LECTURE 2

Sprituality in Prehistoric Art

VCS408
 Leo Tolstoy

Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of

feeling the artist has experienced.
 Arts of the ancient world
refers to the many types of art that were
in the cultures of ancient societies

Definition of Ancient history

(Historical Terms)

the history of the ancient world from the earliest known

civilizations to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in
476 AD

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ancient+history
Prehistory

(Latin, præ = before Greek, ιστορία = history)

is a term often used to describe the period before
written history.

It came into use in French in the 1830s to describe

the time before writing, and was introduced into
English by Daniel Wilson in 1851.
Stone age art

The first known period of prehistoric human culture,

during which work was done with stone tools. The
period began with the earliest human development,
about 2 million years ago. It is divided into three
periods :-

Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic

TIMELINE

‘Paleo’ – old stone age

‘Meso’ – middle stone age
‘Neo’ – new stone age

------------------------------------------

PALEOLITHIC 35000 – 8000 BC

MESOLITHIC 8000- 3500 BC
NEOLITHIC 6000- 1500 BC
Altamira, Spain Lascaux, France
in 1870 in 1940

cave art

Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc, South of France

in 1994
 Cave paintings Carvings
Venus figurines
Chauvet, Altamira, &
Pech Merle, and Lascaux
Venus of Willendorf

Upper Paleolithic
period
The oldest cave art

The oldest cave art is found in the Cave of El Castillo in

Spain, dated at around 40,000 years, the time when it is
believed that homo sapiens migrated to Europe from
Africa. The paintings are mainly of deer. The next oldest
cave paintings are found in the Chauvet Cave in France,
dating to around 30,000 years ago. The paintings feature
a larger variety of wild animals, such as lions, panthers,
bears and hyenas. It's strange to think that these animals
were roaming around France at that time.
http://www.samwoolfe.com/2013/04/are-cave-paintings-sign-of-shamanism.html
Altamira, Spain
The first cave paintings
were found in 1870 in Altamira, Spain by Don Marcelino
and his daughter. They were painted by the Magdalenian
people between 16,000-9,000 BC. This would have been
11,000-19,000 years ago. These paintings at Altamira are
mainly of the bison. Many of the bison are drawn and
then painted using the boulders for the animal’s
shoulders. This made them look three dimensional.
http://www.beaconlearningcenter.com/documents/1137_01.pdf
Altamira Cave, Spain
Bison at Altamira, Spain
Cave Paintings
Bison
c. 15,000-12,000 BC
bison length 77 in. (195 cm)
Lascaux, France 1940
Four boys searching for a lost dog also discovered paintings at Lascaux,
France in 1940. These paintings were created around 15,000 BC,
which would make them abou17,000years old. There are seven
chambers in the Lascaux cave; the Great Hall of the Bulls, the Painted
Gallery, the Lateral Passage, the Chamber of Engravings, the Main
Gallery, the Chamber of Felines, and the Shaft of the Dead Man.

The Hall of the Bulls is the most impressive. It is composed of horses,

bulls, and stags. Some of the animals have been painted over,
suggesting that different groups of people might have lived in this
same cave. The painting in the Shaft of the Dead Man is unusual
because the human figure is not normally drawn. This scene shows
the image of a man that appears to have been killed by the bison.
http://www.beaconlearningcenter.com/documents/1137_01.pdf
Hall of Bulls at Lascaux
HALL OF BULLS
Cave Paintings
Horse
c. 15,000-10,000 BC
Lascaux, France
Cave Paintings Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc
Discovered in 1994
Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc cave in the South of France is the
newest cave painting to be discovered. Jean-Marie
Chauvet, Christian Hillaire and Heliette Brunel-Deschamps
discovered the cave on December 18, 1994. There is a
menagerie of animals on the walls of these caves. Many of
the animals like the ones in Lascaux were painted over
each other. The oldest were probably painted around
30,000 BC, making them about 32000 years old. The cave
was probably occupied for nearly 10,000 years. It is
thought that a violent collapse blocked the natural
entrance.
http://www.beaconlearningcenter.com/documents/1137_01.pdf
30,000 year old spotted hyena painting
found in the Chauvet Cave
Many cave paintings are polychromatic made with mineral
pigments, such as manganese, gypsum, malachite, hematite
and the like, applied to the surface of the rock. Findings of
brushes made from animal hair in the caves explain how these
artists were able to produce detailed pictures. The fine lines of
some artworks must have required the production of excellent
brushes, evidence that these early people took their artistic
efforts very seriously.
www.squidoo.com/cavepaintings
SPIRITUALITY AND THE THEORIES

Activities of daily life.

