At Chauvet Cave in the Ariège in France there are
probably three types of images: the red drawings, which are
often symbolic but also depict animals; the white scratched
drawings; and black animal drawings.
Generally speaking the Red signs dominate towards the
original entrance of the cave. They are followed by an area
of white drawings, which is separated from the red drawings
via an undecorated cave section. Bernard Gély in Jean
Clottes Return to Chauvet Cave points out that such
a "contrast between a decorated sector and a merely
frequented zone had already been recognized in the Ardèche,
in the Grotte des Deux-Ouvertures."
It is therefore possible that the colour used for an image
also gave it a certain symbolic context and that colours were
not used at random.
Curiously, Clottes does not treat the white of the
scratched drawings as its own colour, and recognizes a two
colour scheme at Chauvet. This is surprising because he and
his team were able to demonstrate that in numerous cases
scratched drawings were smudged in a way to avoid the white
of the wall underneath the beige surface sediment to show too
brightly, so that the drawings have an off white bone colour.
However, some white drawings have black markings and infill,
and they do appear in the same sector. Personally I get the
sense that we are confronted with an universal human colour
trilogy, common in all Goddess&God cults where the
Goddess is Earth and God is the sky. The sky changes with the
rising and setting of the sun, while the earth changes with
the cycle of the moon. The moon moves the water that is in
the earth. The sun moves the water that is in the sky. The
water transports the soul or the spirit between Heaven and
the Underworld.
In such a context, a dark cave is the Underworld, and the
spirits (water) therein are ancestor spirits, waiting to rise
back into the middle world where life manifests. Such spirits
are particularly attracted to blood, the spirit water of the
living. This is why Odysseus in the Underworld digs a trench
the length of an arm and fills it with the blood of a freshly
sacrificed animal to attract the ancestor spirits, so that he
may converse with them. Red is the colour of blood, it is the
colour of new life. White or yellow is the colour of maturity
and manifest spirit, it is the colour of bone. Black is the
colour of ash, of dead earth, earth without spirit.
Whether or not the red paint at Chauvet had blood added to
it, I cannot say, but if I had to guess I would say yes. The
Inca mummies found on the mountain tops in Peru, had
iron oxide dye pumped into their stomachs. This may have been
done to dramatise the effect of the ritual but essentially
the red in our blood is iron oxide. Blood is a
mineral rich water with iron oxide in it, except that the iron
only acts as a sort of magnet for the oxygen atom, so that it
can be transported from the lungs to wherever in the body it
is needed to burn energy. There is fire inside of us.
Why then would ancient people make blood markings in the
underworld? I guess the question is why they would go there
in the fist place. As I have discussed in my essay on the
Sky tent, I believe they went there to obtain powers that
would serve them in the Middle world. They possibly had taken
power tokens from animals who they had killed. For these
power tokens to be worth anything, these would have to be
powerful animals. Such power tokens appear in Greek mythology
i.e. the Golden fleece. In China the Tiger faces extinction
because every body part is assigned a special healing quality,
the claws being a protective charm. Fur, horn, claws and
hooves are all known to be attributed magical powers.
Interestingly at Chauvet, such body parts are often missing
or painted black. Interestingly, most of the animals shown have
died out.
Take a depiction of a mammoth on the wall of the End
Chamber at Chauvet for instance. The animal is shown in black
without any trace of fur, so that it resembles a slightly
deformed elephant. Or look at the lions that are shown
without any trace of a mane or teeth. It seem that almost
every lion is shown with an open mouth and none contain teeth.
To some Manchurian tribes the tuft of hair below the
reindeers head extending down to its lower chest is thought
to be invested with a magic life power (according to Ivar
Lissner in Man, God and Magic). The same tuft of
hair on the bison is always coloured black including
the head and on one animal there is a black patch on the back.
Were these body parts removed? Were the hooves, certain fur,
horns and teeth taken from a killed animal, and kept as
magical power tokens? Were these images of animals created
because form attracts spirit, and an image of an animal would
attract its spirit? Were those parts missing or blackened so
that the spirit animal would not be disturbed by their
absence, and come looking for them, to conceal that an
important part of itself was missing?
Perhaps I have an advantage here. I am an artist. Images
give me power. To create them, I take on their spirit. I feel
them. Am I my art? - No! But I know the feeling, and with
every painting I free my spirit to be something else. This
can be like swapping TV channels. It can be like adding
layers to a landscape. The power of image lies in the
approach. Many cave art images are in very inaccessible
places, some are so obscure that even the artist would not
have seen the image he or she created. These are not
decorations. These caves are not dwellings. Jean Clottes and
his team have documented this pretty well. Apart from a few
hearth which seem to have been used for making charcoal from bone
or tree (Trees are holy for they connect heaven and
earth, they are an image of the soul), the cave shows no real
signs of habitation. This should not come as a great surprise.
Most caves are damp and not very well ventilated. For a
minimum of 2,500,000 years our ancestors have had stone tools
and thus the means to make other type of shelter, such as
huts and tents.
Caves are holy places, temples and cathedrals of the
underworld of old. In my opinion we should not assume that
when we find human remains in caves, that these were
habitations, but places of ritual, even if that includes the
manufacture of tools. On Bali to this day certain bone may
only be carved on the holy grounds of a temple. The people
who ventured into these caves went there to get power, and
not to have a nice sing song in front of a decorated wall.
According to my reasoning, they went into these dark and damp
places to see spirits on the dimly lit walls of the
underworld, and to capture them or encourage their presence
by creating an image form of them. The images then need to be
in spaces where the spirits might enter the space. These
spaces are the cracks and crevices where the water pushes
through the walls.
We know that ancient European tribes used to worship lakes
as holy sites where sacrifices used to be made. In National
Geographic Vol. 197 No 5, Michael Klesius mentions that horse
skeletons have been found in Danish bogs. He suggests that
the hides were displayed by the side of the lake to indicate
that this was a holy site. This probably indicates that the
hides were not found on the horses, and it is possible that
they were kept for other purposes. Was there a lake near
Chauvet cave? If the animals depicted referred to live
animals, then whatever remained of these animals would have
been buried ideally above the site, or in a way that
its remains could have been carried there by groundwater.
