Though we don’t know when humans first gained the ability to talk, my guess is that one of the first topics of protracted conversation revolved around dreams. Making sense of dreams surely was a priority. My guess is also that those who offered the most convincing explanations or interpretations were the first shamans.

It probably did not take long for these early shamans, whose status derived at least in part from their ability to interpret or make sense of dreams, to discover that dream-like states could be induced outside of sleep. Physical exertions and deprivations could lead to trance states and hallucinations. Psychotropic plants could do the same.

Shamans the world over interpret these experiences as soul flights. From a shamanic perspective, the problem with sleep-dream soul flights is they are hard to control. While some control can be gained through training or what is called lucid dreaming, there is greater possibility for control and direction when one is awake. This may explain why shamanic societies tend to place greater emphasis on deliberately induced trance states than they do on sleeping dream states.

In shamanic societies, the tight linkage between supernatural beliefs on the one hand and dreams-trances-visions on the other is not in doubt. The traditional exemplar comes Australian Aborigines, whose supernatural cycle is known as Dreamtime or Dreaming. Other well-known examples come from the San of southern Africa with their trance dance and the Plains Indians with their vision quest. In Amazonia, the use of psychotropics to induce “spiritual” hallucinations or soul flights has long been famous.

In all these cases, sleep dreaming has taken a back seat to deliberately induced altered states of consciousness. An interesting exception to this comes from the historic Iroquois, whose supernatural beliefs were structured in large part around sleep dreaming and the interpretation of dreams. In Jesuit Relations (1610-1791), which constitutes one of our best sources on Amerindian life during the early contact period, missionaries characterized sleep-dreaming as “the Iroquois divinity.”

This is a fascinating twist on the dream-trance-vision complex and its relationship to supernatural beliefs. I can’t help but wonder whether it constitutes a survival of sorts or whether it is a unique development that presaged Freud by hundreds of years.

Aside from the usual concerns about over interpretation, some wondered whether there was any justification for assuming that Paleolithic people had an essentially modern aesthetic category which might be called “art.” If they didn’t, it would follow that artistic interpretations of the cave paintings were just that and shed little light on Paleolithic minds.

Frustrated by the sense that we weren’t getting any closer to understanding Paleolithic symbols, some began searching for alternatives. One of the more compelling came from cognitive archaeologist David Lewis-Williams. Having studied rock art around the world, Lewis-Williams noticed that certain kinds of symbols regularly appeared across time and space. This was an enigma, given that the peoples producing these recurring symbols had not been in contact with one another. These symbols were not, in other words, the result of cultural diffusion.  Lewis-Williams calls these symbols “entoptic forms”:

What could account for this similarity of forms in rock art around the world? Lewis-Williams argues, with considerable force, that such images are the result of a universal cognitive architecture. Our brains are constructed in a particular way to process visual images and carry out other sensory related functions. When we experience altered states of consciousness (“ASC”) and reach a stage just before full blown hallucination, the mental images we generate are similar across time and space. These images are entoptic forms.

We know from ethnography and ethnohistory that in non-state societies, ASC is often the province of shamans. With this in mind, Lewis-Williams argues that entoptic forms are related to shamanic practices. Although we can’t know what kind of cultural meaning the symbols had or were assigned, we could at least link them to ASC and shamans.

If we don’t go any further, the argument is fairly parsimonious and anchored in shared biology. Lewis-Williams, however, goes further. He contends that shamans were largely responsible for the European cave paintings and that access to the caves (and images) was restricted. He sees in this an emerging social complexity and stratification, whereby shamans are privileged and powerful. Although this is plausible it is also speculative. There is little evidence for emerging complexity or stratification in the Upper Paleolithic archaeological record. It is bootstrapping to argue that because shamans (may have) made the paintings, shamans (may have) had more power.

