Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “The First Signs: Unlocking the Mysteries of the World's Oldest Symbols” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

The First Signs: Unlocking the Mysteries of the World's Oldest Symbols

Genevieve von Petzinger

3.95 · Rating details · 317 ratings · 68 reviews

One of the most significant works on our evolutionary ancestry since Richard Leakey’s paradigm-shattering Origins, The First Signs is the first-ever exploration of the little-known geometric images that accompany most cave art around the world—the first indications of symbolic meaning, intelligence, and language.

Imagine yourself as a caveman or woman. The place: Europe. Th ...more

Get A Copy

Hardcover, 307 pages

Published May 31st 2016 by Atria Books (first published March 29th 2016)

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about The First Signs, please sign up.

Be the first to ask a question about The First Signs

Lists with This Book

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language by David W. Anthony

411 books — 153 voters

The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown

books from TED

92 books — 372 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 3.95 ·

Rating details

· 317 ratings · 68 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of The First Signs: Unlocking the Mysteries of the World's Oldest Symbols

May 30, 2016 Wanda rated it really liked it

Shelves: female-authors, read-in-2016, anthropology, public-library, linguistics-languages, non-fiction, canadian-eh

I’ve been fascinated with cave art since I was about 11 or 12 years old. I blame Children’s Digest. I don’t know who started my subscription to that periodical, but it started quite an assortment of interests which I still read about whenever possible. I distinctly remember a story about a young girl who fell in a hole in Spain and accidentally discovered the Altimira cave system, with its profusion of cave paintings.

So imagine my frenzied fangirl squee-ing when I discovered that one of the lead I’ve been fascinated with cave art since I was about 11 or 12 years old. I blame Children’s Digest. I don’t know who started my subscription to that periodical, but it started quite an assortment of interests which I still read about whenever possible. I distinctly remember a story about a young girl who fell in a hole in Spain and accidentally discovered the Altimira cave system, with its profusion of cave paintings.

So imagine my frenzied fangirl squee-ing when I discovered that one of the leading researchers into the meaning of the abstract & geometrical cave paintings & engravings is a woman and a Canadian. Colour me impressed. And she’s young—there will be more to come from this researcher.

Studying the symbols in cave art seems to be a field whose time has come. This book is partially a travelogue, detailing many of the caves that the author has explored and the symbols recorded. Now that computers are up to the task of keeping track of age, place and position of each symbol, patterns can be discerned and intriguing theories can be concocted. The author is careful to tell us that she hasn’t “translated” these signs yet, but progress is being made. I think it is incredible that there are only 32 basic signs used and that they show pattern and purpose.

One of her most interesting theories is that this “vocabulary” of symbols came with the first humans to Europe and wasn’t invented on the spot. Researchers must turn their eyes back to Africa to see if the beginnings of this tradition can be sussed out.

Also of note (although disappointing to me personally), is that these symbols are probably not entoptic phenomena (visual effects that have their genesis in the eye with no outside stimulation). I’ve seen entoptic effects during visual migraines and they are frightening until you realize what they are. They are flashing arrows, zigzags, circles, Xs, etc. that (for me anyway) were produced when my neck muscles clenched so tightly that input to the optic nerve was cut off. Not only did I think I was going blind, but I was seeing neon-flashing symbols! An earlier theory had postulated that cave artists were merely transcribing their own entoptic symbols from either the sensory deprivation of long, dark cave meditations or from drug-induced trances. The statistics just don’t support this interpretation, however, as the symbols aren’t evenly spread. Unless these cave artists just ignored some symbols, they should all be represented.

A very enjoyable read, clearly written and accessible to those of us who haven’t been keeping up with the research in the field. Now, more than ever, seeing some original cave art is on my bucket list.
...more

flag 13 likes · Like · see review

Jul 20, 2016 Todd Stockslager rated it liked it

Shelves: history

Review title: Over promised, under delivered

A better subtitle for this book might be: "Unlocking the mysteries of how subtitles mislead and why." It's not that Von Petzinger has written poorly, but she was unable to deliver on the unrealistic and untrue promise of the subtitle. I certainly picked up the book from my library's new book shelf based on the promise of the mystery solved, and was underwhelmed by the reality of the undelivered promise.

