This exeptional book traces the trail of shamanic culture through 30,000 years of ice age art into the earliest civilisations of human history. It is illustrated with over 80 tracings showing these images and objects for the first time in unprecedented detail and context. The book investigates Chauvet Cave the oldest and most complete ice age cave in Southern Europe and discusses its symbolic content and conventions. It explores the similarity of a barbed sign with a rib cage, references to lunar and solar cycles, conventions that leave away and hide prominent features of animals such as fur, antlers and hoves. It shows how the shamanic northern hemisphere bear cult provides a useful template for interpreting cave art and early religions. By doing this, Ice Age Art and the Bear Cult highlights how our own world today still resonates with concepts and views that our ancestors developed over a period hundreds of thousands of years with roots spreading to early human forms that predate our modern appearance.