The idea that a lake is a pathway to the otherworld or the
world of the spirits is reflected in many myths and legends.
One such legend is that of the marriage of Gwyn to a lady
from a lake called Llan y Fan Fach. The marriage ends in by
the lady returning to the lake after being hit by Gwyn (more
or less accidentally) three times. She takes with her dowry: more than six hundred head of sheep, cattle, goats and
horses. The story is published in The Young Oxford Book
of Folk Tales, by Kevin Crossley-Holland.
The sacrifice of animals and humans in lakes and bogs may
therefore mirror some of the beliefs held by the people of
the culture at Chauvet 30,000 years ago. The sacrifices were
gifts to the spirit world and it was probably hoped that
there would be assistance from the spirit world in return.
But let us return to the Red Signs. If humans created
images of power animals in these spaces to call these spirits
into their midst, and if humans did so because they wanted to
obtain or capture some of these animals powers, then there
would at least be a chance that from time to time one of
these power animals could escape out of the cave and follow
the humans to haunt them. Therefore two things had to be done.
Power that was taken had to be repaid. And the entrances to
the cave had to be guarded from bad spirits entering and bad
spirits leaving. In my belief this is the purpose of the Red
Signs which I shall discuss in detail, as far as I have had
access to them.
Let us look first at the image of a Rhinoceros on the
"great Lion Panel". It's horns and its cheek which
are usually painted black are painted red. It looks as though
blood is coming out of its nostrils and mouth. Upon close
inspection it seems that the red paint was added to the black
drawing later. Has it been edited? Another clue comes from a
pair of lions (Clottes identifies them as female rubbing
against male). The images overlap and it seems that the male
was drawn first. Then someone started a second animal that
was meant to overlap but then was abandoned at the rump. Then
a red line was drawn to mirror the back of the first lion,
all the way to the head. Then a third (female) lion was drawn
to overlap the previous lion(s). Again we get the impression
that a charcoal painting had been edited, perhaps because it
was not complete. Another case of editing also concerns a
lion in a niche of the Panel of the Horses. The lion has a
red dot on its nose (the nose is where the spirit enters our
body, and was highly revered by the Egyptians) and other red
markings where we would suspect its mane.
What could be the purpose of such 'editing'. Well, it must
have been very important otherwise it would not have been
done. It also suggests two forces at work here: the person
who depicts the animals and the person who does the editing.
The dots of hand stencils found at Chauvet suggest that some
were made by a man and other were made by a woman or an
adolescent according to Dominique Baffier and Valérie
Feruglio who have studied these prints in great detail. It
seems to me that this cave was looked after by someone.
Someone who was in charge of the red signs and who did the
editing of power images executed by others in the cave.
Clottes and his team have found remnants of twigs in the
entrance area of the cave and there is an absence of human
tracks that would refer to the creators of the images.
Clottes and his team suggest that this may be due to water
having flown through the cave in the thirty thousand years
since the images have been created, and this is very likely.
However, another option is that the floor was looked after
and that all tracks left in the underworld were removed to
avoid wandering spirits following them, or to stop initiates
from following the tracks of their predecessors and to find
their own way.
Jean Clottes and his team have done carbon dating on some
of the black images and some of the bones found in the cave.
This has allowed them to establish that the cave was used
during an interstadial of the last ice age, a short episode
of warming. Clottes and his team feel that the images were
executed in one sweep by a small group of artists and that
the panels of animals show some sort of composition, lions
chasing bison a.s.o.. However, none of this explains the
strange markings on the bodies of the animals depicted or the
omissions of certain body parts. It also does not explain why
some animals seem to overlap so many times (found exclusively
among the black drawings). One rhino has simply three other
backsides and three more sets of horns added to it. Then
there is the issue of craftsmanship. It may seem to the
layman that all animals show the same degree of skill, but my
own artist's eye would like to differ. There are conventions
to the drawings, certainly. But there is one lion in the end
chamber that is so poor in execution that Clottes and his
team single it out and query what it depicts. There is so
much space. There is no need to draw one image on top of the
other or to scrape old drawings off and replace them with new
ones, a practise demonstrated by Carole Fritz and Gilles
Tosello on the Panel of the Horses.
Fritz and Tosello point out that originally a bear had
made its marks on the wall, then animals were scratched over
them or nearby. Then part of that original composition was
erased and some small animals were drawn in black with more
and more animals being added as time progressed.
This demonstrates two things: a) the animals were not
drawn as one composition but they were added as time
progressed and old sections were removed to facilitate this;
b) the bear markings could have been crucial for the
selection of the panel and there was something special about
this section of the wall that did not allow the images to be
drawn somewhere else. It seems that Fritz and Tosello are
confused by both the diversities and similarities of the
images. They claim that a panel of four horses "were all
done by the same hand" and state in the same sentence
that they (apart from their "family likeness")
"also differ from each other in [...] the proportions of
the head and neck, the drawing of the eyes and ears, [and]
the postures."
It may be that what is so confusing about these
compositions is that the people who executed a particular (black)
drawing was part of some sort of animal clan. This may have
been a family clan. Tuition in how to draw the animal and the
conventions to observe may have been part of the education.
It may have been seen as prosperous to place your own power
image as close to that of an important ancestor/predecessor
as possible, in the hope that some of his (?) spirit-power
would also reflect upon yourself. To me the compositions in
the End Chamber certainly seem to suggest so. Two rhinos may
be drawn crossing their horns not to simulate a fight but to
place their power symbols on top of each other in the hope
that some of the power of the former will transfer itself
through to the latter. In one instance, three 'successors'
simply 'chose' to add the power symbols and outline of their
animal to that of their predecessor(s). To me, the lions are
not chasing anything but they are drawn in a way that one
emerges out of another. There were lots of other spaces to
draw, but maybe it was felt to be more auspicious if one
placed ones own image as close as possible with one's own
ancestors/predecessors to avoid unwanted changes of fortune.
If that is the case then the composition in the End chamber
of Chauvet is not premeditated but it reflects the
psychological attitudes of successive members of a clan or
family and their need (or lack of it) to place themselves
with their own kind at a spot that is revered for its potency
to trap or convey the powers or remnants of a totem/power
animal.