While the functional linkage between shamans-ASC-entoptics and ritual surely holds in some or even many cases, it is looking less likely in others. In 2004, Kevin Sharpe and Leslie Van Gelder suggested that 13,000 year old “flutings” inside Rouffignac Cave, France were made by children. In 2006, Sharpe and Van Gelder experimentally confirmed these findings and found that children between 2 and 5 years of age made these markings:

This year a Cambridge University doctoral student in archaeology, Jessica Cooney, discovered that children were responsible for even more “art” at Rouffignac than was previously thought. In a recent interview with History (which includes a slide show), Cooney discussed her findings:

What I’ve found in Rouffignac is that they are screaming to be heard — the presence of children is everywhere in the cave, even in the passages furthest from the entrance. There are no areas in Rouffignac with flutings where we find adults without children, and vice versa.

Many theories about cave art point to shamanism or ritual use. While I don’t rule that out, I don’t think that that’s necessarily the case for all caves. With children involved, it could have been one of those reasons but also very likely could have been play or a time for practicing art, or simply an exploration of the landscape.

If we didn’t know that young children made these markings, it would be tempting to attribute them to shamans experiencing ASC. There are some obvious resemblances between entoptic forms (see chart above) and the childrens’ markings at Rouffignac. While one could argue that the children were shaman apprentices being tutored in ASC and entoptics, this amounts to special pleading. I can’t think of any ethnographic or ethnohistoric instances of children this young being trained as shamans or inducing ASC.

These findings also call into question the often made argument that the deepest, darkest recesses of caves were reserved for experienced shamans (with privileged access to the spirit world) undergoing the most intense ASC. If children were in these dark zones, it is hard to argue for restricted access or shamanistic exclusivity.

The most likely or parsimonious interpretation of these symbols is the one given by Cooney: play. If children were doodling “entoptics” in the cave with their parents, it suggests that “artistic” interpretations of these symbols deserve reconsideration. All in all, this research serves as a good reminder that not everything produced by Paleolithic peoples requires a utilitarian or functional explanation.

References:

Lewis-Williams, David, & Dowson, T.A. (1988). The Signs of All Times: Entoptic Phenomena in Upper Palaeolithic Art Current Anthropology, 29 (2), 201-245

Sharpe, Kevin, & Van Gelder, Leslie (2006). Evidence for Cave Marking by Paleolithic Children Antiquity, 80 (310), 937-947

Simek the Scientist v. Reilly the Symbolist

This is not a lawsuit — it is the tension Sullivan establishes between Jan Simek, the data oriented anthropologist whose theoretical stance is that we cannot access the meaning of the cave symbolism, and F. Kent Reilly, the meaning oriented anthropologist whose theoretical stance is that we can use the cave symbols to access the thoughts of those who were making them. This opposition, if it actually exists, roughly approximates the age old debate in anthropology about our approaches to other cultures.

Should we view it as an outsider, fitting the data into our own theoretical frameworks (etic), or attempt to access it as an insider, viewing it as might a member of that culture (emic)? There is a sense in which this is a false binary, for the approaches are not mutually exclusive and indeed are complementary — ideally, we should be looking at our data both ways, kaleidoscopically shifting our perspectives between the etic and emic. In this passage, Sullivan illustrates Simek’s approach:

A conspicuous percentage of the caves, Simek said, had birds for their opening images. “What does it mean?” I asked. “We don’t know,” he said. I learned that this was his default answer to the question, What does it mean? He might then go on to give you a plausible and interesting theory, but only after saying, “We don’t know.” It wasn’t grumpiness—it was a theoretical stance. Woodpeckers could be related to war, he said. In other Native American myths they carry the souls of the dead to the afterworld.

And in this one, Reilly’s:

When it comes to meaning, not everyone is as skeptical as Simek. Over the past decade a group of scholars, led by the archaeologist F. Kent Reilly in Texas, has been using a combination of historical records— nineteenth­-century ethnography, mainly—to work their way back into the Mississippian worldview, with its macabre warrior gods and monsters and belief in a three­-part cosmos: the Upper World, This World, the Lower World…Reilly described some of the group’s achievements. Using intense motif analysis, two of its members identified an exotic-­looking geometrical shape, which appears on various Mississippian objects, as a butterfly… “We think we may have identified a new deity complex—based purely on artwork,” Reilly said.

