Etched in Stone
by Janeen Renaghan
A man crawls into the recesses of a dark subterranean tunnel, his bare feet and deerskin sheath dragging on the rock. In his hand, a stone lamp filled with fat and lit by a wick of moss guides him deeper into the cavern, under piercing stalactites, over the bones of bears. A half-mile from the mouth of the cave he reaches a chamber and, standing, inventories his tools: a large, flat bone; a stone scraper; a bristly reed; and a flint knife. Held to the rock wall, the flickering light from the lamp animates a Paleolithic animal kingdom. Bulls stampede in a brown blur of hoofs and swinging tails. Black horses canter. A red cave bear lumbers. A woolly rhinoceros stands, stiff and immobile in its unshorn coat. On his bone palette, the man combines a chunk of red ocher with animal fat. He dips a reed into the mixture and applies it to the rough, natural canvas, each stroke comprising some of the earliest known evidence of human existence.
Almost three years ago, a man named Jean Chauvet stumbled upon a limestone cavern not unlike this one in southeastern France, near Avignon. The cavern, now named after the fortuitous explorer, is about 30 feet below ground and contains the oldest cave paintings for which we have radiocarbon dates. Radiocarbon dating, the process by which the age of an object is determined by the radioactivity of its carbon content, suggests that the art in Chauvet is about 31,000 years old, 4,000 years older than that in an underwater cave at Cosquer, and 14,000 years older than the famous art of Lascaux. Because the paintings at Chauvet are so ancient, we might expect them to be crude, the work of men not far along the evolutionary road. But the beauty and diversity of these paintings and engravings rival those of any cave. In fact, they are as or more skillful than many works completed three millennia later, turning the linear way in which we have understood art history on its head. The art in Chauvet has caused many historians and scientists to throw away their time lines along with their belief that art progressed and matured steadily over the course of the Upper Paleolithic era, which lasted from approximately 35,000 to 8,000 BP (Before the Present).
One does not stroll through the gallery at Chauvet; instead, one ducks, crawls, and explores. The Upper Paleolithic was a time toward the end of the last ice age, when the sea level was 300 feet lower than it is today and cold climatic conditions often drove people into shelter. Typical of many cave art sites, the muraled chambers at Chauvet are far from the entrance, in rooms off a labyrinth of tunnels. The inaccessibility of the art suggests that, unlike the paintings in our living rooms, the purpose was not decorative; these pictures were used for something.
The Cro-Magnons, early Homo sapiens sapiens living in Europe, possessed an advanced brain that allowed them to think on a symbolic level and, therefore, to communicate through visual images. These intelligent and imaginative hunter-artists invented representation. But what sort of symbols did they construct, and why? Do stampeding bulls and galloping horses express certain fears and needs? Are they somehow involved in rituals concerning hunting or fertility? Are they magical? Chauvet is not the only cave that calls into question widely accepted theories of the purpose and origins of prehistoric art. An exploration of cave art in Europe and new research of rock shelters of South Africa may help bring this ancient world out of the dark.
As with any period in art history, generalizations may be made about the style and subjects of European Paleolithic cave art. When one looks at an Upper Paleolithic cave painting in Europe, the use of primary colors, the variety of technique, and the consistent subject matter are clearly visible. The Cro-Magnon palette was fairly colorful, considering the available materials and lack of art supply stores. Paint was made by mixing pigments from natural substances such as yellow, red, and brown ocher, black oxide of manganese, vegetable charcoal, and clay with binders such as sap, animal fat, blood, and even urine. The mixture was applied to the rock surface with anything from creative fingers to brushes made of animal hair, feathers, or splinters of bone. Blowpipes, straw-like tools usually made of reeds, were used to trace outlines and to blow pigments where we would use a ladder, on ceilings and in tight corners.
Engravings, just as common in caves as paintings, were created through different techniques. The rock surface was punctured with sharp objects (such as flint points) to produce an image made up of a series of dots, or delicately chiseled to create a fine outline. A somewhat less precise method involved scratching or scraping dark rock surfaces to reveal a picture in the lighter rock underneath.
A rock wall is certainly not as smooth a canvas as a closely woven strip of cloth. The natural swells and recesses in the rock were not necessarily an obstacle, though. Artists softened or flattened rough edges with a sharp stone, or used the uneven surface as a convenient three-dimensional enhancement to a picture. Bulges in the rock, for example, could literally flesh out fat or pregnant animals.
But even more noticeable than the colors or technique is the overwhelming presence of large animals--horses, bison, wild cattle, mammoths, deer, rhinoceroses, lions, bears, reindeer, and goats, many of which no longer walk this earth. Prehistoric cave galleries are often the only visual documentation we have of long-extinct mammals, including the European mammoth (Elephas primigenius blumenbach), a long-haired, giant-tusked forerunner of the modern elephant; the heavy-humped woolly rhinoceros (Tichorinus antiquitatis blum), an ancient mass of tufts and tangles; and the European cave bear (Ursus spelaeus), a domineering creature standing ten feet tall, whose powerful jaw contained enormous canine teeth. Smaller mammals, birds, and other creatures also appear, though in lesser numbers. In Chauvet, an engraved owl, a red panther, and a spotted hyena were identified on the rock face some of the few known images of these animals in Upper Paleolithic caves in Europe.
