TED Community » Genevieve von Petzinger

More About Me

I'm passionate about

I'm passionate about my research! I am very curious about when our ancestors started tapping into their full "human potential", and I study the earliest examples of Ice Age art looking for answers...

An idea worth spreading

What does it mean to be human? What is it about our species that sets us apart from every other living creature past and present on this planet? The short answer is our creative impulse, our ability to perceive life in an abstract, symbolic manner, and our desire to communicate these ideas to others. But where did this urge come from and how long ago did it start? The "creative explosion" seems to have begun almost 100,000 years ago in Africa with jewellery and decorated portable objects. Rock art appears in several parts of the world around 40,000 years ago, and is seen to be one of the best indicators of symbolic thought. I study the geometric signs found in nearly all European Ice Age rock art sites, and I believe that the abstract nature of these symbols could be the key to figuring out where this practice was 'invented', as well as helping us to understand how information was transmitted across space and time.

Talk to me about

Ancient rock art, the Ice Age, cognitive evolution

Comments

• TEDCred score: +53.30 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A reply on Conversation: The debate about Graham Hancock's talk

  Mar 19 2013: Pandelis - I am going to ignore the tone of your second comment other than to note than I am a full time mother and full time PhD student and I don't think that a 2-3 hour delay in responding on a weekday afternoon is an unreasonable length of time.
  
  In regards to your question about TED's right to delete a talk off of a youtube channel affiliated with them, I don't pretend for a moment to know the whole story of what went into that decision, but I do think that as a private organization they have the right to maintain curatorial control of content associated with them. The beauty of the internet is that it is wonderfully vast and there is space for all sorts of ideas to be shared, but I don't think that a private individual or organization should be forced to include content on their website that they are not comfortable with (whatever the reason).
• +4

  A comment on Conversation: The debate about Graham Hancock's talk

  Mar 19 2013: Part 3: While he is totally entitled to his opinion, having read his book Supernatural I know that he has read a lot of the literature from my field and is aware that this interpretation is not as clear cut as he made it sound. (This could again have to do with the time constraint and he may have stated this differently if he had more time to elaborate). Now all of this doesn’t mean that the question of whether shamanistic practices inspired some of the ancient art isn’t worth exploring, and in fact I happen to be currently working on a project that is asking that exact question. My area of specialty is the geometric signs found at Ice Age rock art sites in Europe, and since some of the images most closely associated with trance visions are abstract (grids, lines, dots, zigzags, spirals, etc.) and are universal based on what our eyes are hardwired to see while in an altered state, this question interests me. These shapes are called entoptics, and in his research, Lewis-Williams brings in literature from the field of neuropsychology to suggest that this hardwiring might allow us to understand the motivations of ancient people since their eyes would have worked the same way as ours. I am testing this hypothesis by looking for the presence of entoptic shapes in the caves, and while you will have to stay tuned for my final conclusions since the study is ongoing, I can say that the results so far are mixed (e.g. spirals are almost non-existent this far back). If you are interested in learning more, the TEDx talk I did last November happens to be about how an archaeologist like me could approach such a subjective research question, and while the TEDx organizers were having some sound problems that day, it is watchable, so feel free to check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zgwz_m7sRs
  
  Thank you TED for giving me a venue to participate in this discussion and thank you Graham for giving me an excuse to talk about my favorite subject!
• +3

  A comment on Conversation: The debate about Graham Hancock's talk

  Mar 19 2013: Part 2: Lewis-Williams has suggested that shamanistic practices could explain some of the art some of the time, but has never claimed that it will provide some sort of grand unified theory that would explain all of it – so thank you Graham for being accurate in your phrasing :). One thing that I do wish that Graham had mentioned though was that much of L-W’s ethnographic work comes from his research on the San People from South Africa who still actively produce rock art, and while they themselves say that the art is the result of shamanistic visions, they do not do drugs to reach this altered state. They use rhythmic drumming and ritual dance, which leads to my point that there are many ways to achieve an altered state of consciousness, and there is currently no evidence for Ice Age peoples from Europe having ingested mushrooms or any other type of mind altering substance. (By evidence I am referring to the lack of pollen samples from archaeological layers - we have been able to identify lots of other plants this way). Now this didn’t mean that they didn’t take hallucinogenics, just that we have no proof and anyone who has spent any time in caves can tell you that they make pretty excellent sensory deprivation chambers all on their own!
  
  
  
  Also, some of the imagery often associated with shamanistic visions like hand prints on the wall might have been done for other reasons (hunting sign language, signature mark, etc.), and there is even one example in France of a toddler’s handprint high up on a wall (and there are other handprints made by kids). I doubt that they were feeding their small children hallucinogenics, so this goes back to my earlier comment that shamanism probably does not explain all of the art all of the time. The only statement that Graham made in relation to rock art which I do disagree with is when he said that the art clearly details people’s visions.
  