Simek “doesn’t go in for that talk” and wants data. Reilly is dismissive of “corns, beans, squash” archaeology and wants meaning. Who is right? Neither — we need both. I am nonetheless sympathetic to Simek’s contention that symbolic analysis, if not anchored in data, can construct elaborate worlds that never existed — the Southern Death Cult weltanschauung cannot be accessed through art alone. But I really like the idea of looking for survivals of this world view in ethnohistories of successor tribes such as the Natchez, Cherokee, and even Creek.

Shamans and Bird Symbolism

Many of the “unknown caves” are adorned with birds, especially at the entrances. This makes considerable sense and here we have evidence of continuity. Before the rise of any mound building society based on agriculture, Native Americans were organized into smaller hunting and gathering groups whose primary form of supernaturalism was shamanic. As Mircea Eliade, Piers Vitebsky, and many others have demonstrated, shamans the world over have long been enamored of birds. Why? Birds fly, as do shamans’ “souls” when they experience altered states of consciousness.

I find it interesting that birds have equal importance in later foraging cultures, such as the Plains Indians, some of whom may have been linked in deeper time to Mississippian societies. Is this a survival, evidence of continuity with the more ancient mound building past? It is a distinct possibility. Alternatively, it could be parallelism or cultural homoplasy.

Power and Religion: The Rise of Complex Societies

One thing is certain: the creation of complex mound building and Mississippian societies required more elaborate forms of supernaturalism. Shamanic practices are not especially conducive to the creation (or maintenance) of power and legitimation of elites. It is not easy to transition from the rough egalitarianism of hunting-gathering culture to the inequality and stratification that inevitably characterizes more complex societies. This transition requires the amplification and systematization of earlier practices — shamans become priests. We know this occurred in Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica, and it undoubtedly occurred as mound building cultures began to appear in America.

While I was vaguely aware of the “Unknown Caves,” I don’t think I really understood — until after reading Sullivan’s article (the full version of which you can find here), how truly spectacular these finds are. It is exciting to know that America has many caves, with more being discovered every year, that contain deep “dark zone” passages filled with art that is just as spectacular and enigmatic as the Paleolithic caves in Europe and Mayan caves in Central America. Because the cave artists used river cane torches to light the passages and chambers, cave usage can be carbon dated. Some of the art in these caves is 6,000 years old!

As might be expected, cave usage apparently intensified with the rise of the mound building Mississippian cultures and the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. I would be surprised if this did not result in cave art palimpsests with date ranges spanning thousands of years. Some of the more recent art dates from the late 1500s, shortly after Europeans had made contact with local tribes such as the Cherokee and Natchez, both of whom surely had historical connections to the earlier mound building cultures (such as Adena and Hopewell).

If we consider the massive time depth of dark zone cave art, from over 30,000 years ago until a few hundred years ago, and the fact it is found throughout the world, the signal we are getting is strong: caves have tremendous cosmological significance. They have been used by ritual specialists or seekers from both hunting-gathering and agricultural societies for tens of thousands of years for what appear to be quite similar purposes.

Moreover, many of the images found in such caves is consistent across time and space. Look at these 4,000 year old images from Appalachian caves and note their resemblance to San Rock art from Africa and much older Paleolithic symbolism from Europe:

These are of course form constants or entoptic symbols that all humans can “see,” in their mind’s eye, when experiencing altered states of consciousness or are hallucinating. They are the product of a particular kind of neural architecture related to visual processing.

While visiting one of the “Unknown Caves” with University of Tennessee anthropologist Jan Simek, Sullivan approached this kind of experience:

The tunnels got lower, narrower. Our faces were inches from the cave walls. We encountered weird paddle­handed creatures with long wavy arms. I began to feel that I was inside a hallucination, not that I was hallucinating myself—I was working very hard, in that cramped space, to write down Jan’s few cryptic remarks—but that I was experiencing someone else’s dream, which had been engineered for me, or rather not for me but for some other, very different people to progress through. It may have been shamanic. There’s a spring in that cave, Simek said, that can start to sound like voices, after you’ve been in there for a while.