In addition to animals, bewildering geometric shapes and signs mark the rock face: lines, dots, zigzags, wedges, triangular shapes, and hand prints. Are these marks mere slips of the hand, or something more?
The range of explanations for these enigmatic forms--a primitive form of writing, calendar markings, drawings of genitalia--conveys just how difficult it is for us to make sense of cave art. One common explanation is that these forms acted as a magical means of controlling animals. In this view, lines drawn to look like traps may have been used to ensure success in hunting. The paint-dipped hand prints, not unlike a child's finger-painting, also may have served some sort of magical purpose or acted as an unforgeable signature.
Human figures are extremely rare in all Upper Paleolithic cave art, and no one is sure why artists abstained from self-representation. Perhaps, if the art was inherently magic, the artist was wary of turning a spell on himself. While human figures are scarce, human features were sometimes rendered on the rock face as part of the anatomy of half-man, half-beast figures. These odd hybrids are loosely analogous to the centaurs of classical mythology, with human postures and animal attributes such as hoofs or tails. The antlered Sorcerer from a cave in Trois Freres in France is a fascinating example of a hybrid subject. The monstrous shape has the antlers of a reindeer, the beard of a bison or a man, the tail of a horse, and the paws of a bear. At one moment it looks like a costumed ritual dancer; at another, a hunter stalking in disguise. Many researchers have speculated that these semi-human creatures are magicians or sorcerers (hence the name of the figure at Trois Freres) or even gods from ancient ceremonies.
We are used to our art having an order, from the eye-level placement of paintings in a gallery to the uniformed guards in a museum. Yet unlike the structured way in which we view art today, the animals on cavern walls appear to be without any semblance of organization and are certainly not framed. They seem arbitrarily, almost chaotically, placed, layers of scattered, superimposed animals running over and into each other in a stampede of horns and hoofs. While it has been suggested that the animals were arranged in a definite order meant to convey the artist's preference for certain species, the strata may also indicate later additions to the walls in the days before paint remover or whitewash. And considering the conditions in which these artists worked--complete darkness illuminated in only small patches by primitive stone lamps, compared with the enveloping glow of today's ubiquitous artificial light--it would have been very difficult for a Paleolithic artist to precisely align images and step back to view his "canvas."
However much we do not understand about the Cro-Magnon, this much is certain: The Stone Age world was defined by animals. Paleolithic man hunted animals, depended on them to sustain life, and used them as the primary subject of his art. The artist took a great deal of time delineating his animal subjects; even viewers of cave art today, 30,000 years later, rarely need to question the species, sex, or age. (Identification is facilitated further by the fact that although the animals are almost always portrayed in profile, certain features such as horns, antlers, or hooves are drawn in three-quarter perspective for a complete transcription.) While an intimate knowledge of animal species and anatomy is not surprising in a primeval hunting culture, it has been suggested that this accuracy resulted from artists' using dead animals as models. Limp, relaxed bodies; tight, close-fitting legs (which seem incongruous on a standing beast); and hanging tongues are possible evidence of the use of these "still-life" prototypes. Dead in a cave or alive in a memory, animal models allowed the artists to create a realistic, even breathtaking, Paleolithic zoo on cave walls.
Much of the interpretation of cave art involves the mystical and ceremonial significance of animals to early man. No one can be sure what role these images played in late Stone Age hunting society, but it is probable that they were somehow connected to ritual. Through visual representation, hunter-artists may have tried to animate and then control the animals around them. Arrow marks on the rock near some images suggest a killing ritual in which artists tried to slay the animals voodoo-like far from the scene of the hunt. In the same way that the artists may have tried to command animal death, they may also have endeavored to govern animal life. The depiction of noticeably pregnant animals, such as the pregnant cow from Lascaux, suggests that artists tried to will the propagation of certain species to ensure a steady food supply. If Cro-Magnons did imbue animals with some supernatural meaning, recent research in South Africa may tell us even more about the mysticism involved in creating this art.
Unlike the spelunking gymnastics required to reach the muraled chambers of Lascaux and Chauvet, the prehistoric rock paintings in southern Africa are located in accessible rock shelters of mountain ranges. Engravings are even easier to spot: They are pecked or incised on innumerable boulders and rocks across the plains. While finding the art may be as easy as taking a leisurely walk, dating the paintings and engravings is far more difficult. The lack of organic matter in southern African rock art makes radiocarbon dating virtually impossible. Sometimes, if a portion of a painting has dropped from the walls and ceilings of shelters into an archaeological deposit, the charcoal in the deposit can be given a date. Although this technique says more about when the piece fell into the deposit than when it was actually created, it nevertheless has been important in providing the few available dates for southern African rock art. The method was used to date a piece of rock art in southern Namibia to approximately 27,000 BP, placing this oldest recorded San art at roughly the same time as western European Upper Paleolithic art.
