University

Product Description
This brilliantly argued and elegantly written book examines the intricate web of belief, myth and society in the Neolithic period, continuing the story begun in the bestselling and critically acclaimed book The Mind in the Cave. Drawing on the latest research, the authors skilfully link material on human consciousness, imagery and religious concepts to propose provocative new theories about the causes of an ancient revolution in cosmology, the origins of social complexity and even the drive behind the domestication of plants and animals.

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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Bringing the gods home, 1 Mar 2007
By Stephen A. Haines (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
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]
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Ancient monuments in a new context, 4 Jan 2007
By A reader (Maidstone, UK) - See all my reviews
This text is a folow on from The Mind in the Cave where Lewis Wiliams showed how neuorological elements in the human brain, combined with different levels of consciousness, give rise to religious experiences and belief systems. Taking this model on to the neolithic sites of Catal Huyuk in Turkey and the Boyne Bend monuments in northern Ireland, the authors attempt to explain the structures in terms of belief systems that may have been held by the builders. The great strenght of this thesis is that it has flexibility built around a core of basic ideas. This does allow different interpretations to be made, but based upon a relatively simple model. The interpretative powers are of course limited - we cannot replay the past - but we now have the best window found yet into the minds of those ancient builders and their belief systems. No extravagant claims are made by the authors (though that wil not stop others), but it does offer an opportunity to think constructively about an area of archaeology and ancient history that has been far too neglected until now. Religion simply cannot be ignored when attempting to understand ancient societies - this is an invaluable contribution to our attempts to understand the people and the contexts in which they built their structures and the ways in which their societies may have functioned.
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9 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars A bold undertaking, but poor execution, 22 Oct 2006
By Jonathon Smith (Sheffield, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Inside the Neolithic Mind sets out on a bold premise: that similarities in ethnographic religions can be explained by the physical neurological wiring of the human mind. It presents a clear and well articulated explanation of the fundamental structure of religion and quite a compelling argument for the art of megalithic Europe being derived from altered states of consciousness.

However, Inside the Neolithic Mind ultimately fails to deliver. It unflinchingly attempts the most unfashionable of things; to create a framework that can be applied to the broadest range of human cultures. But with this it necessarily attempts to accommodate the concept of social variability and in doing so it looses almost all of its interpretative power.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable Neolithic Jaunt
I enjoyed reading this book. It seems to focus mainly upon Neolithic sites in Turkey and Ireland (and some in Angelsey), but also interjected some interesting comments from... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Magickal Spires

5.0 out of 5 stars Inside the Neolithic Mind: Consciousness, Cosmos and the Rea
Lucid and convincing in it's arguments. In particular presents a clear framework for analysing the relationship between religious experience, religious belief and religious... Read more
Published on 31 Mar 2006

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