So, context: The first signs are geometric symbol Review title: Over promised, under delivered

A better subtitle for this book might be: "Unlocking the mysteries of how subtitles mislead and why." It's not that Von Petzinger has written poorly, but she was unable to deliver on the unrealistic and untrue promise of the subtitle. I certainly picked up the book from my library's new book shelf based on the promise of the mystery solved, and was underwhelmed by the reality of the undelivered promise.

So, context: The first signs are geometric symbols that are often part of Ice Age (10,000 + years ago) cave art wall paintings, which are better known for representations of large mammals (mammoths, bison, horses, deer) and hand prints in red and black paint. Von Petzinger was intrigued by the symbols, and wondered if they were common across the hundreds (350+ known in Europe and more still being found) of these sites and if patterns of usage emerged that might reveal meaning. So she scoured the literature and conducted her own explorations to create a database of the types of symbols and their locations, eventually identifying 32 symbols like cruciforms (crosses), dots, lines, ovals, triangles, and zigzags that appeared in multiple places.

Von Petzinger spends the larger part of her book describing her intellectual and geographic journey to this point, and it is an interesting tale--but in the back of my mind I'm waiting for mysteries to be unlocked. What do these symbols mean? Are they language? When she finally arrives at the point of that discussion over half way through the book I learned what I had already expected: the mystery would not be solved, not because Von Petzinger wasn't a good writer or for lack of knowledge or research. Far from it. What she has done is start to gather the data and ask the right questions, which in itself is an interesting journey, but a subtitle that reads "gathering the data and asking the right questions" isn't likely to make any book fly off the shelves no matter how well written.

Knowing that authors often have no control over their book titles as published, I have to wonder if Von Petzinger argued for a different subtitle. She certainly doesn't write like a sensationalist popular nonfiction writer, more like an earnest teacher eager to show her class the journey to the knowledge she is revealing so the class can really grasp the subject and want to learn more. She never oversells her findings and theories, in fact backs away from some potential inferences because the data can't prove them (unlike some science writers might do for a good subtitle!).

So I wouldn't recommend readers to stay away from The First signs, but rather to read it focused on the journey to and through the data and the theories that Von Petzinger is formulating to organize it. Read The First signs, then look for the followup, hopefully in a few short years, after she is able to gather more data, refine her theories, and have confidence that the data enables them to really unlock the mysteries. ...more

flag 9 likes · Like · see review

Sep 12, 2017 Iset rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: palaeolithic-2-6m-to-12000bce-factu

I have to admit I picked this book up under the totally unfounded assumption that it would be about the Neolithic Vinca symbols. For the uninitiated, the Vinca culture is a society from the Balkans that flourished c. 5700 – 4800 BCE, which left behind mysterious symbols on their artefacts that could well be the world’s first writing system; a good two thousand or so years before the earliest examples of Egyptian hieroglyphs or Sumerian cuneiform.

But in actual fact Von Petzinger goes way beyond t
I have to admit I picked this book up under the totally unfounded assumption that it would be about the Neolithic Vinca symbols. For the uninitiated, the Vinca culture is a society from the Balkans that flourished c. 5700 – 4800 BCE, which left behind mysterious symbols on their artefacts that could well be the world’s first writing system; a good two thousand or so years before the earliest examples of Egyptian hieroglyphs or Sumerian cuneiform.

But in actual fact Von Petzinger goes way beyond this to the Upper Palaeolithic (c. 50,000 – 10,000 BCE), examining the mass of material from Europe’s Ice Age caves, rock art, and incised portable objects; specifically, the mysterious geometric signs. This is far beyond what I would have expected, and it’s fair to say it’s a challenge and then some, considering the languages are lost (even Proto-Indo-European takes us back only as far as 4500 BCE). So, the big question – is it a writing system? Well… no. After tireless cataloguing and data analysis, Von Petzinger clearly states that we are not yet at a writing system with these signs. For starters, the limited number of signs and the relative lack of complex combinations couldn’t possibly render all the permutations of a spoken language. More likely, the symbols communicate limited concepts to the group that created them, but do not represent language.

That disappointment out of the way, I’m impressed with Von Petzinger’s work. Not only is the book clearly and informatively written, but her quality as a researcher shows. It’s considered the mark of a good and rigorous piece of academia to examine, acknowledge, and deconstruct alternative hypotheses. This allows the reader to make up their mind independently, consult other interpretations, and weigh the arguments for why this hypothesis may be more accurate than others. Personally, I think Von Petzinger makes a good case for why the symbols should not be interpreted as either entoptic, shamanic art or binary male/female symbolism. The former simply isn’t supported by the forms and instances of the signs, which rarely align with known entoptic imagery, and the latter proposition seems to rely far too heavily on late 20th century interpretative bias with no evidence to confirm that the art is divided in this way at all.

