Rock Art Research

The organisation and evolution of the brain is beginning to provide clues as to how, why and when certain crucial behaviours may have arisen in hominins. As palaeoart constitutes evidence of such behaviour, it can therefore be understood within the broader context of hominin evolution as part of a series of connected biopsychosocial events that eventually led to the Upper Palaeolithic representations of animals. Iconic representation is accordingly shown to be linked in complex ways to how ‘representation’ occurred in the evolving brain in relation to the demands and dynamics of the evolutionary niche occupied by hominins.