Scientists and archaeologists have determined that the Paleolithic area was at its height during the Ice Age when frozen tundra covered the land in some places a mile thick. Exotic herds of bison, mammoth, ibex, reindeer, and horses outnumbered the hunter-gatherer tribes sharing the land. Although weather conditions could be fierce, food was prevalent and hunting successful. Men and women coexisted equally as their roles remained in balance and both were considered an important part of the communal life of the tribe. Here, in these conditions, Neanderthals began symbolically expressing themselves and demonstrating a desire to understand the rhythmic cycles of life, death, and rebirth. To date, Neanderthals are the first homo sapiens to bury their dead, clothe themselves, and wear decorative body paint and jewelry. Although their hyoid bone did not allow them the speech capacity we have today, their ability to conceive of and communicate esoteric thought is proven by the artifacts they left behind.
Neolithic peoples were able to manipulate their environment to their advantage as is proven by the stone tools and huge bison bone pits discovered by archaeologists. With this evolutionary move forward, Neolithic men and women had more time for leisure and contemplative thought and perhaps this is why they began to ceremoniously bury their dead. Burial sites contain skeletons flanked by pollen and skulls painted with ocher. The sick and elderly are found to have been nurtured rather than wantonly discarded. In general, the mysteries of life and death began to be revered and ritually expressed.
Inside a cave located at Monte Circeo, Italy, archaeologists discovered a bear skull encircled by pollen. Speculative thought has given rise to the theory that this behavior may have been Neanderthals way of sacralizing the protector of the cave. Furthermore, a child's skull was found in the Shanindar Cave in Iraq with flint tied on top with twine. Why was this skull buried separately and aesthetically differently than others? Although we don't know the answer, the question itself demonstrates that Neanderthals were projecting unconscious thought about death into their conscious lives.
The fact that the above mentioned skulls were found in caves also speaks volumes about Neanderthal peoples. We know that caves are dangerous places to inhabit being cold, damp, and dark and home to animals willing to kill to protect their lair. To have buried bodies and ritualized bear heads meant that Neanderthal had to knowingly put himself in danger. So why the sacrifice of that which could give seemingly little return in light of what one had to risk? Again, the answer is uncertain but the presence of the question alludes to Neanderthal's higher understanding of mystery.
Out of the Middle East, CroMagnon people came into Europe and began to encroach upon Neanderthals. As evolution went to work, CroMagnon became favored by natural selection and furthered Neanderthal's symbolic expressions into awe-inspiring works of art. Also found primarily in caves, CroMagnon art continues to fascinate archaeologists, anthropologists, and
mythologists to this day. Furthermore, the discovery of some artwork found outdoors on rocks and mountain facings, for me, propagates the theory that caves were sacred places for Paloelithic peoples entered into through sacrifice and trial for a specific purpose. Great lengths were gone to in order to make caves inhabitable for painting. CroMagnon built scaffolds, invented candles, and killed threatening animals so that they could express their seemingly uncontrollable desire to communicate and ritualize. Both male and female mythologies were represented further demonstrating the balanced role of the sexes and together, Cromagnon men and women changed the course of human evolution.
In LasCaux, France, archaeologists have discovered paintings dating back to 30,000 B.C.. One picture is of a charging buffalo whose tremendous size, location, proportion, and color give the purposeful impression of a stampede. LasCaux contains many pictures of other non-threatening animals including wild cattle, bison, and horses. Some archaeologists speculate that this fact points to a shamanistic purpose behind CroMagnon art. Also in LasCaux exists a painting dating back to 20,000 B.C. of a man with a bird's head lying down with an erect penis surrounded by a bison with its head turned, and a standing bird. Entitled "The Sorcerer" mythologists using present day understandings of culture, speculate that this painting and its location may have been a learning and/or initiatory tool for young boys nearing hunter status. With a head of a bird, the shaman's spirit is at flight as his erect penis heralds the spirit of the buffalo as its self-sacrificing posture demonstrates its willingness to give its life for the hunter. Similar in its shamanistic lessons is the "Animal Master" painting from 15,000 B.C. found in France in the Les Trois Freres cave. Here, a human form placed above other animal paintings has the eyes of an owl, ears of a stag, a wolf's tail, and a man's head. Mythologists think this image represents the shaman dressed in costume calling the animal spirits.