Von Petzinger also gains big points, at least in my book, for siding with palaeogeneticist Stephen Oppenheimer and arguing against the ‘creative explosion’. The ‘creative explosion’ is the idea by some academics that the wondrous cave art in Europe from c. 50,000 BCE onwards must have come about by some change in our brains, society, or other development – they use this notion to explain the impressive artwork and the apparent lack of such striking art before that date and elsewhere in the world. Personally, I’ve always seriously doubted the existence of a ‘creative explosion’ since anatomically we are the same as the Homo sapiens that evolved in Africa c. 200,000 BCE, and so little exploration and excavation has been done in other Stone Age sites compared to Europe that it seems eminently plausible to suggest that such discoveries are still forthcoming. Oppenheimer’s Out of Eden notes that the ‘creative explosion’ hypothesis makes no sense genetically because a gene switching on is not a prerequisite to our creative expression, and the proposition would rely on such genes somehow spreading back into Africa and across the rest of the world in order for anyone else to be capable of such extraordinary artistic outpourings – which of course is absurd and not the case at all. Von Petzinger directly examines some of the sites outside Europe and dating to earlier than 50,000 BCE to demonstrate convincingly that people had a well-developed sense of symbolic thought and creative expression long before Homo sapiens ever reached Europe.

I would recommend this book to both beginners and academics alike. It’s of genuine interest to me as the first collective analysis attempted of these signs, and thus brings something distinctly new and worthwhile to the field, whilst Von Petzinger’s writing style is accessible and she clearly explains to beginners how the scientific techniques used work. I would therefore deem it suitable for both.

8 out of 10 ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Jan 13, 2017 Emily Regier rated it it was amazing

If you are even .5% interested in cave art, this work will hook you from the very start. She writes with such casual intellect, almost like she's telling you about her research over coffee on a Tuesday. By the end of the book, I felt this weird sense of pride for this woman I don't even know and the work she's done. She's transcending colleagues in her field and isn't daunted by the incredible challenge her work actually represents. I hope to see more work from her in the future. ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Aug 13, 2017 Sarah rated it liked it

Shelves: nonfiction, library-reads, 2017-challenge-books

I'm not sure on the rating of this one. It was a real drag for me to get through, but I think that was due to what else was going on in my life at the time. I do feel like she should have given the relevance of the signs in the first or second chapter instead of speaking about it in the last half of the book. It would have helped the book overall to understand a lot of what she was saying early on.
That being said, the ideas and theories that she presents boggle the mind. Or at least mine. As un ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Oct 24, 2020 Kaitlyn rated it really liked it

Really enjoyed the stories and learnings in this book! If you're into prehistory, early humans or cave art this is definitely a great overview of much of the field. My only issue was that after all this setup and literature review, Von Petzinger's thesis seemed a bit rushed at the end. I walked away asking "What was her main point again??". I'll continue to look out for her work, she is a great communicator of this fascinating area. ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Apr 23, 2018 Jacques Coulardeau rated it really liked it · review of another edition

THIS BOOK IS DANGEROUSLY LIMITED

Genevieve von Petzinger is young for sure and she has just finished her Ph.D., but she is connected to National Geographic in their Paleoanthropology department, which is supposed to be a good affiliation. You will surely be interested in many of the information she gathered about rock art and the personal research she did on collecting all geometric or iconic signs present in Homo Sapiens caves in Europe. But the book is not up to the research in the field of the THIS BOOK IS DANGEROUSLY LIMITED

Genevieve von Petzinger is young for sure and she has just finished her Ph.D., but she is connected to National Geographic in their Paleoanthropology department, which is supposed to be a good affiliation. You will surely be interested in many of the information she gathered about rock art and the personal research she did on collecting all geometric or iconic signs present in Homo Sapiens caves in Europe. But the book is not up to the research in the field of the last ten or fifteen years, at times even more.