LIFE and In primitive societies, the pursuits of hunting,
SOCIETIES agriculture, procreation, natural seasons and
forces of nature, and even healing linked in
various ways the areas of spirituality and art

SPIRITUALITY
SHAMAN or Witchdoctor-type individuals in contact
AND
with the spirit world - was a widespread
THE THEORIES SORCERERS
cultural phenomenon.

Animism is the belief that all things animate

and inanimate have a spirit of their own and
SPIRITUALISM
that there is no boundary between the
and ANIMISM physical world and the spiritual world.
Animals and Handprints
 LIFE and
SOCIETIES

SPIRITUALITY AND
PREHISTORIC ART

In primitive societies, the pursuits of hunting, agriculture,

procreation, natural seasons and forces of nature, and even healing
linked in various ways the areas of spirituality and art. Even at the
dawn of civilization, cave paintings were created to depict the
activities of daily life.

http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/9-8-2005-76370.asp
 LIFE and
SOCIETIES
CAVE PAINTING

Most of the cave paintings depict illustrations of animals that existed

in that period - bison, horses, aurochs, rhinos, mammoths, and
some other animals that are now extinct.
Seldom do cave paintings include human figures; and if at all, then
they are more like caricatures and not actual drawings of the human
form. Though prehistoric man was rather particular and meticulous
in the way he depicted the wild animals he saw around himself,
humans were sketched merely as stick figures.

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/history-of-cave-paintings.html
SHAMAN or
SORCERERS

CAVE PAINTING

Early humans may have regarded the cave as a bridge between

this world and the next. This "supernatural" interpretation is the
only one which explains the lack of visitors to the cave: people
were probably too terrified by voodoo-type fears and
superstitions to enter.
http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/prehistoric/pictographs.htm
 SHAMAN or
SORCERERS

CAVE PAINTING

Small groups of humans kept going into these (deep and dark) caves
for thirty thousand years, not to live or shelter there, but to draw on
the walls, something significant must have been going on.

And since time immemorial, the dark - and especially the underground
dark - has been seen as a sort of supernatural realm, harboring any
number of spirits in contact with higher powers. Furthermore, the
influence of "shamans" - witchdoctor-type individuals in contact with
the spirit world - was a widespread cultural phenomenon.

Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherer societies

http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/prehistoric/pictographs.htm
SHAMAN or
SORCERERS
CAVE PAINTING
There are no examples of complete human figures in these cave
paintings, although there is an image of a woman which seems
to be connected to the head of a bison. This has led some to say
that the image is the first example of the mythical “minotaur” - a
creature with the head of a bull and the body of a man. There
are also some more abstract and strange markings, such as zig-
zag lines, dots and dashes throughout the walls of the cave.
David Lewis-Williams in his book The Mind and the Cave has
interpreted these strange images and patterns as a sign of
shamanism and altered states of consciousness
http://www.samwoolfe.com/2013/04/are-cave-paintings-sign-of-shamanism.html.
 The Sorcerer is one name for an
enigmatic cave painting found in
the cavern known as 'The
Sanctuary' at Trois-Frères, Ariège,
France, made around 13,000 BC.
The figure's significance is
unknown, but it is usually
interpreted as some kind of great
spirit or master of the animals.

SHAMAN or
SORCERERS
“The Sorcerer” with re-drawn
version by Henri Breuil
“The Sorcerer”, is an example of a strange cave painting found in “The Sanctuary”
cave in France, dating to around 13,000 years ago. Henri Breuil asserts that The
Sorcerer, which is painted as a kind of half-man, half-deer hybrid, represents a
shaman. It is speculated that when one of these shamans went into a trance,
they might perceive images of these transformed beings or they might imagine
themselves becoming one of them

http://www.samwoolfe.com/2013/04/are-cave-paintings-sign-of-shamanism.html
SHAMAN or
SORCERERS

SHAMANISM IN PREHISTORIC ART

A shaman or medicine man/woman is the person

traditionally in a tribal setting who is charged with the
spiritual, otherworldly or one could say the psychological
well being of the tribe.
The actual word shaman originates from Russian Evenki and
Tungus tribes of Siberia but has been adopted in the West
as a generic term for the priestly, wise person who provides
spiritual advice to the tribe by means of communication
with ancestors, natural spirits and the hidden otherworld.