Shamanic indeed.

In a recent study, Brian Akers and colleagues report on a 6,000 rock shelter mural in Spain. As is true of so many Paleolithic cave paintings, this one depicts a bull (which is most likely a wild auroch). What makes this mural unique, however, is that it also depicts mushrooms of the psychotropic or tripping variety (Psilocybe hispanica):

Selva Pascuala Rock Art

At the bottom right, there are 13 images of what the authors consider to be psychotropic mushrooms native to this region of Spain. After noting that ritual or shamanic usage of neurotropic fungi has been widely documented in Mexico, Siberia and elsewhere in the world, the authors suggest that the Selva Pascuala mural represents hunting and mushroom magic. The close proximity of the mushrooms with the bull, which are often depicted in cave paintings that are many thousands of years older than the mural at Selva Pascuala, is fairly convincing proof that these images were created by shamans experiencing altered states of consciousness.

It is worth noting that the majority of these depictions are located in difficult to access places (“dark zones”) and may only have been visited by shamans. If this is the case, it suggests that the earliest forms of supernaturalism may not have been group oriented but instead were the private domain of ritual specialists or shamans.

Reference:

Akers, B., Ruiz, J., Piper, A., & Ruck, C. (2011). A Prehistoric Mural in Spain Depicting Neurotropic Psilocybe Mushrooms? Economic Botany DOI: 10.1007/s12231-011-9152-5

In pre-state societies, shamans deliberately induced altered states of consciousness and engaged in what have been termed “soul flights.” For Christians, such experiences are often cited as evidence there is a soul inhabiting the body. For those living in societies where reincarnation is a major belief, such experiences are taken as proof of recurrent life.

As Richard Alleyne reports, scientists using virtual technology have been able to reliably replicate this dissociative experience:

Throughout history people have described how they have floated from their bodies and looked back at themselves, often when close to death or on the operating table.

The accounts have been so vivid that they are often cited as proof of the existence of the soul or Heaven.

But scientists now claim they have dispelled this myth by artificially creating an out-of-body experience using computers and cameras.

They believe the feeling of detachment occurs when the brain becomes confused by conflict between the senses – and is not proof of any “spiritual dimension” to existence.

Out of body experiences result, in other words, from impairment of the temporal-parietal regions of the brain, which have long been known to be association areas. The avatars of Tron are not souls — they are the brain being tricked.

The movie, “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” is being premiered at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. Here is the trailer for the 95 minute film, which I can hardly wait to see:

Here is the bad news: Herzog has either done no research on humans living 30,000 years ago or he has been given some bad information. In a recent Spiegel interview, Herzog was asked how he viewed the cave:

This is the birth of the modern human soul. The artists are like us, not like the Neanderthals, who had no culture — and who incidentally were still roaming the landscape at the time the paintings were made.

While one might be able to argue that the Chauvet paintings represent the earliest fluorescence of what we consider to be modern forms of art, it is doubtful that the paintings mark the beginning of behavioral modernity. Soul beliefs certainly pre-date the Chauvet paintings by tens of thousands of years.

As for Neanderthals, they definitely had “culture” — known generally to archaeologists as the Mousterian and Chatelperronian — and it is doubtful whether they were “still roaming the landscape” at the time the Chauvet paintings were made. There may have been a few Neanderthals living 30,000 years ago in isolated areas of Spain or other refugia, but most had disappeared by that time or been assimilated into human populations. Herzog’s Neanderthal comment should get John Hawks‘ blood boiling.

Let’s hope that Herzog does not narrate the film, as is his wont when he does documentaries (i.e., Grizzly Man). If he does, one might consider ignoring most of what he says and simply sitting in awe of what you see.

Update: This brief review in the Guardian states the film is “stunning,” despite doubts about Herzog’s “Teutonic observations” that link the paintings to dreams. Herzog may not be too far afield, given that shamans experiencing altered states of consciousness similar to dreaming were probably responsible for the Chauvet paintings.