First of all, her locking her personal research onto Europe is of course very dubious and definitely unacceptable in our global world. Then her coverage of Africa is only collecting information about what others have done, and yet her only one-time mention of Sally McBrearty is very strange because Sally McBrearty spoke very loudly against two myths in this field of research. First she rejected the idea of a Neolithic agricultural revolution for one main reason: it took a long time and personally I will amplify what she said and published and add that Homo Sapiens, particularly when he started migrating out of BLACK Africa, had to take care, the very first form of cultivation, of the natural garden to make sure he was able to survive and expand in his various new environments. Their food has been identified from research on their teeth and it shows an extremely varied food and what’s more Neanderthals shows the same phenomenon, though maybe at a less developed level. We do not know about Denisovans.

The second thing Sally McBrearty was very critical of is the idea of a cognitive revolution somewhere around 50,000 BCE, and the connection some insist on about a possible genetic change, mutations at the time and particularly the FOXP2 gene. I have amplified this approach and I just ask a simple question: what genetic mutations were naturally selected to enable Homo Sapiens to become a bipedal long distance fast runner since his leaving the forest and his coming down into the savanna required that evolution? And I found out that all the elements these cognitive revolutionaries are putting on the table are all necessary genetic mutations for Homo Sapiens to become that bipedal long distance fast runner which was absolutely indispensable if he wanted to survive in the savanna.

The collateral side effect of these mutations is that Homo Sapiens was able to multiply the vowels he could utter and the consonants he could articulate. He could then develop human articulated language that counts three articulations. The first one based on the rotation of vowels and consonants was not possessed by monkeys but we do not know whether Neanderthals and Denisovans had it and if the common ancestors of these two Hominins species plus Homo Sapiens had also developed this rotation of vowels and consonants, this first articulation. I believe they had because they needed a full communicational system, hence an articulated language, even with only one articulation and not the three of our languages, to be able to plan, organize, control and guide the migrations they all were engaged in. The common ancestors to the Middle East and to Central Asia-Mongolia-Siberia where Neanderthals and Denisovans were to evolve, and of course Neanderthals who migrated from the Middle East to the whole of Europe and Denisovans who also migrated from Central Asia to a vast zone in Asia, though their presence in Asia is far from being fully documented.

But Genevieve von Petzinger is short on a few other subjects. She does not study the THREE basic migrations out of BLACK Africa and thus she misses the linguistic problem of the three migrations: Semitic languages first, isolating languages second, and agglutinative and synthetic-analytical languages third. She is so ignorant on this subject that she does not know about the vast research of Theo Vennemann who proved, I repeat proved, Old Homo Sapiens in Europe, the Homo Sapiens of the Ice Age that von Petzinger is considering, spoke a set of Turkic agglutinative languages and nothing else. She neglects the fact that a great number of rivers and geographical areas are still using names that can be traced to Basque or Turkish, hence to Turkic roots. It is these people who painted the caves in Europe.

If she had opened her interest to Indonesia (Sulawesi), to Asia in general, to the Americas and to Africa, she would have found out that rock art is in no way European and it might even be older in some other continents. The author should check the site of the Bradshaw Foundation and she would be able to open up her approach to the whole world. But Sulawesi in Indonesia only would have provided her with the idea that most hands in these caves are female hands and that would have helped her to avoid her minimization of the role of women that she shifts from 75% to nothing but equal, from a 3 to 1 dominance to an equal contribution. This pushing aside of women’s role in these rock art paintings helps the author NOT TO CONSIDER the basic and vital (meaning survival) division of labor of women in Ice Age societies and probably in all Homo Sapiens societies till their emergence 300,000 BCE, that made women the central group in their societies that could 1- be clear about the rejection of inbreeding (a natural characteristic common to at least all mammals); 2- be clear on the role of women in delivering and raising the necessary children who will assume the survival of the community, of the species and their expansion; 3- the spiritual role women played in these societies.

Without falling into the Babel Biblical ranting and raving of some (like Chris Hegg) about the real existence of one unique language before Babel and its tower, I must admit that Genevieve von Petzinger did waste a lot of time about transferring the San hunter-gatherer community in South Africa today and their shamanistic practice, reinforced by the entoptic universal sign theory that is at least debatable, onto the Homo Sapiens communities of Europe during the Ice Age, to come to the conclusion that we cannot conclude these Homo Sapiens had any kind of shamanistic practice. When you come to such a conclusion in your research it is good to drop the research itself and look for another approach.

