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Books 73 of light, variously bright; a crab or a scorpion steering your destiny; a plough or a saucepan, making a mark to keep on the port beam when you must sail towards the sunrise? We ‘see’ the stars not with our eyes nor through telescopes, but rather through larigitage: through a kind of working model of the world about us, made of icons, indices and symbols that are ordered and articulated by grammars and logics. Through such a model, the astronomers of old saw Phosphorus and Hesperus as one and the same wandering star and that the Sun is a long way off and bigger than all Greece; through such a model, astronomers of today ‘see’ the stars as huge, evolving globes of gas in curved, expanding space. Karl Popper has called the developing word-model of the world about us the intersubjective ‘third world‘, intermediate in epistemological status between the ‘subjective’ private dream and the ‘objective’ bite into an apple, and it is really this, whether it be called myth, religion, cot?iniomisense, ideology or science, that we experience and try to manipulate as our reality. The trouble with pre-history (with the story of what happened before writing was invented) is precisely that the ‘third worlds’ of the pre-historic peoples, the word-models of their worlds that they experienced and tried to manipulate as their realities, were transmitted orally and are now almost wholly irrecoverable. So we cannot know much about the most interesting thing about them-their humanity-except that they must have been smart enough for us to evolve culturally from them. Marshack‘s interesting, bad book reports a luxuriant, egocentricramble through the traces of pre-history, starting from a bit of bone bearing tally marks that might (or might not) represent a notation of the phases of the Moon. When one looks for patterns in scatterings, one can usually find them and the method is so near the edge of numerology that it is very difficult (I would say impossible) to be sure that one has not been fooled. Moreover, Marshack leans heavily on respectful references to ‘microscopic examination ’ of his traces of pre-history, as if looking at something through an optical instrument is somehow more ‘scientific’ and intellectually respectable than just simply looking at it. Lowell looked through a telescope at Mars and saw canals that were not there; and those who have taught biology know that beginners at first see through microscopes very little of significance and later see only what they are taught to expect to see. Assuming that the conclusions are all right, the book argues that Cro-Magnon people were more intelligent than some had told us (who?, Mr. Marshack), for these people did see their world in a ‘time-factored’ way. Does this need arguing? Has not anyone who, say, follows the trail of quarry a clear idea of the notation of events in ‘time or space? Who are these scholars Marshack feels the need to knock down, who think that our ancestors were so stupid? The book measures 21 x 28 cm, weighs about 2 kg and has pictures on almost every one of its 413 pages. A lot, of money has been spent on producing it to sell at $17.50, but not enough to get the pages in the right order. Browse well before buying. Studies and Documents on Cultural Policies Series. Unesco, Paris. I. The Role of Culture in Leisure-Time in New Zealand . Bernard W. Smyth. 1973. 88 pp., illus. Paper. USS2.55; f0.75; FF8,OO. Reviewed by Melvin N. Day* While many people will continue to argue about the definition of culture, there will be few who will not be satisfied by the coverage that this book gives to various aspects of leisure-time activities in New Zealand. The reader must bear in mind that the book was printed in 1973. Since then there have been Governmental changes in policies and attitudes that prevailed at the time of *National Art Gallery of New Zealand, Private Bag, Wellington, New Zealand. writing. For instance, the Government funding of the Arts Council has increased greatly from $510,000 in the financial year...

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