New discoveries of cave art at Chauvet and elsewhere have produced radiocarbon dates which may seem startlingly early and demand dramatic revision to the traditional stylistic sequence. The authors warn that the radiocarbon dates may themselves need better validation.
In October of 2002, Patricia A. Helvenston and Paul G. Bahn published a paper entitled ‘Desperately Seeking Trance Plants: Testing the “Three Stages of Trance” Model’. That paper presented a critique of the ‘Three Stages of Trance’ model as proposed by J.D. Lewis-Williams and T.A. Dowson in 1988 to account for mental imagery as perceived by people in ‘certain altered states of consciousness’ that they believed inspired Palaeolithic cave art. Helvenston & Bahn chose to publish their paper privately, but supplied the following summary of their argument. It is accompanied here by comments from a neuropsychologist (John L. Bradshaw) and a rock-art specialist (Christopher Chippindale).
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.