I feel my sense of such a cycle of power being transferred
emphasised, when we look at the composition of the 'Sorcerer
Panel'. This image is painted on a rock pendant in the End
Chamber. It shows a vagina in the centre. From the right a
bison 'steps' into the left leg of this woman. On the other
side on the left, a lion steps out of the right leg of the
woman and a mammoth seems to follow on from the lion. In my
opinion, what we see here is a symbol of how through the
transformation of death and rebirth power is passed on. Black
is the colour of death. The animals are totems of power. The
lower part of a woman shows that these images relate to
the physical human body. In Shamanism it is common around the
world to have a power animal and to entertain a constant
relationship with it. My wife is from Cameroon and there,
according to various first hand accounts that I have heard,
some people still keep an alligator or a snake in on their
land with whom they have a magical bond. It is believed that
if one dies, so does the other. One man told me that he
observed how ignorant (European) officer threw stones at one
of these alligators and how later a mob of people shot arrows
through his window.
I feel that the End Chamber is the very place where such a
bond was forged as part of a complicated and probably lengthy
ritual. In that context the space beneath the rock pendant of
the Sorcerers Panel may have been particularly significant
as the spot where by some ritual the contract was sealed.
I think that at this stage it is already apparent, that
whatever culture perused its rites here was quite complex,
considering my observations hold true.
Then why do I differ so much from the opinions and
observations of Jean Clottes and his team? The answer may be
that we have different expectations as to what we are looking
at. Jean Clottes and his team are seasoned academics that
have to incorporate traditionally held views in their report,
or challenge them by ways of very lengthy and complicated
arguments (such as I am trying to produce here).
I have also had the benefit (?) of watching a program on
BBC several years ago that explored the thesis of a man,
whose name I cannot remember (shall try and find out), who
suggested that before much of the ice started to melt ~10,000
years ago, most of the ancient civilisations had their
centres and cities along the coastlines which for ten
thousand years have been submerged under water. Such cultures
could explain the origins of the early civilisations which
all were founded along major rivers (Indus, Nile, Tigris,
Euphrates). His thesis did suggest that as the waters rose,
these civilisations did retreat up the main rivers to regroup
and start again.
It is therefore at least possible that the culture of the
Aurignatians which replaced the culture of the Neanderthal,
was imported from the Mediterranean where it had its main
cultural base (probably near Palestine where Neanderthal
culture and Cro-Magnon culture seemed to co-exist). I say
'replaced the culture' because I support the argument that
the Neanderthal people form a significant part of the
European and Northern Asian biological ancestry and that the
built of the Neanderthal was due to lifestyle and culture,
and not to genetic variation. I will discuss this in a
separate essay.
However, this point is important because it supposes a
fusion of cultures so that what we see at Chauvet has very
strong local roots (in the Neanderthal Culture) but also has
an imported element (from the middle east). In Return to
Chauvet Bernard Gély produces a map that shows the
distribution of Upper Palaeolithic sites and Decorated Caves.
It is interesting that almost all the decorated caves are
clustered along a side arm of the Rhone or near water ways.
It is common knowledge, that there are certain parts of
central and northern Europe where no decorated cave art has
yet been found. A possible explanation might be, that the
cave artists did not have their origin in nomadic central
Europe but that they belonged at least to the fringes of a
culture of trade, organisation and civilisation of which we
have very little information. That would explain the
complexity of signs found at Chauvet. It would also explain
why, in the continuation of cave art there is a definite
improvement of style and technique as well as overall
stylisation in comparison of Chauvet (30,000 BC) and Lascaux
(14,000 BC), which suggest that somewhere, even if it was on
ancient long lost Mediterranean coast lines, there was a
continuation of culture and civilisation that time and again
would spread its cultural influence up the Mediterranean and
Atlantic rivers. In the case of France the Rhône and the
Dordogne.
This should really not come as much of a surprise since it
has been known for a long time that Mediterranean shells have
found their way to remote Palaeolithic sites in France and
that therefore some form of trade must have existed.
Travelling up and down rivers in a landscape filled with
dangerous animals must be the safest and most convenient way
of transport.
It is with this background consideration that I will
continue to try and regard and interpret the images and
traces left at Chauvet.
People who seek power, have a need for it. The Aurignatian
culture differs from the Neanderthal culture in some very
important aspects. First, they were organised to support a
growing population. All their technological innovation also
fed a real need. This was in many ways the beginning of the
end of the Ice Age. During an Ice Age populations on land
shrink and increase in the oceans. Individuals are strong and
big, structured around small and tight communities. This
applied for humanity as much as for all other mammals living
in the Northern Hemisphere.
Closer to the Equator life is small, also organised into
small groups to suit the dense and tropical rain forests. The
pigmy and bushmen, as well as the recently discovered remains
of 'Homo Florensiensis' may be good examples for such
populations. There is no doubt that these different people
with their different cultures could have met, and they
probably have, most notably somewhere in Palestine. The
argument has often been made that the fact that Neanderthal
and Sapiens bones are not found in the same cave shows that
the two populations did not meet. I disagree. If Neanderthal
and archaic Sapiens were different cultures they may well
have mixed, yet still retained different cultural identities.
The Neanderthal finds from the Sinai suggest this. They show
a slimming of the bone structure, suggesting both a change in
lifestyle and possible interbreeding with other cultural
groups. However, someone showing Neanderthal features was
probably part of a Neanderthal culture and thus would have
been buried accordingly by their peers. My wife is catholic,
I am not. I will not be buried as a catholic she will.
The Mediterranean would have been much smaller more than
ten thousand years ago. What we can find of these cultures
lies hidden beneath the sea. Oceanic archaeology is in its
infancy. However, Plato did suggest that there once was a
technologically advanced culture that got swallowed by the
sea. If such a culture did exist, it probably had its seat
around Greece, Crete, Turkey, Palestine, and Egypt. Then,
these lands were luscious green and fertile lands.
With every interstadial (warm episode towards the end of
an Ice Age) opens a window for cultural growth and expansion.
The orthodox Neanderthal clearly rejected this. They did not
want this expansion or bow and arrow. Instead they retreated
into some of the most hostile environments known to man.
These were proud people with strong beliefs. They were not
interested in the expansion of their populations, they were
interested in the preservation of their culture which had
endured at least 70,000 years and of which the Neanderthal
physique is an expression.
