The Prehistory of Art Therapy Reconsidered

Abstract

Recent archaeological findings and anthropological research extend the timeline for art-making (in all its many forms) much further back into the Palaeolithic Era. The increasingly complex experiences of early humans were conceptualized and communicated metaphorically long before the development of articulate speech. Art-making is a uniquely human behaviour that helped us adapt and survive. Our proclivity for art-making encouraged the expansion of human consciousness. Through art-making Palaeolithic human beings created a symbolic universe that did not previously exist. In the 21st Century, facing new environmental challenges, will we make new art that alters our values and outlook, preparing ourselves for the Ecozoic Era?

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 2 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.