This is all very interesting and it surely says something about the way guilt-oriented religions work. Of course not all religions revolve around the notion of guilt, and its Abrahamic concomitant: sin. Because the study participants were Australian and 65% of Australians are Christians of one variety or another, most have been taught that guilt and pain are connected. The study, therefore, may have done nothing more than measure the internalization and efficacy of such teachings.

There is a chance, however, that the study measured something more fundamental. Before considering what this might be, let’s consider two famous paintings, the first by Francisco de Goya (“A Procession of Flagellants”) and second by George Catlin (“The Cutting Scene: Mandan Ceremony”):

Here we have two very different groups — medieval Christians on the one hand and historic Mandans on the other — engaged in activities that appear to be similar and rooted in ritualized pain. The similarities, however, end here. The Mandan ritual has nothing to do with guilt, immorality, atonement, penitence, or sin. Mandans who skewered their chests and suspended themselves were seeking power and visions — through pain they could contact the spirit world and negotiate with it.

It is not unreasonable to suppose that this practice, which is historically ancient and known to have been practiced by hunter-gatherers around the world, was transformed by later traditions and that Christian and Islamic penitence — of the flagellating kind, taps into these ideas. It seems also that shame, which in pre-state societies is the primary method of social control, was eventually transformed into the twinned ideas of guilt and sin. The latter, of course, are also techniques of control.

The artifact will be described in the March issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science. Polish archaeologist Tomasz Plonka talked to Viegas about the find:

“The ornament is composed of groups of zigzag lines and a human representation, probably a woman with spread legs with a short zigzag nearby,” lead author Tomasz Płonka told Discovery News. “The woman may be nude, but the geometrical style of representation does not allow us to answer (this question).”

At first the scientists believed the geometrical figure carved onto the antler could have been either the mentioned woman, or a nude man raising his arms. Measurements to determine the ratio of the stick figure limbs, in addition to comparisons with other early human representations, lead the researchers to support the woman interpretation.

Zigzags are very popular motifs on artifacts from many cultures throughout the world, with many possible meanings, but Płonka said, “I think our zigzag lines are connected with water and life symbolism.”

Zigzags are indeed very popular motifs across time and space, especially among hunter-gatherers. The South African archaeologist David Lewis-Williams has documented zigzags on rock art from around the world and interprets them as entoptic images or forms. Such images are commonly generated by humans who are experiencing altered states of consciousness and are a specific, predictable result of a universal cognitive architecture.

The zigzag motif was extensively used by North American Plains Indians tribes to decorate many things, including tipis, moccasins, parfleche bags, quivers, rattles, and clothing. In his classic Indians of the Plains, Robert Lowie cataloged these geometric patterns (see Chapter 5) and noted that although each tribe tended toward a distinctive style, there was little agreement on their meaning. Many natives claimed that such patterns (including zigzags) had no meaning — they were simply traditional and merely decorative. Others claimed that such patterns had meaning, but that such meaning was idiosyncratic — the meaning varying according to the person producing it.

Because zigzags are so common and their meaning so slippery, I have difficulty with Plonka’s claim that the incised antler represents a woman spreading her legs, and is a fertility object related to “water and life symbolism.” Although this seems like a classic case of overinterpretation or speculation, I will reserve judgment until the full article appears next month.

[His] argument is that Stone Age farmers were domesticating cereals not so much to fill their stomachs but to lighten their heads, by turning the grains into beer. That has been their take for more than 50 years, and now one archaeologist says the evidence is getting stronger.

Signs that people went to great lengths to obtain grains despite the hard work needed to make them edible, plus the knowledge that feasts were important community-building gatherings, support the idea that cereal grains were being turned into beer, said archaeologist Brian Hayden at Simon Fraser University in Canada.

“Beer is sacred stuff in most traditional societies,” said Hayden, who is planning to submit research on the origins of beer to the journal Current Anthropology.

For those not familiar with Hayden’s work, I recommend his book Shamans, Sorcerers, and Saints: A Prehistory of Religion.