The Neanderthal were incredibly hardy. It is probably from
them that Europeans have inherited the pale skin, blond and
red hair, slightly stocky built, big noses and the shape of
the skull. Why did the very robust built of Neanderthal
people disappear so suddenly in the Cro Magnon? Because the
Cro Magnon had very different lifestyles that knew
organisation of labour and longevity based on a high toll on
the resources on the environment that was not possible in Ice
Age Neanderthal territory. The Neanderthal would never have
survived if they had shown the attitude of Cro-Magnon people.
It is under the successors of the Neanderthal that the wholly
rhino, the mammoth, the megaloceros, the sabre tooth tiger,
the hyena and a large host of other animals died out.
The Neanderthal knew how to preserve. They have often been
credited as being to unimaginative to produce innovation and
for being poor hunters. This is because the people examining
them still have Cro Magnon headsets. We live in a warm period
which is probably going to end at some point, and then we may
start to look differently at the attitudes displayed in the
artefacts of the Neanderthal. The heavy wear of on the
Neanderthal teeth, their strong neck and jaw muscles (expressed
through their bow ridges and fleeing chin) suggest that these
people were used to eating things that needed a lot of
chewing. Their tools suggest that they did a lot of digging.
It is therefore possible and under the circumstances likely,
that the Neanderthal ate a lot of dug up roots and other
vegetables. Such a view is supported by various research (for
which I lack quotes) that suggest that more robust apes or
human types usually have a more vegetarian diet, the Gorilla
and the Chimpanzees being an example, but also
Australopithecus Robustus.
The 'hunt' of Neanderthals shows a lot of ritual. Their
confrontation of an aurochs bull resembles that of a bull
fight, and shows the same ritual features as the bear hunt.
In the hunt for food weak animals are chosen for preference.
The Neanderthal people hunted the biggest animals. Thus a
fully grown aurochs would be led into a marshy plane and then
be confronted probably by one chosen initiate.
Neanderthal men show a very high level of such injuries
and such ritual fights/hunts may have been a traditional
right of passage for the Neanderthal men. Why? In a small
group limited by size, that relies on strong individuals it
is essential that every place in the community is earned by
rites of passage. There is not a lot of space for hangers on.
I imagine that the Neanderthal must have been a deeply
spiritual people. I feel that they were equally at home in
the spiritual world as in the material world. I say this
because a spiritual awareness is essential for contentedness,
and contentedness is essential for the preservation of a
delicate balance.
In the National Geographic Vol.189, No1 is an article on
the Neanderthals by Rick Gore, in which he examines the high
risk hunt of the Neanderthals but also a site found in
Atapuerca in Spain called La Sima de los Huesos where
Neanderthal finds date to up to 230,000 years ago. Here the
Neanderthal 'dumped' the bodies of their dead into a shaft at
the end of a cave. Such behaviour already suggests spiritual
concepts and a sense that our soul travels after we die. Gore
points to another early Neanderthal site where a cache of
cave bear and aurochs bones were found together with a "surprisingly
advanced tool kit". According to Gore the bear paws
showed cut marks to suggest that the skin had been removed
from them. It seems that the bear cult and its remnants span
a vast realm of human existence and have their archetypical
origins in early Neanderthal culture. Gore quotes Alain
Tuffreau, an archaeologist at the University of Science and
Technology of Lille who points out that the bones "belonged
to young adult aurochs. They were very strong and dangerous.[...]
For humans to kill such big mammals before bows and arrows
were invented, they needed a group and a strategy."
I think as time will progress our regard of the
sophistication of the Neanderthal culture will greatly
increase. Neanderthal behaviour is perplexing. These were
people used to fulfilling their life's mission before the
age of thirty, so that they could make space for someone new
in the group. These people were used to extremes in their
lifestyles that show a defiance of the physical world and
deep spiritual concepts. Without us accrediting the
Neanderthal people with such complex insights and ritual
activity, their actions seem primitive and unintelligent.
That, however seems inappropriate since here we have not only
one of the most successful human cultures but also a human
group which displayed the biggest average cranial capacity to
date.
It is this culture (not the people) that the Aurignatians
came to replace and they probably did so not by force but by
offering something that was exiting and new. At Chauvet we
still see the strong influence of the Cave Bear Cult. The
cave is littered with cave bear remains and at least one
femur and one skull, according to Jean Clottes, look as
though they have been intentionally placed by humans. The
fact that so many Neanderthal finds with ritual implication
are found in caves seems to suggest that caves were already
highly significant to the Neanderthal. The concept of caves
as places that connect with the underworld is probably
something extremely ancient among humanity. What is new are
the images and symbols.
Images and symbols exist so that we may relate to the essence
of knowledge. This is unlike understanding knowledge.
Knowledge of the spiritual world is merely a gateway to
another reality. The other reality is the essence of this
knowledge. The fact that the Aurignatians needed images
suggests that they did not usually lead demanding lives (perhaps
by our standards but not theirs). They needed images and
symbols to penetrate into the spiritual world where 'power
magic' was possible. They did not live in this spiritual
world, as perhaps the Neanderthal did. They needed shamans or
priests. They lived in a world of organised labour, where
tasks were delegated, where there were hierarchies and where
there was power. Someone had to have or represent this power.
Power needs a symbol. The sceptre of a king, his crown, his
attire are universal human tools in bestowing power on an
individual, and through the individual onto the group. Thus
the Aurignatian populations were separated form their
spiritual powers and in turn they obtained the power to
exploit their environments, to advance technology, to explore
the world, to live in relative comfort, to live longer lives
without the high levels of injury and sacrifice known to the
Neanderthal.
It is the difference between watching the bull fight in a
crowd and fighting it yourself.
However, we may expect that the spiritual concepts of the
Neanderthal had a profound impact on European and Central
Asian culture, and that the Aurignatians happily adapted such
concepts in their desire to obtain power from the spirit
world.
