A Case Study of Bird Symbolism and Human Origins

For anyone who has had the pleasure of visiting natural history museums, they might have noticed
that a distinction is often made between what is categorized as “natural history” and what is
categorized as “cultural history.” Human-made artifacts and taxidermy are often separated, as seen
in the halls dedicated to taxidermy in the American Museum of Natural History, the Chicago Field
Museum and the Smithsonian National Natural History Museum. Canadian museums perpetuate the
same practice of separation as well. The Royal Ontario Museum is one such museum that creates
this degree of separation. As an institution focused on being a “champion for the natural and cultural
worlds,”1 their exhibitions are bound to these categories. The plural term “worlds” suggests that
there are two distinct realities separating their content. Even though the mission, vision and
mandate of other natural history museums do not explicitly make this distinction, the organization
of their exhibitions and lack of human representation in the classification of what is “natural”
demonstrates that similar semantic categories are being upheld. Why is there such a distinction and
separation? The separation of these topics creates a narrative of detachment between humanity and
the history of our planet. This could not be further from the truth. Human existence is bound to the
environment of our planet. Our stories derive from interaction with ourselves, nature and the world
around us. Culture does not emerge independently of the earth; instead, the interactions between
ourselves and natural landscapes shape the ways cultures manifest. It is also wrong to suggest that
humans, in turn, do not affect nature. The ever-growing evidence indicates that humans have
changed the natural environment to such an extent that the earth has entered a new geological age,
the Anthropocene, named after Humanity’s effect on climate.

This article explores how the curatorial process could be used to incorporate these categories into
one without losing the complexity and importance of both by using current scientific research as a
way of connecting what is cultural and what is natural. This article proposes a theoretical exhibition
that presents “the natural” and “the cultural” as one world. It will demonstrate how curatorial
research for this exhibition can use the symbolism of birds as a means of exploring cultures and
beliefs, in tandem with nature. Different cultures interact with various species of birds and these
interactions manifest in symbolic representations of birds through cultural artifacts. Using a culture's
interactions with animals as a form of cultural analysis could be done with any animals but exploring
the cultural representations and symbolic use of birds specifically was done purposefully for two
reasons. The first is that birds are one of the only class of animals that are on every continent.2 The
wide ecological range of birds makes them a strong possibility for a human universal; all peoples
have lived in an area inhabited by at least one bird species. The second reason will be the
exploration of the rest of this essay. The abundance of birds does not explain human fascination with
bird symbolism; it only provides the opportunity for inspiration. The universality of birds in symbolic
cultural representation is no coincidence but rather, a deeply embedded aspect of our collective
humanity, connected to our biological evolution and interaction with the natural world. To explore
this idea in-depth, we turn to the most current paleo-archeological research on eagle symbolism
which sheds light on the complex subject of human origins and the development of cultural symbols
as a natural phenomenon.
A skeleton of a golden eagle would mark the start of the exhibition but also the start of humanity’s
relationship with birds as symbolic objects. The question is asked; how far back can archeologists
find examples of humans using birds as a form of symbolism? To understand this question, it is
necessary to understand what the term “human” means. “Human” does not just refer to us (Homo
sapiens); it refers to the broader genus of Homo, a linage that is over 2.5 million years old. This
distinction broadens the scope of analysis. The ancestral family tree for humanity is precisely that, a
tree. There are branches and twigs that all diverge from a single common ancestor. This perspective
of what it means to be human needs to be taken into account when asking the question. To answer
the question, let us consider the behaviour of our human cousins, Homo neanderthalensis
(Neanderthals), and their relationship with the golden eagle and its symbolism. In recent
archeological discoveries, there is evidence demonstrating that Neanderthals had been using eagle
talons as a form of symbolism before there was contact between them and Homo sapiens, 100 000
years ago.3 The remains of golden eagles demonstrate that Neanderthals were systematically
targeting golden eagles to use their talons as a form of jewelry and burial rites. 4

The significance of Neanderthals using birds as a form of symbolism is twofold. The first is that it
challenges the narrative that Homo sapiens are unique. Evaluating a subject on the quality of its
uniqueness requires a degree of separation between the two subjects in the comparison. Often, as
we see in museums, this creates the distinction between what is “natural” and what is “cultural.”
Until recently, the perspective among paleo-anthropologists was that the exploitation of birds
marked a certain degree of cognitive complexity that was only associated with the development of
behaviorally modern Homo sapiens.5 Knowing that other human species were capable of creating
sophisticated cultures starts to dissolve the bias that culture is something separate from the natural
world. Culture is a by-product of the natural process of evolution and, therefore, a part of the
natural world. The symbolic use of natural objects is not unique to Homo sapiens and Neanderthals.
New discoveries show that our common ancestor, Homo heidelbergensis, used carnivore bones
symbolically in burial rites.6 Given that this common ancestor also had the capability of symbolic
thought suggests that the human ability to create culture is a deep biological process, a result of
millions of years of natural selection in human evolution. The origins of culture can be traced back
even further than the origins of the genus Homo. The extensive fieldwork of Jane Goodall
demonstrates that chimpanzees create and participate in culture.7 Since both humans and
chimpanzees are capable of culture, it points to the origin of culture starting, at the very least, with
our common ancestor with chimpanzees. We, as a species, diverged from chimpanzees between 13-
4 million years ago, marking culture as a biological process with a possible 10 million-year-old
history.