The other approach is in de Saussure and his theory of the linguistic sign. For Genevieve von Petzinger, in spite of chapter 12 that is purely superficially unthought-through linguistic amateurish prose, Homo Sapiens is mainly MUTE, which he was not. He had a fully developed communicational tool called language that had three deep articulations in this particular case in Europe and it is obvious – meaning absolutely unavoidable and inescapable – that the geometric and maybe iconic signs in the caves along with the hands and all the paintings corresponded to a “word” or “discursive linguistic entity” that had an oral signifier and a semantic signified (meaning) and that Homo Sapiens superimposed onto this linguistic sign a pictographic or geometric sign that was, in fact, a visual signifying superimposed onto the dual linguistic sign. We do not know what these signs mean because we do not know what linguistic signs are behind, and we might never know, but it is not scientifically acceptable to transfer a modern world shamanistic practice onto another practice that is at least 45,000 years older. Such retrospective transfer is a methodological mistake that disqualifies eventual conclusions.

Luckily Genevieve von Petzinger herself concludes that is worth nothing, that no shamanism can be proved. So why on earth did she write and published all these pages on something that is worth nothing? I am in the process of publishing a much longer study on this book because it is dangerously misleading for younger researchers, or a younger audience, who may let themselves be lured by such pages and chapters.

Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
...more

flag Like · see review

Aug 23, 2017 Robyn rated it it was amazing

FULL REVIEW WITH AMAZING, JAW-DROPPING, HEART-STOPPING GIFS HERE AT THE OLD BLOGGO

Hey hey, cupcakes. It’s been a minute. Blame that chubby little muthafucka Cupid, whose golden arrow hath pierced my once-frigid heart and set it ablaze with Love’s undying flames. Or whatever.

Ahem. MOVING ON.

So as I’ve mentioned (*cough* whined about) before, my brain has got a severe case of the Love-Struck Stupids (band name, write that down) and my Goodreads challenge is taking a hit. And, you know, my intellec ...more

flag Like · see review

Jul 11, 2018 Kim Miller-Davis rated it it was amazing

This was an absolutely fascinating read about our ancient human ancestors and the mysteries they left behind on the walls of caves. After showing Petzinger's Ted Talk to my Humanities students last fall, I ordered this from Amazon, but somehow never got around to reading it until now. Yesterday, after showing the Ted Talk to my Summer students, I walked straight to my bookcase, picked it up, and became completely immersed.

Petzinger's book chronicles her trek to Paleolithic cave art sites throug ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Oct 14, 2016 Mary Soderstrom rated it it was amazing

This is an extremely important book about how humans developed in our far distant past. Told in an engaging, yet authoritative way, it probably is the most thought-provoking book I've read in months. ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jun 23, 2017 Phillias rated it really liked it

cloak and dagger history, approachable read, voluminous data and information, but no new or conclusive declarations. Good primer.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Oct 23, 2020 David Koerner rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

In “The First Signs,” Genevieve von Petzinger recounts her survey of symbols in European Pleistocene cave painting. She delivers much more, however. I first became aware of her work through her popular Ted talk (
https://www.ted.com/speakers/geneviev...). In the book, she explains her research tallying and classifying “non-figurative” symbols in more detail. While these symbols are not thought to constitute “writing,” per se, they may presage its origins by tens of thousands of years. To set the In “The First Signs,” Genevieve von Petzinger recounts her survey of symbols in European Pleistocene cave painting. She delivers much more, however. I first became aware of her work through her popular Ted talk (
https://www.ted.com/speakers/geneviev...). In the book, she explains her research tallying and classifying “non-figurative” symbols in more detail. While these symbols are not thought to constitute “writing,” per se, they may presage its origins by tens of thousands of years. To set the stage, von Petzinger spends worthwhile time recounting what is known about the evolution of culture in Pleistocene man going back a few hundred thousand years. This review alone is worth the price of the book!!

The discovery of cave art and music artifacts in Europe dates from about 50,000 years ago, well after the first appearance of anatomically modern humans (~300,000 years ago). This has led to the notion of a cultural explosion at the later time, wherein modern bodies belatedly acquired modern minds. Von Petzinger points out, however, that this “explosion” may be the result of migration to Europe and to a Euro-centered set of observations. The discovery of ochre pigments and bead jewelry in Africa dates back much earlier and suggests that the “modern” human mind may have co-existed with modern human bodies well in advance of the putative “explosion.”