On the Panel of Hand Prints at Chauvet there is the
following drawing: it consists of thirteen dots that are
arranged around a faint circle with the thirteenths point
being slightly offset. At the musée d'Aquitaine in Bordaux
is a prehistoric Bas-Relief of a seemingly pregnant woman (her
left arm resting on her bulging belly) holding up a horn, the
opening facing her face, reminding us of the Greek Fortuna
Goddess of Fertility. There are thirteen cut marks on the horn
she is holding. At Lascaux there are thirteen black dots
followed by an upright rectangle - similar to a door -
underneath a black stag. This is followed by another row of
26 dots beneath a horse and a cow. Are the number of dots
significant? Robert Graves, in his book The White Goddess,
which I highly recommend, talks about his impression that the
sacrifices of bulls and other animals in antiquity probably
point towards a time when a leader / chief had twelve
followers. There are thirteen lunar cycles in a solar year,
plus a bit. Like Arthur's round table or Jesus and his twelve
apostles (or Moses and the Twelve Tribes of Israel), each had
their place, and with each year a chief or king would be
sacrificed, his powers absorbed by the new king and a new
member would enter the circle. It is thinkable that such a
strict system ruled Neanderthal life. However, Graves says
that it seems that at some point this ritual sacrifice of the
chief / king was replaced by a ritual that allowed the chief
/ king to sacrifice something else. Graves suggests he may
have been able to prolong his reign by sacrificing his
firstborn son or his most priced animal. I am not sure how
Graves came to his conclusions but as a model they cannot be
dismissed, since themes like this almost universally feature
in European and Asian mythology.
I am not sure how this may apply directly to Chauvet or
Lascaux. However, from what we know about the Neanderthal
culture it seems quite possible that men had their lifespan
mapped out in a way that made it unlikely for them to live
beyond the age of thirty or forty years, and we must take
into consideration that such cycles of succession did exist
among the early Aurignatians.
 Here we can see the
sacrum flanked by one of the two llium on the right.
|
 This image shows more
graphically the connotation of the llium with the
sickle, and the sacrum with the owl.
|
In my opinion what we see here in the Panel of the owl, is
the sacrum viewed from behind, flanked by the two llium. The
line next to the sacrum (owl) signifies the rib inside of the
womb. Before on the Panel of the Signs we see the rib, how it
is marked on the ribcage as the thirteenth rib. We then see
it falling into the pregnant womb sign. The line next to the
pregnant womb sign probably signifies that the rib is now
inside of the womb. This view is enforced by the Panel of the
Owl, where we view the female pelvis from behind, with the
rib inserted inside.
There are several (5) actual depictions of vulvas found at
Chauvet by Jean Clottes and his team. This encourages the
view that the Cave was seen in some way as a womb itself,
where the spirit of the earth and the spirit of the heaven
could mix. It is the manipulation of this mixture that is the
magic that creates life.
It is perhaps easy to see how to people who saw the earth
as a female goddess and the sky as a male god would interpret
a cave and the passage leading into it as the entrance to the
divine womb of the earth. The presence of water equals the
presence of spirit, while the ochre colour of the cave walls
emulate the colour of bone. This is important. There are
large undecorated areas of the cave where the walls have been
extensively scraped. I have suggested to Jean Clottes that it
is possible that the scrapings were collected as a sacred
substance that was possibly used for body decoration and
indigestion. This is the only point on which M.Clottes and I
agree. He said that there were no significant scrapings on
the floor but then thirty thousand years have passed since
then and it is possible as he rightly points out that they
were washed away by water at some stage of the caves history.
However, an Ugandan friend of ours whose mother is a
herbal healer has sent her a white clay substance to eat
during her pregnancies. The births of her four children were
incredibly fast between 30 min and 45 min. Whether this is
related or not is not my concern, but the same substance is
known to my wife and her mother from Cameroon where it is
called Fembe locally and Kalaba Chalk in general.
Again it is essentially a dry white type of clay that is
eaten during pregnancies and for all sorts of stomach problems
or just as a dietary supplement. It is also used in a variety
of ceremonies as part of body decoration.
The painting of the body with clay is probably as old as
humanity itself (if not older, depending on how one defines
'human'). However, in the context of Chauvet we should
consider that this substance may have been, together with the
water collected from the cave walls, a sacred substance
essential for the creation of the sympathetic magic attempted
here.
At this point I would also like to point out the my
personal interest in m-state minerals, in particular m-state
gold. These substances have a distinctly interesting effect
on the body (allegedly by increasing its internal
electromagnetic conductivity) and there are some people who
believe that these white powdery substances are the manna
referred to in the Bible, and the philosophers stone, the gold
of the alchemist. In this context I recommend the reading of
Alexander Roob, Alchemie & Mystik, Das
Hermetische Kabinett, published by Taschen, 2005, where
Roob traces the origins of alchemy to Greek colonialist in
the late Egypt of antiquity, who identified Hermes their
winged messenger of the gods who was also attributed the
knowledge of the art of healing, with the old Egyptian god
Thot, the 'three times great'. Thot, according to Roob, was
the god of scripture and magic, and was worshipped as the
guide to the soul in the underworld. He is a human figure
with the head of a bird. This of course brings to mind the
phallic man with the bird head in the shaft scene at Lascaux.
When we look at what I have discussed so far, then it
should be obvious that the beliefs held here at Chauvet
somehow have influenced beliefs held 25,000 years later in
the middle east and northern Africa, and that the imagery of
the Panel of signs does evoke distinct parallels with the I-Ging
and the creationist story of Genesis.
In this context we may assume that some of the spiritual
scripture of the old testament may have had a foundation in
Egyptian writings. Moses after all was supposed to have been
raised (and educated) by the royal household of Egypt. The
relationship of the Hebrews and the Egyptians is an
interesting one. 1,500 BC Akhenaton, the heretic Pharaoh, broke
with the Egyptian priesthood and formed his own religion, a
sun god cult, which did worship not the idols of the priests
but the image of creation as it is presented by the sun.
Tutankhamen, his son and follower, had a throne in his grave
that shows the rays of the sun reaching down, their divine
hand touching the royal family and everything around them.
This obviously signifies that the shape of things is given by
the god of light. The sun god cult essentially undermines the
significance of the earth, the female aspect of creation. It
strikes me that there are parallels between the one God Moses
preaches to the Israelites, who essentially is very similar
to the sun god of Akhenaton, who also forbade the worship of
idols. It is therefore possible that the very ancient texts
of Genesis were Egyptian in origin, and that it were similar
texts that inspired Akhenaton to form his own cult.
