The Origin Of Humankind Richard Lekey Summary

In his book The Origin of Humankind, Richard Leakey is convinced that the images depicted in Paleolithic art reflect more than their everyday diet, or environment. Paintings of chimera-like creatures are evidence that these paintings are “greatly mediated by cognitive reflection” (Leakey 109). Leakey’s most interesting attempt to uncover exactly what these drawings represent is when he explores the idea that Paleolithic paintings represent hallucinations. The author relates Paleolithic art to art from the San people to further develop the theory about hallucinations. San art was a representation of what the people saw during their hallucinations, and Leakey believes that Paleolithic art represented that same thing. To prove this idea, Leakey talks about the three different stages of hallucinations. In the first stage, the person sees geometric shapes, and in the second stage the individual starts to view these shapes “as real objects” (Leakey 115). In the third stage of hallucination, different images can be seen, and …show more content…
Agriculture began because of population density, along with climate change. In the book The Great Human Diasporas, Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza claims that dense populations “exceeded the limit for survival,” which led them to abandon hunting and gathering for agriculture (140). The changing global environment further fueled this change. The rise of agriculture originated in three different regions, including the Middle East, China, and South America. The domestication of cereals first evolved in the Middle East, and later spread to different areas throughout Europe, as well as northern Africa. Agriculture spread throughout China as well, and Cavalli-Sforza claims that “millet-farming villages” from the Neolithic period have been discovered in the area (142). In Mexico, about 8,000 years ago, many kinds of crops were being cultivated, including