From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Wed 05 Mar 2003 - 17:59:10 GMT
> Hi Scott,
>
> <I was referring to limitations of using artificats to extrapolate
> about the > culture from which these artifacts came.> >
> You're absolutely right about this, a very good example being cave
> paintings where we have found out all sorts of stuff about how they
> were made, and _hypothesised_about what they were_for_ but no-ones
> knows for certain. However, we can extrapolate to a reasonable degree
> certain probable associations. For example, people of that time were
> hunter gatherers, the vast majority of paintings are of animals,
> therefore there must be some relationship between those two things.
> Given the inaccessible places, and very difficult conditions in whihc
> the paintings were produced (these weren't caves people lived in) it's
> reasonable to assume that these paintings weren't just idle doodles,
> but important in some way, perhaps tied to rituals and beliefs
> asssociated with the hunter gatherer lifestyle.
>
> Amongst other things, the problem that the memes in minds model has,
> and I think what Wade has been driving at in his recent comments is
> its requirement for the totality of the meme to go from one mind to
> another, its form and meaning. I would argue that artefacts retain
> their form far more readily, and thus are easier to transmit between
> people. That's why chinese whispers doesn't work very well at
> retaining fidelity, but chinese checkers does.
>
> In the very real McLuhan sense, for memes the medium is the message.
> Which means that understanding, for example the 20th century will be
> significantly easier, in some senses, for historians of the far
> future, than it is for historians today to understand stone-age
> culture. The meme machines are the artefacts we leave behind us, not
> us.
>
Actually, the cave painting riddle might well have been solved. I refer
you to:
The Shamans of Prehistory: Trance and Magic in the Painted
Caves
by Jean Clottes, J. David Lewis-Williams
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
The most obvious question about cave art is why is it there, and
Clottes, a prehistoric rock art expert associated with the French
ministry of culture, and Lewis-Williams, a South African
professor of cognitive archaeology, propose an elegant answer in
this beautifully illustrated volume. They begin by documenting
the universality of certain cave art images, then suggest that these
paintings are shamanic in nature. They make their case in a fresh
and lucid discussion of the methods shamans use to achieve
altered states of consciousness in order to get in touch with the
spiritual realm, then, shifting to a neuropsychological perspective,
characterize the types of hallucinations experienced at the three
main stages of trance: geometric shapes, objects of religious or
emotional significance, and visions of animals, monsters, and
people. The three sets of visions are depicted gracefully on cave
walls deep beneath the surface of the earth, the perfect setting for
a journey to another world. This is a handsome and quietly
thrilling solution to an old and essential mystery. Donna Seaman
>
> Vincent
>
>
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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