Akhenaton disposed of his priesthood and needed to recruit
new personnel to serve him in this respect. It may be that
the Israelites were amongst those chosen for such a purpose,
and that since then they have been initiates to deep
spiritual secrets of ancient Egypt. This would certainly
explain why there were forces in Egypt that were both
reluctant to let the Israelites leave, while at the same time
had an interest to keep them suppressed.
This is however, a far shot. It is equally likely that
there was an ancient civilisation common to the entire region
which inspired all of the people in the region, and that the
Hebrews had their own stories handed down to them, which may
or may not have correlated with certain Egyptian scriptures.
I cannot discuss the parallels between the I Ging and the
red sign in great detail due to my lack of insight into the
former, but they will be obvious to all those familiar with
the I Ging. In the I Ging there are six levels, represented
by six horizontal lines that sometimes are 'broken'. It is my
understanding that the lower three lines refer to aspects of
the earth and related symbolism, while the upper three lines
refer to aspects of the sky or heavens. On the ribcage
diagram at Chauvet we also find six lines that are crosses by
a line moving up and down in the middle, thus forming six
segments. The broad coloured infill at the bottom of the
diagram colours the lower three segments. Red is the colour
of the earth, white is the colour of the heavens.
Interestingly the I Ging serves as an oracle; the Greek
heroes travelled into the Underworld to consult the ancestors
about the future; and it is likely that the cave at Chauvet
also served for similar purposes. In the Greek underworld
there is usually a lake that the hero has to cross. I believe
it is possible that a similar feature did exist at Chauvet in
the so called Candle Gallery, separating the zone of red
signs and drawings from the rest of the anterior cave.
If the Neanderthal culture did serve an ancient
Mediterranean culture with a cultural influence then it was
most likely that of the Bull and Bear cult. Both the Minoans
and the ancient Egyptians worshipped the aurochs. The Bull
cult exist still in modern Spain and it stretches all the way
to India where the cow is still holy today. The Bear cult
probably died out in those region where the cave bear itself
did disappear.
At Chauvet the Bear Cult features heavily. Even Jean
Clottes and his team were compelled to note the special
position of the bear amongst the animals depicted. I do not
know about cave bear populations 30,000 years ago around the
Mediterranean but I suppose that the fact that the cave
itself shows that it was visited by cave bears, that the cave
bear cult was an element with strong local roots, which
overlaps with the possibly imported cultural elements from a
Mediterranean culture.
The importance of the bear stands out in several ways at
Chauvet.
Fritz and Tosello in their study of the Panel of the
Horses remark that a bear left claw marks on that wall first,
that then scratched drawings were added. Then some of the
area was erased and black drawings were done on the top, the
horses being the last addition.
Norbert Aujoulat and Bernard Gély record a similar
sequence of superimposed claw marks for the Panel of the
Engraved Horse.
Michel Philippe and Philippe Fosse noted a print from a
clay-covered paw on a wall under the stomach of a drawing of
a panther. They note that so far more than 170 bear skulls
and 2500 skeletal remains lay strewn over the floor, and
notably in heaps. "Adult females seem to dominate".
They also point out that the cave has been visited by Cave
Bears probably for millennia, although first radiocarbon dates
show the bears are contemporary with the drawings. Bear
hollows are predominantly in the Chamber of the Bear Hollows,
in the Hillaire Chamber, Skull Chamber and End Chamber.
Philippe and Fosse also note that the lower parts of the
first chambers are 'truly carpeted' with bones, allegedly
transported by water. They also note two humeri (upper leg
bones) that are stuck in the mud next to two bear skulls. One
skull in the so called Skull Chamber 'sits' on top of a block
of stone, and Jean Clottes and his team seem convinced that
it could only have been placed there by humans.
Around the great collapse in the Hillaire Chamber Jean
Clottes and his team noted bear bones looking as though they
were piled there on purpose.
Additionally, Dominique Baffier and Valérie Feruglio have
noted that all bear drawings are lacking eyes with which they
differ from all other animals except perhaps the Ibex. I have
to add however, that the (only) black drawing of a cave bear
in the Hillaire Chamber does have an eye in my opinion.
I therefore agree with Clottes and his team that the bear
held a special position in the view of the 'artist' of
Chauvet. It seems that in many ways it was the bear that
served as a key inspiration for decorating Chauvet.
Time will tell whether the bear bones found at Chauvet
show signs of human preparation or not. It would also be nice
to know, if female bears generally die in Caves where they
hibernate, and whether or not it is usual for male cave bears
not to frequent the same caves as females. Also, although
Philippe and Fosse point out that Chauvet was visited by Cave
bears for millennia, it will be very interesting to know
carbon dates for the (so far) over 170 skulls at Chauvet to
determine whether or not these did date from other millennia
or whether they are all contemporary to the drawings at
Chauvet.
If they are, then we must assume it very likely that
Chauvet cave involved ritual killings of bears and that
culturally it has to be recognized as a bear cult site. That
would be very interesting since it would link Chauvet to
cultural traits of the Neanderthal people in Europe.
The fact that bones were found in piles and in unusual
places suggests that these bones were viewed as being very
special, since no other animal bones seem to feature
similarly at Chauvet (although the Ibex and the wolves, the
snake and the eagle are very interesting cases respectively).
It seems likely to me that perhaps at the time Chauvet was
visited by the Aurignatians, that all bear skull were
arranged in piles, and that the bear bones that seem to have
been washed in from the entrance may at some point have
decorated the entrance and first chamber.
I feel that Ivar lissner has demonstrated the similarities
between the shaft scene at Lascaux and the shamanic and
spiritual beliefs of the bear cult practicing tribes of
Manchuria. It therefore should be considered that some
cultural traits and beliefs of the Manchurian tribes are in
direct lineage with those displayed at Chauvet 30,000 years
ago. This notion is amplified by the fact that these people
at the time Lissner did visit them, still lived like the
prehistoric tribes of the Aurignatians, hunting, gathering
and reindeer herding.
If the Aurignatians did collect the bear bones found at
Chauvet, then it was important to them that the animal in
question was a female. This does seem significant. Female
bears give birth while hibernating.