Catherine Perigo – Cultural Anthropologist

cited in http://shamanicidentity.blogspot.com/
 SHAMAN or
SORCERERS

SHAMANISM IN PREHISTORIC ART

Unlike people today, those in prehistory were adept at

entering trance; what we now call shamanism. This gave
access to alternative realms where people met and
befriended entities that they thought of as spirits. To the
people of the past, the otherworld of trance, and the spirits
that resided there, were as real to them as anything else they
encountered.
Mike William PhD
cited in http://prehistoricshamanism.com/prehistoric-belief.php
 SHAMAN or
SORCERERS
SHAMAN

They were the earliest professionals. They mediated between

the inner life of the tribe and its external affairs. They
presided at all "rites of passage" such as births, puberty
initiations, marriages, and deaths as well as all "rites of
intensification" which attempt to strengthen the tribe's
relation with powerful natural forces in times of crisis such as
famine, storm, and epidemic.

http://www.williamjames.com/History/SHAMANS.htm
 Red ochre hand stencils in the
Cave of El Castillo (c.37,300 BCE).
SHAMAN or
SORCERERS Aurignacian culture. These
markings are some of the earliest
art of the Upper Paleolithic.

Hand stencil from Cosquer Cave

(c.25,000 BCE) Gravettian culture.
National Museum of Archeology,
Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France.

http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/prehistoric/hand-stencils-rock-art.htm
 SHAMAN or
SORCERERS
Characteristics of Prehistoric Hand Art
As far as age and gender are concerned, recent analysis of hand stencils
has shown that Paleolithic art, or at least the caves where the art was
created, involved men, women and children.

According to Professor Dean Snow of Pennsylvania State University, who

studied the hand marks in the French caves of Pech Marle and Gargas, and
in the Spanish rock shelter of El Castillo, a strong majority of the hands
belonged to women. His research findings raise the possibility that the
role of females in Stone Age art was greater than previously thought,
although - since we don't know for sure that hand paintings were created
by "artists" rather than mere "spectators" - more evidence is required
before a definite conclusion can be reached. We do know, however, that
both handprints and hand stencils were left by cave dwellers of all ages,
including children.
http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/prehistoric/hand-stencils-rock-art.htm
 SHAMAN or
SORCERERS
The meaning of hand stencils,
conducted by Paul Pettitt of the
University of Sheffield. Pettitt
demonstrates that the handprints
were quite often created in places
that were difficult to reach. He
suggests that a possible
interpretation of this is that they
represented navigational
pictographs in dimly lit caves,
giving advice such as "do not use
this passageway".

http://www.visual-arts-
cork.com/prehistoric/pictographs.htm
SHAMAN or
An international team of researchers
SORCERERS
have discovered evidence that spotted
horses, often seen in cave paintings,
actually existed adding to the debate
over the inspiration for the 25,000 year-
old painting, The Dappled Horses of
Pech-Merle in France.
http://www.english.rfi.fr/france/20111108-genetic-tests-throw-new-
light-french-cave-painting

Pech Merle The cave is large, with seven

underground ‘galleries’ totalling 2 kilometres
in length. And although visitors only get to
see about a third of the cave, they do get to
see the best third. The cave is best known
for the large panel of spotted horses, the
head of one of which is formed by a natural
shape on cave wall. Research on this
Hand stencils around the famous particular panel has done much to advance
"Dappled Horses of Pech Merle". our understanding of European cave art.
(c.25,000 BCE) 13 feet by 5 feet. http://guidedtoursfrance.wordpress.com/
SHAMAN or
SORCERERS

This painting created around 15,000 BC,

which would make them about 17,000
years old.

The Shaft of the Dead Man. From

Lascaux, France
One of the greatest and most baffling
paintings of the Stone Age

The painting in the Shaft of the Dead Man is unusual because the
human figure is not normally drawn. This scene shows the image
of a man that appears to have been killed by the bison.
SHAMAN or
SORCERERS

Shamans lying in a trance in San Bushman cave art,

South Africa
SHAMAN or
SORCERERS

Hunting Magic
Traditionally, shamans served their communities
as the mediators between the human world and
the world of nature, the source of food and all
good things upon which the community
depended for their continued survival. Rock
shelters and cave sites have preserved
pictographs and petroglyphs that reveal the
shaman’s connection with the spirits of the
animals that were hunted by the people—spirits
with whom the shaman had to maintain a good
working relationship. If the shaman failed to
maintain this balance, the people might starve
SHAMAN or
SORCERERS

“Aliens” and “UFOs” in ancient cave

www.samwoolfe.com/2013/04/are-cave-paintings-sign-of-shamanism.html
 Images have also been found in cave art which
SHAMAN or look like UFOs or alien beings. Graham
SORCERERS
Hancock argues that this does not mean that
prehistoric humans encountered aliens, as
some conspiracy theorists might say, but
instead could be a sign of hallucinations.

