The Cradle of Humanity: Prehistoric Art and Culture collects essays and lectures by Georges Bataille spanning thirty years of research in anthropology, comparative religion, aesthetics, and philosophy. These were neither idle nor idyllic years; the discovery of Lascaux in 1940 coincides with the bloodiest war in history - with new machines of death, Auschwitz, and Hiroshima. Bataille-s reflections on the possible origins of humanity coincide with the intensified threat of its possible extinction.
For Bataille, prehistory is universal history; it is the history of a human community before its fall into separation, into nations and races. The art of prehistory offers the earliest traces of nascent yet fully human consciousness - of consciousness not yet fully separated from natural flora and fauna, or from the energetic forces of the universe. A play of identities, the art of prehistory is the art of a consciousness struggling against itself, of a human spirit struggling
