Chapter 2. Art and the Brain: Framing Art and the Brain

Topics include:

Deep Time and Deep History
Cave Painting
Trepanation

Excerpt:

I have introduced deep history to set the stage because I am arguing for a definition of history, and an approach that does not depend on the written word, nor rest on what written documents alone say. Using a broader framework when we critically study history, one that allows us to more effectively encompass human creativity in all modes, expands our models. That said, because human experience is a latecomer on the stage, geological history (or deep time), and deep history, offer a nice analogy from which we can begin to think about what multi-dimensional thinking is, what it adds to human life, and how to use it. “Consider the Earth’s history as the old measure of the English yard, the distance from the King’s nose to the tip of his outstretched hand. One stroke of a nail file on his middle finger erases human history” (Gould 1987: 3). How can something that is expansive and hardly noticeable at the same time bring about evolutionary thought? This is the story of human history.

Image Gallery

Fig. 2.1. Animal Painting Located in the Lascaux Cave (France). Photograph courtesy of Professor Saxx.

Fig. 2.2. Trephination. (Cave of Nogert-les-vierges, Neolithic period).

Fig. 2.3. A Surgeon Trephining a Patient’s Cranium. 1678.. Trephination. (Cave of Nogert-les-vierges, Neolithic period). surgeon trephining a patient’s cranium, 1678.