The San people are responsible for the majority of rock art in southern Africa. Ancient hunter-gatherers, the San Bushmen were sole inhabitants of southern Africa until approximately two thousand years ago, when other farmers migrated into the region. Today they are found only in the Kalahari, a desert region that includes parts of Botswana and Namibia. (San rock art featuring rhebok, left.)
Although the San palette was not unlike that of the Cro-Magnon European artist, San art was originally interpreted as somewhat trite, a sort of visual diary of quotidian events: we hunted, we gathered, and so on. However, South African archaeologist David Lewis-Williams, founder of the Rock Art Research Institute at the University of Witwatersrand, suggests that San art is far more complex; in fact, his work ultimately calls into question what we think of not only southern African art, but all Upper Paleolithic art.
Especially for people with no written language or institutionalized religion, intimate rituals and symbolism were integral to San life. Without priests, doctors, or social workers, the San as in many cultures relied on shamans to perform the work of all three. The shaman is, above all else, an advocate for his people, sent to other worlds by means of a trance to mediate the will of the spirits for control of rain, sickness, game, and fertility. The process of actually getting to that other world often begins with music: The pounding rhythms of ritual songs, crackling fires, clapping hands, and dancing feet are often the only catalyst a shaman needs to enter deep concentration. Once intensely focused, the shaman feels an energy "boil" painfully in his stomach. Sweating and trembling, he bends over, head dropped, blood dripping from his nose. The energy from his abdomen then rises up his spine and "explodes" in his head. The shaman enters a trance, a world as real and tangible to him as the dancers, the music, and the fire. (San rock art showing hoofed shamanic characters, each with its own distinctive head type, above.)
Recent research has shown that much San art was associated with similar reported shamanic experiences. Lewis-Williams came to this conclusion through his study of various stages of visual hallucinations, from the first stage characterized by the appearance of geometric forms such as grids, dots, zigzags, spirals, and curves to the final stages, where one sees and experiences things invisible to those in a normal state of consciousness, not unlike a waking dream. These stages are important because they are later translated by shamans onto the rock face as art. The zigzags, lines, and dots (perhaps better known to us not as a stage of hallucination, but as signs of a painful migraine or a dizzy spell) that appear in the first part of a trance are seen in rock engravings and paintings in southern Africa and are quite possibly emblems of a shamanic vision.
In the final stages of hallucination, some shamans have reported having out-of-body experiences. While in a trance, shamans may call up the soul of and then become a potent animal, such as a large African antelope called the eland, in order to negotiate with the spirits. Like the geometric shapes, records of this trance-induced metamorphosis--images of shamans with antelope heads and hoofs--frequently appear on rock walls across southern Africa. Even more convincing, the figures are sometimes painted with bleeding noses and bent heads, suggestive of the bleeding that shamans themselves experience as they enter a trance.
Lewis-Williams' model may work for southern African art, but can it be applied to Paleolithic images in western Europe? Is it possible that the paintings and engravings in caves like Lascaux and Chauvet were also made by shamans? The lines and zigzags appearing in the first stages of hallucination are prevalent in western European caves, and are just as likely products of a trance as they are calendar markings or drawings of genitalia. The metamorphosed creatures typical of the late stage of shamanic hallucinations are also identifiable in western European cave art such as the antlered Sorcerer from Trois Freres in France. (Whereas a San shaman might hallucinate an African beast such as an eland, a European shaman might hallucinate a creature more familiar to him, such as a deer, horse, or bison.) Like their southern African counterparts, Upper Paleolithic men in Europe also may have traveled to a spirit world inhabited by animals and recorded these visions on cave walls. Once dismissed as the art of a primitive culture that could not distinguish between man and beast, in the context of shamanism the hybrid images are seen as the result of a late stage of hallucination. (Shown above, a hallucinatory monster on a wall in KwaZulu-Natal Drakensberg.)
This new theory suggests that hallucinations influenced much of the art of the Upper Paleolithic era in every way, from inspiration and subject matter to style and position. Even the rock face apparently acted as much more than just a canvas: Lewis-Williams found some of the strongest evidence for the shamanic interpretation of San art in images that appear to emerge from cracks in the rock, suggesting that the jagged walls of rock shelters were like veils between the human and spirit worlds.
In 1998, a team of scientists will begin a formal investigation of Chauvet. With each half-life of carbon measured and Paleolithic beast identified, the scientists will begin to piece together the history of the cave and the Cro-Magnon artists for whom it was so crucial. Despite what we do not know and, ultimately, cannot know about our ancient past, one reason to continue studying the cave galleries of the world is found in theories like those proposed in southern Africa. Looking at Upper Paleolithic art in Western Europe and in southern Africa through the transfixed eyes of a shaman gives us a new understanding of the relationship between cave art and prehistoric civilization, and of our relationship to the man in the deerskin sheath, slowly crawling through the dark tunnel to paint.
Former FONZ intern Janeen Renaghan is a freelance writer living in Washington, D.C. She graduated from Brown University in 1995 with a B.A. in English.
(ZooGoer 26(4) 1997. Copyright 1997 Friends of the National Zoo. All rights reserved.)