For mythologists the above mentioned paintings appear to follow a pattern. Seeming to revere the animals they killed, Paleolithic peoples had a deep understanding about the cyclic relationships between man and nature and life and death. They recognized and ritualized the fact that man needed animals in order to survive leading to a shamanic mythology sacralizing the life force of animal spirits in order to rid the people of the natural guilt and shame that went with their murder. Archaeologists further speculate that the shamanistic painting methods themselves may have been a perpetuation of a sacred relationship with animals. The painting method of using a reed to spit paint through was a way, according to mythologists, to become one with the animal being painted. Furthermore, the manganese oxide used by artists has been found to affect people with hallucinations which supports the shamanistic way of ritual. Perhaps the most tangible proof to support this theory exists within the remaining few present day hunter-gatherer societies who continue to perpetuate this mythology and give thanks to the animals whose ultimate sacrifice gives them life.
Also important to note are hand prints of various sizes flanking Paleolithic artwork and depicted in negative or positive artistic methods. Due to the size of the hands and the time allotted to women for creative thinking, some anthropologists speculate that these hand paintings were done by women and may have been part of female initiatory rites regarding menstruation. Often times in the same vicinity, as well as on Paleolithic objects, thirteen or twenty-six dots are slashed or painted which corresponds with lunar and menstrual cycles. Footprints on some cave floors also point to feminine
involvement because of their size and shape. Additional evidence for female artisans springs from their plant gathering rolenabling them to recognize more colors, shades, and shapes while men as hunters required a more linearly focused view.
As hunter-gatherers, Paleolithic peoples recognized the importance of a woman's role in maintaining the life of the clan. Women were responsible for gathering vegetables and herbs that were always present while game could sometimes be scarce. They also had the unique ability to bleed for five to eight days a month without dying, and bare life to new human beings. These awesome feminine traits may have been the inspiration behind the Venus statuettes and the fact that the first human CroMagnon sculpture found to date is of a young girl. Most of these statuettes, however, were of plump mother figures often shown simultaneously pregnant and giving birth who did not have specific facial features pointing to an overall appreciation of "woman." The most popular and striking example is the Venus carving done in 20,000 BC on the entrance of the Lausell France Cave. With an imageless face, this pregnant carving has bulbous breasts and is holding a rhino horn with thirteen lunar/menstrual marks in the shape of a crescent. Here, it seems that CroMagnon people discovered womens' important connection with the universe and the gender roles would become imbalanced as is demonstrated in the Neolithic period.
In a later Paleolithic cave painting in Algeria the hunter-shaman is further seen with female forms and demonstrates the shift into Neolithic thinking. The painting shows the Great Goddess with her hands above her as a force flows from her vulva into the penis of the man as hunter portraying the power women give to men as they hunt. The hunter is also shooting an arrow at a large bird, probably an ostrich whose phallic neck and giant egg combine both masculine and feminine principles. By shooting this bird, the analogy arose that arrow is to wound as penis is to vulva. In author William Irvin Thompson's words, "the force of the Goddesses's vulva shoots into the penis of the hunter; his arrow shoots into the phallic bird of the Great Goddess, to make a new vulva as wound; thus the painting expresses the energy of a cycle from vulva to vulva."
The Neolithic period of 8000-5000 BC has been described as the turning point for civilization when people began to control nature, establishing villages, towns, fields and pastures, and domesticating animals. As these changes occurred, former nomadic hunter-gatherers became sedentary villagers who coveted land and constructed permanent dwellings. This shift from nomad to agrarian created what Carl Jung describes as cognitive dissonance between men and women. Because men were no longer needed as hunters and food providers, women controlled the stationary granaries, toppling the millenia-old gender balance as women became related to the eternal cyclic growth of the harvest and men to the linear, rising and falling of the momentary hunt.
The Jericho settlers, the oldest of Neolithic peoples, began to bury their dead under their homes citing the first proof of ancestor worship. After decapitation, much like Neanderthals, Neolithic people allowed bodies to be picked clean by vultures or allowed exposure to destroy the remaining living tissue. The heads were plastered and painted with
ocher replacing the eyes with corey shells. Next, the heads were placed ceremoniously beneath the beds of husbands and/or wives so that the dead could symbolically inform the living regarding the invisible world that supports the visible. By making love over the skull they may have thought that the ancestor spirit might be reborn into the child. At the Jericho site archaeologists also discovered objects shaped like female breasts whose nipples had holes that one could look through to see small, non-threatening animals which may have been the last vestige of the hunter-shamanic mythology.