Von Petzinger deliciously recounts her cave explorations, and one gets a feel for just how much evidence of Pleistocene culture is out there: over 300 painted caves in Europe alone. A vivid picture emerges in which Ice Age hunter-gatherer humans are wandering about Europe from 60,000 years ago. The narrative provides welcome relief from the popular notion that human culture appears in the Middle East out of nowhere about 5-6,000 years ago, a view supported by religious fundamentalists believing in a biblically literal Adam and Eve. In light of Pleistocene archeological evidence, there’s just no excuse for such a view!

“The First Signs” is meticulously notated with end-notes and provides a good foundation for further study. I look forward to future work that documents Pleistocene graphical representations in other parts of the world, especially in the western hemisphere to which humans may have migrated as early as 20,000 years ago. Pleistocene culture comprises a fascinating story that is just beginning to unfold! ...more

flag Like · see review

Mar 08, 2017 Kendra Goldberg rated it really liked it

Shelves: nonfiction

This book is a nonfiction delight, and well written for the layman. Genevieve von Petzinger is extremely talented at writing about her research in a dynamic and captivating way. I have read a lot of nonfiction where the topic is fascinating but the book gets bogged down in jargon and the authors inability to write for a wider audience. I you are using an e-reader, I highly recommend reading this book in a format that allows you to view the images in color.

Confession: In High School I was mildly ...more

flag Like · see review

Aug 17, 2017 Mary rated it it was amazing

At the intersection of art history, archaeology, semiotics, and the origin of writing lies First Signs. This delightful book is scholarly yet personable, scientific but also funny. Von Petzinger is a genius at distilling complex ideas and theories into a understandable and pleasant narrative-- she literally takes you on the same journeys that she has taken through the European countryside. She describes the landscape as well as the characteristics of each cave she visits-- I really felt like a f ...more

flag Like · see review

Jul 16, 2018 Carissa rated it really liked it

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The cartoonish depiction of “cave” men and women is so far from reality as evident through their art and, it appears, through their use of symbols. To think about life—complex then too— at 40000 years ago!

The author presents scientific information in a way that is accessible to readers not familiar with this deep work. I even laughed out loud at times—in astonishment and amusement both.

I dropped a star because a book about cave art and, more particularly, symbols ...more

flag Like · see review

Feb 26, 2021 Alex Wood rated it really liked it

Very interesting book. For me, the biggest takeaways were the ways that Paleo archaeologist record, process, and analyze prehistoric symbols. Many of my preconceive notion‘s of what signs and symbols mean were proved very very wrong. The fact that color and shape are so important to past peoples was really interesting. I had thought it was somewhat randomized. How these colors and shapes transcend locations and different time periods is amazing.

Another great point is that the author talks about ...more

flag Like · see review

Jun 14, 2016 Vicki M. Z. rated it liked it

I was under the impression that this book had more linguistic aspects and explanations, instead of the mostly archaeological and anthropological explanations it contained. Even then, the author gave a great recounting of her adventures in European caves: descriptions of caves and the surroundings are complete, pictures and notes add to the narration and background information paint an in-depth history for those with close to little knowledge of rock art (aka me). Her brief flashes of humour are ...more

flag Like · see review

Jun 22, 2019 Robert rated it really liked it

The author collected and examined cave art signs, both from existing explorations and newly conducted ones, from around Europe and South Africa. Her premise was that the geometric markings are at least partly symbolic, rather than figurative or random. She collected the markings into 32 specific types/styles, then attempted to understand why they were common in widely separated cave art sites and what they might mean. Most of the book rehashes early hominid archaeology and its relationship to ca ...more

flag Like · see review

Jul 20, 2018 Janta rated it liked it

Shelves: nonfiction-history, nonfiction-science, 2018-ladies-only, 2018-reading-challenge, 2018-nonfiction