If the Aurignatians did believe caves were some kind of
womb of the earth where ancestors congregated and from where
new life would spring, then the fact that a female cave bear
would visit such a cave to hibernate and then for her to
emerge with her young, would seem highly significant. I would
seem equally significant and inspiring for them to find that
the bear left marks on the wall, for this may be interpreted
by people used to seeing spirits in the dark (this is what
shamans do) as a sign that the bear is conversing with
spirits.
The fact that the Manchurians attribute(d) the Kodiak bear
a soul, does suggest that perhaps the Aurignatians did the
same. It was (is) the belief of the Manchurian tribes
interviewed by Lissner that the soul of the bear would fly up
to the mountain where it would meet God, and present God with
the concerns of the tribe. Then the bear would reincarnate,
providing the skeleton was intact.
The belief that the skeleton has to be intact for the soul
to reincarnate is very ancient. It is especially notable in
Egyptian burial customs. However, it is possible that such
practices are due to Neanderthal cultural influences, for the
Neanderthal are noted for the burial of their dead. Did they
do so in order to assure the reincarnation of the deceased?
It would be very interesting to know if any human burials
have taken place at Chauvet in particular under the heap of
stones in the Red Panels Gallery.
The fact that the bear has a special position at Chauvet
and the fact that most of the skeletons found are of females
does suggest that the Aurignatians at Chauvet did believe in
reincarnation, and that this was their main purpose for being
there.
The missing eyes on all bears except the black bear may be
explained by the fact that eyes are devices that see in
daylight. The bears without eyes at Chauvet are probably
encouraging the initiates to venture towards their
destination, where they are going to meet the (their) spirits(s).
The black bear in the Hillaire Chamber may be a guide back to
the Upper world, it has met with the spirits and now it
returns to the world of the living.
Such a notion is supported by the vulva signs found at the
End of the Megaloceros Gallery and in the End Chamber. It
seems that these signs were there to 'inform' the initiate
that he (?) had arrived in the womb-of-the-earth proper.
The fact that many drawings at Chauvet incorporate natural
fissures and cracks in the cave walls, shows that the
Aurignatians did study them in great detail. This may be due
to their belief that the Cave Bears did the same when
scratching the walls.
It is natural for anyone who is in trance to see an
animated surface, and to experience the surface to dissolve
into a three dimensional scenery.
In his very illuminating book The Way of the Shaman
the Anthropologist and Shaman Michael Harner talks about his
very interesting vision quests with Shamans of the Amazon. He
also describes simple guides for entering the 'otherworld'.
Similar techniques are also described by Phil Hine in Walking
Between The Worlds, Techniques of Modern Shamanism Vol.1&2.
Both techniques are based on sensitising the brains
ability to associate and visualise. It is a universal aim of
all shamanic traditions known to me to engage with a spirit
guide or power animal, to form a symbiosis. The Aurignatians
may have felt that the bear was doing the same by
'scratching' the spirit, for in the shamanic tradition the
power animal is captured by the shaman after it has shown
itself four times.
Thus the female bear may have been thought to engage with
power animals in the womb of the young to form the young in
her womb, and possibly to reincarnate the souls or her
ancestors.
I believe it is possible that the activity at Chauvet was
much older than the black drawings. The fact that large
sections of the walls were scraped, old drawings erased and
then re-decorated, does suggest that the initial activity at
Chauvet was far less structured, and probably a lot more
local.
It seems that there may have existed a local cult which
may have gained significance to a wider region, possibly the
whole Mediterranean. When this happened the stylistic
elements that existed became more refined and merged with
more complex beliefs systems. The cave then stopped being the
place where local shamans did their business and became a
structured site similar in significance as the Temple of
Apollo and Aphrodite to the Greeks and Antiquity.
I suppose that the cave was then structured into its
current format.
It may be that originally such animals as the rhinoceros
and the mammoth featured predominantly amongst the white
drawings but that later as the cultural context became wider,
other species were introduced, which were traditional power
animals elsewhere.
Clottes and his team mention that at the time the cave was
visited by a child 26,000 years ago, there may have been a
'lake' in the centre of the Hillaire Chamber. From the
descriptions and the colouration of the floor it is possible
that the Candle Gallery and the Chamber of the Bear Hollows
both were lakes. Of course, appropriate tests need to be
conducted to confirm this, yet this notion is supported by
the absence of wall decorations in those parts.
Bernard Gély points out that the Candle Gallery is 1.5 m
(5 feet) lower than the previous chamber. The only decoration
is a red "crude" mammoth drawing on a rock pendant
which Gély describes as easily accessible, and strikes
me as a further guide to the initiate towards the relevant
cave section ahead, on his journey through the 20 m of the
Candle Gallery.
The presence of lakes at Chauvet at the time of the
Aurignatians would be highly significant since this would
link with descriptions of Hades in Greek mythology, where the
hero had to cross a lake, and since it is a common occurrence
in shamanic journeys into the world of the ancestors that at
some point they come across a river over which the shaman can
fly in his or her journey but which is a significant obstacle
for the recently deceased on their way to the otherworld (read
Holger Kahlweit, Die Welt der Shamanen).
It is likely that Aurignatian shamans would have
recognized a lake in a cave as such a barrier that the
initiate had to cross in order to get to the world of the
spirits.
The floor of the Candle Gallery and of the Chamber of the
Bear Hollows seems to be very red. Perhaps the Aurignatians
had added red ochre to the water to make it look like blood.
In keeping with this I structure Chauvet Cave in its
present layout as follows:
- The Entrance Chamber would probably have been
filled with stacked bear bones and perhaps that
of other totem animals (Golden Eagle?). From
there one passage was used to access the Morel
Chamber and one to get to the Brunel Chamber,
which served as the 'reception' area.
- The Morel Chamber could have been a meditation
chamber, or a room where the initiate was
prepared. There are little round circles around
the entrance that almost seem to form some kind
of curtain. In any case, the symbol above the
door is probably a sign denoting the area beyond
as a sacred space.