  
  
  Continued below… (the next post is the last one I promise!)
• +5

  A comment on Conversation: The debate about Graham Hancock's talk

  Mar 19 2013: Part 1: As a TED Senior Fellow and a rock art researcher, I wanted to comment on Graham Hancock’s talk. I think it is important to frame this comment by saying that I am a big supporter of TED (pretty obvious since I am a TED Fellow LOL!) and that I really admire their willingness to let us have this conversation. To me, true censorship would have been if they pulled down the talk and never mentioned it again. I also wanted to say that having done a 4 minute Fellows talk and a 3 minute main stage talk at TED Global 2011 plus recently having done a 18 minute TEDx talk, I totally get how hard it is to get across your ideas clearly and accurately in such a short time span, and I am sure that Graham felt the same way. Much of his talk is about his personal journey and his opinions about governmental control of certain substances (don’t necessarily disagree with a lot of what he said about drugs that are currently illegal – I am from the West Coast of Canada and the legalization debate is alive and well in my part of the world) and I don’t have any comment on that, but I would like to take a couple of moments to clarify some of the remarks he made about Ice Age rock art at the beginning of his talk.
  
  This art was created between 10,000 and 40,000 years ago by our distant ancestors, and the truth of the matter is that we have no idea why they did the art, nor are we ever likely to know for sure since the people who made it have been dead for at least 10,000 years, so there is no one for us to ask (modern peoples who still make art do it for a variety of reasons, so it’s not like there is some universal explanation that we could easily extrapolate back that far). I was happy to see that Graham was careful in how he mentioned that it was only a possibility that shamanism could explain the art, as this is also the stance taken by rock art researcher David Lewis-Williams (who Graham mentioned).
  
  Continued below…

• A reply on Conversation: LIVE chat with Lucianne Walkowicz on extrasolar planets and how that affects life on Earth, September 15, 1-3pm EDT.

  Sep 15 2011: I love the fish tank analogy Lucianne! I hear what you are saying about being "in it together" - my husband and I have often speculated that the only thing that could suddenly bring us together as a species (i.e. end conflicts, etc.) would actually be the discovery of a totally different species of intelligent life, suddenly we would have a new "them" :). I am not really as cynical as I sound though, and like other contributors to this conversation, I have high hopes that our species will move past some of our current issues and embrace the idea of being part of something much bigger than we are.
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: LIVE chat with Lucianne Walkowicz on extrasolar planets and how that affects life on Earth, September 15, 1-3pm EDT.

  Sep 15 2011: Hi Lucianne - great question! I think the search for planets like ours does have an interesting impact on our everyday existence for a couple of different reasons. First, every time the discovery of a new "earth-like" planet happens, people like me get really excited...and then I remember that I won't be alive by the time we are able to verify this type of thing by actually travelling there :). But kidding aside, I love to think about the possibilities, so please do keep the discoveries coming!
  
  The second thing I see happening when new planets are announced is of course the possibility of there being life elsewhere in the galaxy - for me personally, I am certain there is life out there, so it gets me really excited to think about it, but then there is also that moment of what are the actual implications of there being life elsewhere, what does that say about us, how do we fit in to this, etc.? Hope that makes sense!
  
  I definitely do react every time another planet is found, and thinking about all of the possibilities is a fun exercise (my husband likes thinking about it too, so great conversations always ensue). The work you do really fires the imagination, and with so many people on earth focusing on the daily problems of our planet, it seems like space is often ignored in favour of what is happening in the present closer to home. It is a breath of fresh air to know there are people out there with a larger vision who are actually doing research that could impact the long-term viability of our species - keep up the great work!!

• A comment on Conversation: Is the urge to create art a universal human quality, or did a group of people 'invent' it (say, prior to humans leaving Africa)?

  Jul 19 2011: Before this conversation closes, I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for their thoughts and contributions! As I mentioned above, there really aren't any right or wrong answers, and many of the points that you made are ones that are currently being debated in my field of research from a wide range of perspectives.
  
  While we may not have any certain answers to these questions at the moment, it certainly is fun to speculate, and I hope that all of you enjoyed participating in this process with me. I had a lot of fun - thank you for making it a lively discussion!
• +1

  A reply on Conversation: Is the urge to create art a universal human quality, or did a group of people 'invent' it (say, prior to humans leaving Africa)?

  Jul 19 2011: Beautifully put Lindsay - do you think then that this is something that is specific to modern humans, or that it is possible that earlier hominid species like Homo erectus might also have had this urge to express?
  
  As well, our cousins (and in some cases distant ancestors!), the Neanderthals did things like bury their dead with ochre sprinkled over the grave, so while they didn't actually make art, they did behave in more symbolic ways - do you think they may also have had this artistic quality, or do you see it as being distinctly human?

• A reply on Conversation: Is the urge to create art a universal human quality, or did a group of people 'invent' it (say, prior to humans leaving Africa)?

  Jul 19 2011: Thanks for your thoughts Richard - so do you think then that creating art is a universal human quality?

• A reply on Conversation: Is the urge to create art a universal human quality, or did a group of people 'invent' it (say, prior to humans leaving Africa)?

  Jul 19 2011: Great question Khaled...but unfortunately I don't have any answers :(. I am afraid that dance is not something that we can get at through the archaeological record, because it doesn't leave any permanent artifacts, but with that said, we do have early evidence for music, so maybe that could be connected to dance indirectly? Please see my response to Joe Delsen below for a listing of what early evidence we have for music so far...