Yes, I have been quiet again, but with good reason. I have been finishing a book manuscript and developing the illustration program, always one of the worst jobs with any book—and archaeology is a picture intensive subject. Add to that the long Christmas break and its distractions. So I have plenty of excuses. Over the holidays, I had a chance to read the paleontologist Dale Guthrie’s magnum opus, The Nature of Paleolithic Art. This is a stupendous work, which draws on Dale’s expertise as a working paleontologist and talented artist. He’s spent a lifetime piecing together bones and other materials to study ancient human behavior and prehistoric environments. His central thesis argues that Cro-Magnon and other Stone Age art is a mode of expression that we can understand much better than we often assume. This is because a natural history perspective is a central part of any interpretation of an art tradition that depicts so many members of the late Ice Age bestiary. The book is really a series of essays that combines ethology, evolutionary biology, and human universals as a way of gaining access to the intangible realm that surrounded the art. Dale shows how the art was created by people of different ages, not just by male shamans, boosting his often-controversial ideas with his own observations in the field. Just the chapter on the so-called Venus figurines is worth the price of admission—the essay on voluptuous women is both insightful and right to the point. Time after time, Dale breaks new ground in what is one of the most important, if controversial, books on Paleolithic art to appear in many years. Doubtless many rock art aficionados will hate it, which is their privilege. But they should not set it aside without a thorough reading, for there is rich treasure in its pages, apart from a great deal of excellent, clear, and often funny writing. You’ll never look at rock art the same way after reading Guthrie.