An intriguing analysis of non-figurative symbols (i.e., the things that aren't drawings of animals or people) in the rock art of Ice Age Europe. Von Petzinger has some interesting theories, and I hope more research is done into this area. The author's style is mostly pretty readable; my only quibble is that in a few places in the text she switched into present tense. I suppose it was to give a sense of immediacy to the narrative (she used present tense when describing some of her visits to vario ...more

flag Like · see review

Jun 25, 2017 Casey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction

Signs and symbols of our earliest ancestors, how cool is that? The whole book, very well written (grammar, word choice, sentence structure), explores the cognition of humans living 40,000 to 10,000 years ago, but provides no definitive answers---that would be unseemly in a scientist. However, Dr. von Petzinger is unafraid to share her beliefs, her enthusiasm for more research, and the very new method by which she attacked the question of symbolic cognition in ancient humans. She breaks new groun ...more

flag Like · see review

Jul 01, 2019 Warren rated it liked it

I wanted to like this book more. Von Petzinger cataloged symbols found in European cave art before the neolithic revolution and found common symbols across the continent and tens of thousands of years. I thought she would have a part on each symbol, where it was all found and over what time frame. But that didn't happen, she mostly discussed history and other topics. Maybe I went into the book expecting something different than the author's intent, but I read the book with the hopes of learning ...more

flag Like · see review

Oct 22, 2018 Marcella rated it it was ok

I enjoyed reading this but I think it could've been half the length. I enjoyed the content, but towards the end I felt that I was re-reading information. It was a cool book, though! Maybe better as a TED talk :)

One thing I thought the author did remarkably well was to explain a vast field of research for general consumption. She covered many tricks of the trade but wove them into the narrative without overwhelming the untrained reader. The footnotes were also full of useful references.

Overall, ...more

flag Like · see review

Jan 21, 2021 Elisa rated it liked it

While there were many interesting tidbits of knowledge, I felt the book lacked an over-arching thesis. She kept introducing new hypotheses about meaning, only to prove them inadequate. In the end, the main through-line seemed to be the ever-increasing size of her data pool. It was particularly hard to listen to as I kept feeling the need for examples of the drawings she was discussing. The ending was particularly disappointing. I actually re-listened to the conclusion FOUR times, each time think ...more

flag Like · see review

Oct 17, 2017 Jessica Liew rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favourite-books, history, pre-history

This book is about so much more than the geometric signs in cave art. It is a well-structured examination of the origins of human intellect and creativity. Von Petzinger's examination of the evidence is thorough and engaging. It is rare that I would say I found it hard to put a non-fiction book down, but her writing style was very accessible and enjoyable. Anyone with an interest in prehistoric art and society will find this book to be worth the read. ...more

flag Like · see review

Aug 22, 2018 Fred Rose rated it liked it

Shelves: history-biography

Sort of a written version of a TED talk. Solid science but not written like a typical science book ("the hair on the back of my neck stood up") which is ok for the most part. I'm supportive of scientists taking a risk and speculating on what something means and how they feel about it. Would like to have seen more about the actual signs and what they could mean. It was covered at the end of the book but could have been more. I guess this indicates how early in the process this work is. ...more

flag Like · see review

Mar 20, 2019 Joyce rated it it was amazing

I love this book. Since first reading John Pfeiffer's "The Creative Explosion" more than 30 years ago, I've tried to read as much as possible about the research into Paleolithic art (books for the lay reader, not professional journals). There's lots going on in that field now, and this book brings it all together and brings it up to date. The author's specific area is the abstract signs used, not just in the European caves but around the world. It's nice to follow her on Facebook too! ...more

flag Like · see review

Nov 13, 2019 Rob Lee rated it liked it

A good general overview of cave art symbols and their development but as other reviewers have said, doesn't quite deliver on the promise of the subtitle.

Whilst the author's project of cataloguing signs and symbols is interesting and worthy, the book isn’t quite the radical rewriting of the history it claims to be.

The chapter on Entopic images hints at a Jungian collective consciousness without taking the final leap. ...more

flag Like · see review

May 15, 2018 Harry rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Many insights into the minds, tools, symbols, and lives of people from our dim past.

A very frank and clear description of the author’s field work in the caves our ancestors visited and beautiful art and symbols. Her accounts engender appreciation of how much like us the people truly were.

flag Like · see review

Jul 28, 2019 Richard Wise rated it it was amazing

Shelves: anthropology

A procative look at prehistory. von Petzinger makes some interesting observations and raises some important questions. Her research into the much overlooked, simple signs, drawn on cave walls may help chart a course toward a more useful view of the intellectual attainment of our far distant ancestors.

flag Like · see review

Oct 18, 2017 Bernie Taylor rated it it was amazing

Von Petzinger digs into the Paleolithic caves and emerges with patterns of thinking from our distant past. Is the Paleolithic mind still our own? (Bernie Taylor - Before Orion: Finding the Face of the Hero)

flag Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 next »