When one visits the caves of Altamira in northern Spain to see the 17,000 year old paintings which endure there, one is awed by the array of ancient bison, horses and cattle which adorn the walls. Deeper within the cave, however, the art becomes less figurative. In a cramped area which signifies the deepest inhabited part of the cave, geometric depictions and kaleidoscopic images are found. What was their purpose? Vision quest or shamanic initiation? They are wholly abstract, and the longer one beholds them, the stranger they seem to become. Yet at the same time, for me, they became more and more familiar, and Palaeo Vision remembers this curious aspect of our human past.