General Background

From fledgling beginnings in 1993, interest in African Archaeology & prehistory developed, exponentially it seemed at first.  Initially I was fascinated by the amount of data coming out of Africa, but there were a number of anomalies – contradictory evidence suggesting that there were other factors at play, I became unconvinced that Africa was our only place of evolutionary origin. Contemplating other comparative evidence from SE Asia and Australia uncovered evidence to support much a wider multi-regional idea for human origins.

By this time, having already enmassed lots of interesting data on Late Quaternary post-glacial environments suggestive of unprecedented environmental and climatic change from the period 13,000 – 11,000 (11,000 – 9,000 BC) years ago to about 4,000 years ago (about 2000 BC), and the repercussions of this upon population dynamics and movement (migrations) of peoples around the Northern African, Egyptian, Near & Middle East (Western Asia), Eastern and Southern Mediterranean fringe following these times, lead me to consider exhibited behaviours, ranging from the development of belief systems to adaptive behaviours.

At the same time, specialising in the Epi-palaeolithic epochs of African Prehistory and human creative expression at this time, it became increasingly apparent that there was now much more to creative expression then simply one-dimensional rock engravings and paintings.

From here, my research has latterly concentrated upon what I term the deeper, more symbolic, archetypal origin of human creativity (‘mythic consciousness’) which lead me to include interdisciplinary studies like human consciousness studies and neuroscience in my research.

Part of the human condition enables us to define our cognitive universe – and, for the purpose of one direction of my research, the innate ability for some of us to live within two or more worlds at the same time - without having being taught, made studying the interphasing between “Unconscious” and “Conscious” (always a popular conversation killer!) a highly controversial but very interesting, engaging topic. Both these States of Being, as a single entity, defined as constituting our earliest recalled memories, the aide memoire offers us the opportunity to rediscover our remembered spatio-dimensional timeline, and what I refer to as Mythogenesis.

Mythogenesis is defined as that very first moment when it finally dawned on humankind (likened to splitting of the atom), the realisation that there existed, at some point in time, a single, most crucial, fundamental Event Horizon, that somehow gave us the mental and intelligent edge over our wild cousins.

The further realisation and comprehension of Self (“me in here”) and Other (“you out there”) that supposedly came along later (this supposition is questioned, however), is not only crucial to the understanding of the human psyche, it also provides us with the best platform from which to launch further research on the ‘Creative Spark’.  This ability, not shared by a great many other animals, aside perhaps from Cetaceans (whales & dolphins) is humankinds’ defining feature.

The creative, symbolic, and sacred expression existed in North Africa from at least 11,000 years ago, and it is my belief that some, not all, of the prehistoric engravings and paintings found here suggests that there existed a alternative ‘hidden’ universe, separate from conscious, ordinary reality, but running parallel to it; I call this the Liminal Space/Liminal Mind Equation; it is here that I conduct my research from.

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