- The Brunel Chamber is the 'Reception' before
crossing the initial lake and it is possible that
here members of the clan may still have been
present. The drawings on the wall are there to
inspire the initiate and those partaking in the
ritual. There is the bear, the main totem animal
of the cave and its inspiration. In the recess of
the bears there is also an Ibex, also without the
eye, which is probably the animal that the
initiate should take as an example, for it is the
Ibex that climbs to the top of the mountain where
the earth meets the sky, the antipode to the
cave, another indication to the divine task
ahead, and also an implication as to the journey
of the soul as it enters and leaves the cave with
the water. Other niches exist with other animals
such as Megaloceros, bison, horse, mammoth, a
cervid, a feline, red deer. There are many panels
with red dots, probably emphasizing the presence
of spirit. This is particularly notable with the
sacred heart panel that shows amongst many dots a
cross with a diagonal section drawn through the
top sector, which may be a reference to the 'rib'
seen later on the other side of the 'lake' in the
Red Panels Gallery.
- The initiate then leaves the Brunel Chamber past
the designated entrance to the Chamber of the
Bear Hollows. It is the one with the red dots
above. Here, the initiate is probably confronted
with sounds coming from the Cactus Gallery or
Rouzaud Chamber ahead, whose opening flanks that
of the Red Panels Gallery. It is possible that
the 'lake' was decorated with bear bones,
contrasting the red of the lake and the white of
the bone. The journey probably ends at the area
of the Red Panels Gallery.
- After entering the Red Panels Gallery the
initiate is confronted with the womb signs and
the ribcage. It is very likely that he receives
some kind of ritual involving some magic that
makes him 'Adam', the Red Earth, the rib, that is
being chucked into the womb of the earth, into
'Eve', Life Giving. It is likely that he (?)
receives some sort of initiation underneath the
rock pendant with the womb sign on it, probably
involving the use of the water dropping from this
'Earth-vagina'. He may even have is nose and brow
marked with the Tau that is displayed on the
'leg' of the woman on the pendant, and again we
find the sign of the cross, this time without the
diagonal dash, probably as a symbol for the
journey of the soul as it descends from the sky,
fills the plains and penetrates the earth.
- Perhaps now he sets off across the next lap of
the journey, across the 'lake' in the Candle
Gallery. He is guided by a sign of a little red
mammoth, which is probably supposed to give him
strength and encouragement. He arrives at the
'step' to the Hillaire Chamber and is confronted
with the sign of the Owl which shows him that
'he', the rib, has arrived in the womb.
- Here in the Hillaire Chamber the first
impressions are piles of cave bear bones around
the central collapse. The white animals on the
walls are ancestor spirits. He is reminded of the
enduring aspects of existence, bone, ancestors,
tradition. He sees the Panel of the Engraved
Horse, where he sees the white horse and the
white mammoth superimposed on a wall full of
bear claw marks, confronting the white bear. Here
the bear is filled in completely and thus is not
like the horse and the mammoth a power animal
that has been captured by the claw marks of the
bear and the outline of the artists but who has a
soul and by that convention has to be wholly
covered. Then he views the black bear, the only
bear with eyes, heading back towards the origin
of the initiate and emerging from his final
destination. This bear has eyes. He/she is
heading in the opposite direction for the
upper world. He/she is black. This bear has
completed its reincarnation, the soul emerging
from death.
- If the initiate strays to far into the skull
chamber he sees the 'edited' rock pendant where
some lost soul has painted their totem animal and
which was subsequently drawn over with a horse
head, probably to mark the right direction. This
is also emphasized by the bear skull sitting on a
solitary rock.
- If the initiate finds his way back this way he
will come across more white drawings, most
notably those of the white Ibex. This tells him
that he has arrived at his destination. He now
has to find the entrance to the Megaloceros
Gallery, where he either has to burn some
charcoal for himself, or where ready supplies are
waiting for him. The Megaloceros Gallery has been
scraped and the surfaces readily prepared along
with those next to the Megaloceros Gallery
entrance and the walls of the End Chamber. The so
called Panel of the Scraped Mammoths is probably
an area prepared for future drawings, and I
suppose that the drawings around the entrance of
the Megaloceros Gallery are younger than those of
the End Gallery.
- He passes through the Megaloceros Gallery at the
end of which he will encounter the signs of two
vulvas, confirming to him that he is in the right
place. He searches along the wall, and finds the
spot where previous members of his clan have made
their mark. He attempts to do the same or finds
another convenient spot. It is possible that
there is another initiatory ritual underneath the
Sorcerer Panel. The Panel itself shows the
transition of one totem animal as it reincarnates
into the next, again underlining the purpose of
the magic that was pursued here.
- At some point he returns to the Red Panels
Gallery via the Candle Gallery. Maybe there is a
final ceremony in the Cactus Gallery. Maybe he
already did this beforehand. However, he has now
completed the magic bond he came here for, and he
is now endowed with the magical powers of his
totem animal of which he still holds the token(s),
taken from its body, which now adorn him and give
him status amongst his fellow men. Status that is
beyond the reach of others since it involves
magic that can only be manipulated by going into
the Cave at Chauvet.
This is a very rough and ready sequence of events.
There may have been many different rituals and
initiations performed at Chauvet, of which drawing the
black totem animal was just one, albeit with great
significance. If my interpretation of the general use of
Chauvet Cave are correct, then there were as many
initiations at Chauvet cave after it became an
institution as there are black drawings in the End
Gallery and Hillaire Chamber.
If by any chance the number of black drawings did
match those of female bear skulls then the figure might
stand at somewhere around 150 (my guess). If such
ceremonies were reserved for high dignitaries only, and
if they were conducted on average every five years, then
the activity at Chauvet could span several hundred years.
In any case it seems likely that the place had a very
high status due to the magic conducted there and that
whoever went there to be initiated probably had a
personal interest in protecting the place. The
concentration of Upper Palaeolithic sites around Chauvet,
and the high concentration of secondary decorated caves
seems to support such a view.
I hope this essay on Chauvet serves as inspiration
both to the scientific world and to the lay men and
women, to which I belong. I should also note that I have
never set foot into this cave and that I have conducted
my research entirely on the back of Jean Clottes
excellent book Return to Chauvet Cave, published
in English by Thames & Hudson, ISBN_0-500-51119-5, -
a must for the enthusiast, of what may be the most
important prehistoric archaeological site in Europe.
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