Cave drawings as totem/taxonomyDid alcohol and mood altering substance contribute to human evolution/civilization/development?

I don't think it affected  at the deep evolutionary level.

I also don't think cave drawings etc. were "art" in the modern bourgeois sense of "individual creative expression. " pictures of animals are probably animal taxonomy and kinship totems combined ; non-linear writing.  Not hallucinating Greenwich village artists ; that's an anachronistic error.



Yes I've seen them .Have you read Levi-Strauss's _Savage Mind_ . Stone Age people are botanists ,zoologist a and taxonomists.How about his _Totemism_ ? and I teach my class that ancient Stone Age people were scientists . Also, kinship is the fundamental organizing principle of Stone Age societies , and it is a phylogeny , family "tree," just like the tree of life used to represent taxonomy.

No way they were thinking like modern bourgeois individualist artists, "creating " some individualist expression. 

Just seeing them with a 21st century consciousness , without self -critiquing that consciousness with anthropological knowledge on how fundamental biological and kinship thinking is for foragers will mislead you.


I was an undergrad in Ann Arbor in 1968; you better ask somebody. 

There were discussions of ancient hallucinogenic use in Marshall Sahlins class. I've known about the theory for 40 years. I have after long deliberation concluded the above. 

I also teach the origin , history and structure of writing in my class. I have concluded that it is more like that cave drawings ( 2 dimensional representations of 3 dimensions) were probably a form of pre-linear writing as I say the animals may be a clever combination of biological and kinship taxonomy.
"Just" totems and taxonomy is the opposite of the point. Totems as kinship categories and biological knowledge were profoundly and centrally important for Stone Age people. See Levi-Strauss and Marshall Sahlins.


Modern groups have kinship totems that are different animal species. All animals are related through a common ancestor species ( Darwin); all members of a kin group are related through a common ancestor person ; that is , both are taxonomic structures.



Main way cooking may have affected our biological evolution is to allow selection for smaller teeth and jaws because cooked food requires less chewing . Brain size increase is continuous from Homo erectus ( 2 million years ago) because culture is selected for and bigger brains allow more intelligent use of culture. Discovery of fire may contribute to bigger brain because less teeth and bones in the skull leaves more space for brain size. 

There I just explained your own point better than you did.