Jean Clottes Margret W. Conkey Francesco d'Errico Henry de Lumley-Woodyear Merlin W. Donald Christopher Stuart Henshilwood David Lewis-Williams Paul Anthony Mellars Steven J. Mithen Jane M. Renfrew Paul S. C. Taçon J. Wentzel van Huyssteen Keith Ward ABOVE ANIMATION#1: The Alpine ibex shown fighting on the wall of a part of Lascaux known as the Axial Gallery are drawn in black (animal on left) and dots of yellow (animal on right). Between them is a rectangular symbol. Above them and to the left of the black ibex are horses, the most numerous of all the animals depicted in Lascaux. Courtesy of Serge deSazo/Rapho ABOVE ANIMATION#2:The largest African antelope, the eland, is depicted in many representational paintings in southern Africa. The animals, like these from Natal Drakensberg above, play an important role in the beliefs of San Bushmen. Courtesy of Jean Clottes ABOVE ANIMATION#3:In Lascaux’s Axial Gallery, small horses, similar to Prjwalski’s horses that could still be found in the nineteenth century in the steppes of Mongolia, gallop across the ceiling. The segment pictured above is part of a grand composition. Courtesy of Serge deSazo/Rapho	Professor of early prehistory and head of the School of Human and Environmental Sciences (SHES) at the University of Reading, Steven J. Mithen has undertaken a wide range of research on late Pleistocene and early Holocene hunter-gathers and has written extensively on the evolution of human cognition. He directed a survey program and excavation on the islands of Islay and Colonsay off the coast of western Scotland for eight years and currently serves as co-director of the Dana-Faynan-Ghuwyer project in southern Jordan. After initially studying at the Slade School of Art, Dr. Mithen went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from the University of Sheffield where he took first-class honors in prehistory and archaeology. He received an M.Sc. in biological computation from the University of York and a Ph.D. in archaeology from Cambridge University in 1987. He remained at Cambridge as a research fellow in archaeology at Trinity Hall and then as lecturer in archaeology and a research associate in archaeology at the McDonald Institute. Joining the Reading archaeology faculty in 1991 as a lecturer, he was named a reader in early prehistory in 1998 and a professor in 2000. He was appointed as the first head of the SHES last year. Dr. Mithen has lectured widely in Britain, continental Europe, and North America, as well as in Jordan and Turkey, and he regularly participates in BBC radio and television science programs. His research has been supported by various organizations and institutions, including Historic Scotland, the British Academy, which awarded him a research readership, the Natural Environment Research Council, the Humanities Research Board, the Arts and Humanities Research Board, the Council for British Research in the Levant, the McDonald Institute, and the European Science Foundation. A fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, the Society of Antiquaries of London, the New England Institute of Cognitive Science, and the Institute for Cultural Research, he serves on the editorial boards of the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, the Journal of Social Archaeology, the Journal of Cognition, and Culture, and the Journal of Evolutionary Psychology. Dr. Mithen has published more than 100 scientific articles and essays in collected volumes and served as the editor of three books. He is the author of Thoughtful Foragers: A Study of Prehistoric Decision Making (1990), The Prehistory of the Mind: A Search for the Origins of Art, Science and Religion (1996), a volume translated into five languages besides English so far, and, most recently, After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000-5,000 B.C., which was published in the United Kingdom last year by Weidenfeld & Nicolson and will be published later this year in the United States by Harvard University Press, with future editions planned for Brazil and Portugal. Dr. Mithen is currently completing a new book for Weidenfeld & Nicolson entitled The Singing Neanderthal: On the Evolution of Music, Language, Body and Mind and editing (with William Finlayson) a volume on their excavations of the Neolithic site of WF16 in Wadi Faynan, Jordan, and their archaeological survey of the region.