The ancient Egyptian religion, for example, is

full of half-animal, half-human gods, as well as
ritual and magic. The Egyptian religion, like
the older forms of shamanism, could have
been based on altered states of
consciousness.

Some have argued that the Blue Egyptian

water lily, which has mild psychedelic
properties, might have been used by ancient
Egyptian priests in ritual practices. In Egyptian
art found in the temple of Karnak, the lily is
depicted in party-like scenes. The lily is also a
symbol for the Egyptian deity Nefertem.
SPIRITUALISM
and ANIMISM SPIRITUALISM AND ANIMISM

Animism is the belief that all things animate and inanimate

have a spirit of their own and that there is no boundary
between the physical world and the spiritual world. Within a
culture today, animism in its purest form is a sign of a
profound primitiveness, which we find only in remote tribes in
the Amazon, Africa and a few other isolated pockets of the
world.
For primitive tribal people the world of animism and spirits is
not a belief system, it is an experiential understanding of life
itself and predates any religion which may exist in any culture
today.
Catherine Perigo – Cultural Anthropologist
cited in http://shamanicidentity.blogspot.com/
SPIRITUALISM
and ANIMISM

SPIRITUALITY IN PREHISTORIC ART

• David Lewis-Williams suggests that the cave paintings

were made by Cro-Magnon shamans. The shaman would
retreat into the darkness of the caves, enter into a trance
state and then paint images of their visions, perhaps with
some notion of drawing power out of the cave walls
themselves.
• This goes some way toward explaining the remoteness of
some of the paintings (which often occur in deep or small
caves) and the variety of subject matter (from prey
animals to predators and human hand-prints).
 GUA TEWET
INDONESIA

SPIRITUALISM
and ANIMISM

PALEOLITHIC
MEGALOCEROS,
LASCAUX, FRANCE CAVE PAINTNG,
CHAUVET, FRANCE
 and ANIMISM
SPIRITUALISM

http://www.oom2.com/t13921-prehistoric-shaman-art
SPIRITUALISM
and ANIMISM
 THEORIES on the purpose of
PREHISTORIC cave painting

• Breuil interpreted the cave paintings as

being hunting magic, meant to increase
the number of animals.

• Some theories hold that they may have

been a way of transmitting information,
while

• Other theories ascribe them a religious or

ceremonial purpose
Ever since the beginning of the XXth century (20th), several attempts have been made
to find the meaning(s) of Paleolithic rock art. Art for art’s sake, totemism, the Abbe
Breuil’s hunting magic and Leroi-Gourhan’s and Laming-Emperaires’s structuralist
theories were proposed and then abandoned one after the other (Delporte 1990,
Lorblanchet 1995).

Since then, most specialists have made up their minds that it would be hopeless to
look for the meanings behind the art. They prefer to spend their time and efforts
recording it, describing it and dating it, to endeavor to answer the questions 'what ?',
'how ?' and 'when ?', thus carefully avoiding the fundamental question 'why ?'.

In the course of the past few years, though, a new attempt, spurred by
David Lewis-Williams, was made in order to discover an interpretative
framework. Shamanism was proposed (Clottes & Lewis-Williams 1998).
Considering the fact that shamanism is so widespread among hunter-
gatherers and that Upper Paleolithic people were admittedly hunter-
gatherers, looking to shamanism as a likely religion for them should have
been the first logical step whenever the question of meaning arose.

http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/clottes/page7.php
Indeed, judging by the lack of footprints and other signs of human
presence, only a small group of artists and other decision-makers ever
ventured inside. This leads credence to the idea of the prehistoric cave
as a sanctuary or sacred place, and the paintings as an iconographic
backdrop for whatever ceremony or ritual was performed therein.

Unfortunately, no one knows exactly what kind of ceremonial activity

might have occurred. But two basic possibilities suggest themselves.
First, given the overwhelming visual effect of the animal figures,
engraved, drawn or painted in almost every cave, it is clear that
Paleolithic art is essentially the art of the hunter. Thus the cave
paintings might be interpreted as a primitive type of hunting "wish-
list".

Dangerous predators (such as lions and bears) might have been

pictorialized in order to demonize or cast spells upon them, in the way
that voodoo dolls are first made then pierced with pins and the like.
http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/prehistoric/pictographs.htm
THANK
YOU