Paleolithic Cave Paintings As Eidetic Images

Julian Jaynes, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1979, 2, 605-607.
Reprinted in Marcel Kuijsten (ed.), The Julian Jaynes Collection (Julian Jaynes Society, 2012).

Excerpt: I propose the hypothesis that the well-known cave paintings and engravings at Lascaux, Altamira, and in about a hundred other caves in southern France and northern Spain, dating somewhere between 20,000 and 10,000 B.C., are tracings of eidetic images rather than art in its usual sense. The purpose of this note is to discuss whether Haber’s thorough and welcome revival of the topic sheds any light on this issue, and conversely whether consideration of such a hypothesis suggests new ways to study the still perplexing and inconsistent phenomena of eidetic imagery.