Art does matter-vitally-and never more than now. In caves and prehistoric shelters, along the valleys tracing the mighty rivers of the Ice Age, in a war–ravaged village, and in a city church far removed from the country of the caves, Turner finds resonant meaning in what he has always believed to be true. Frederick Turner makes a personal investigation of sanctuaries in France and Spain that the great mythographer Joseph Campbell called the “temple caves,” the earliest known of which contains paintings and engravings more than 32,000 years old, works of art more advanced than the hunting implements by which their creators lived. Read, and take heart!” -William Kittredge, author of The Willow Field In the Land of Temple Caves travels back to the very beginning of Art to assess anew its meanings in the long human story. Beautifully said, humanely thought out, the story he tells is particularly useful in these sorrowful times. Frederick Turner makes a compelling case for civility organized in response to culture–shaping art as our most ancient source of saving graces. “I just plain loved In the Land of Temple Caves. Clottes’s work lifts us from the darkness of our Paleolithic origins to reveal surprising insights into how we think, why we create, why we believe, and who we are Steeped in Clottes’s shamanistic theories of cave painting, What Is Paleolithic Art? travels from well-known Ice Age sites like Chauvet, Altamira, and Lascaux to visits with contemporary aboriginal artists, evoking a continuum between the cave paintings of our prehistoric past and the living rock art of today. Discussing sites and surveys across the world, Clottes offers personal reflections on how we have viewed these paintings in the past, what we learn from looking at them across geographies, and what these paintings may have meant-and what function they may have served-for their artists. What drew our Stone Age ancestors into caves to paint in charcoal and red hematite, to watch the likenesses of lions, bison, horses, and aurochs as they flickered by firelight? Was it a creative impulse, a spiritual dawn, a shamanistic conception of the world? In this book, Jean Clottes, one of the most renowned figures in the study of cave paintings, pursues an answer to the “why” of Paleolithic art. The noted archaeologist explores the varieties of prehistoric cave art across the world and offers surprising insights into its purpose and meaning.