William Irvin Thompson in his book The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light brilliantly discusses the ecological role the ending of the Ice Age played in raising women to goddess status. He explains that "when the winds shifted, the rains that once fell upon North Africa fell upon Europe. The land responded with an offering of trees. This time, however, humanity had so changed from its Pliocene origin that the return of its ancient forest home was no welcome event...the glaciers retreated, the seashore rose 300 feet, the tundra returned to forest, and the great herds disappeared from Western Europe". With the vanishing of the herds, when men did hunt they had to travel great distances and stay away from the villages for long durations of time. In their absence women developed stronger bonds while developing their skills to include pottery making and animal and plant domestication. Men faced feelings of worthlessness in relation to women for the first time as men lost their hunter identity.
As women continued to become successful gatherers they began to build up surplus of grains. Three weeks worth of work by women could feed an entire village for a year thereby furthering their important within Neolithic society. As wheat domestication increased, living quarters around the granaries were built as agriculture became power to be protected. And, it is the architectural shapes of these dwellings which helps demonstrate the divination of women. Perhaps the most famous example of this is in Turkey at Catal Huyuk which was a town of several thousand people. Homes without doors and shared walls were built in the shape of breasts which could only be entered from a hole in the ceiling. Some mythologists believe that this shape may have also represented the cosmic egg giving life to all beings and describe this form as the female architecture of containment.
Neolithic people at Catal Huyuk began to bury their dead in elaborate "Bull Shrines" and their positioning of men and women further attest to the newly dominant role of females. Women donned with jewels were buried in central positions facing east toward the rising moon and sun while men were buried ornamentless along the walls facing west. In an artist's depiction of the Bull Shrine dating back to 7000 BC, a rectangular room only entered from the top is flanked with bull horns symbolic ofemale fertility along with a huge goddess figure giving birth to a bull. According to mythologists, this relationship demonstrates the idea that men are resurrected through the female and born again as bulls. Furthermore, as part of linear time, male symbols are seen here as bringing the cyclical, eternal female into reality.
Murals and wall paintings called "Murals of the Goddess" in the Bull Shrine also tell of Neolithic goddess worship as it depicts the cyclic, mythological stages of life, death, and rebirth through women. Pictures of large bodied goddesses mythologically point to a concept of woman as the mother of all things, including nature, who provides the cosmic womb of the universe itself. Clay statuettes provide the twin aspects of woman as both mother and daughter who are the manifestation of one holy body and share an intimate, inherited powerful bond. Painted bodies of females holding or hovering over animals display women as both nurturer and pleasure giver. In relation to the powerful, potent, male fertility symbol of the bull, the fertile female goddess becomes the vehicle for spiritual rebirth as she sexually tames the animal side of man and allows him to become compassionate towards humanity. Finally, vultures painted on shrine walls portray crones or wise women who bring the knowledge of death because they are aware of the entire life cycle and must teach the men who only know the explosion of the moment. The Neolithic artist's work communicates a message of woman as she who brings us out of herself in life, love, seed, and death.
© Copyright Paula Vaughan
Haviland, William A. Anthropology, Seventh Edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1994.
Since the dawn of human time when our prehistoric ancestors lacked the hyoid bone necessary for verbal communication, humans have used symbols and created myths to share their questions and experiences of life and death. Although we do not know for certain what they were trying to say, the fact that prehistoric peoples wanted concrete evidence of their thoughts and understandings gives life to the importance of mythology today and forever. During the Paleolithic era, humankind began to express itself artistically over Europe in ways never before seen that would alter the collective consciousness forever. Cave paintings found in France at Lascaux, Chauvet, and Les Trois Freres; bear skulls found in Monte Circeo Cave in Italy and Shanindar Cave in Iraq; and goddess sculptures and cave engravings found in Lausell France and several other locations point to specific mythic themes that demonstrate our ancestors' initial discovery and ultimate desire to express their own perceptions of biology, ecology, and astrology.
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