STEVEN MITHES Ah 5 Ae PREHISTORY OF THE MIND A SEARCH FOR THE ORIGINS OF ART, RELIGION AND SCIENCE ‘An accessible, very well written, wit A provocative and mostgyaluable book Lewis Wolpert, OBSERVERA PHOENIX PAPERBACK First published in Great Britain by Thames and Hudson Ltd in 1996 This paperback edition published in 1998 by Phoenix, a division of Orion Books Ltd, Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane, London WC2H 9EA Copyright © 1996 Thames and Hudson Ltd, London The right of Steven Mithen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 0 75380 204 X Printed and bound in Great Britain by The Guernsey Press Co. Ltd, Guernsey, Channel Islands For my children Hannab, Nicholas and HeatherContents Co em NN DH PB WN 10 11 Preface Why ask an archaeologist about the human mind? The drama of our past The architecture of the modern mind A new proposal for the mind’s evolution Apes, monkeys and the mind of the missing link The mind of the first stone toolmaker The multiple intelligences of the Early Human mind Trying to think like a Neanderthal The big bang of human culture: the origins of art and religion So how did it happen? The evolution of the mind Epilogue: the origins of agriculture Notes and further reading Bibliography Illustration credits Index 14 31 65 79 105 129 166 171 211 223 248 260 310 349 351