The Mind in The Cave The Cave in The Min PDF
The Mind in The Cave The Cave in The Min PDF
and
Jean Clottes
Conservateur Ge'ne'ral du Patrimoine
11, ruedu Fourcat
09000 Foix
France
Abstract
This brief overview argues that the evidence of the images themselves, as well
as their contexts, suggests that some Franco-Cantabrian Upper Paleolithic cave art
was, at least in part, intimately associated with various shamanic practices. Universal
features of altered states of consciousness and the deep caves combined to create
notions of a subterranean spirit-world that became, amongst other ritual areas, the
location of vision quests.
Introduction
In western Europe, the Upper Paleolithic began about 35,000 years ago with the
appearance there — elsewhere it was earlier — of anatomically modern human
beings, somewhat smugly self-styled Homo sapiens sapiens. The period ended in
Europe and the Middle East roughly 10,000 years ago. It was then that people in
western Europe and other parts of the world began to abandon a hunting and
gathering life-style and to domesticate plants and animals (see, for example, Mellars
and Stringer 1989) .
It seems fair to say that the Upper Paleolithic of western Europe is best known
for its remarkable efflorescence of art, or, as some writers wish, less prejudicially and
probably rightly, to call it, "image-making" (for an overview of the art, see Bahn and
Vertut 1988). Recently, Upper Paleolithic cave art, painted and engraved deep
underground in dark chambers and nooks, has received renewed attention with the
announcement in the world media of two startling new sites—Cosquer, the partially
flooded cave on the French Mediterranean coast (Clottes and Courtin 1996), and
Chauvet in the Ardeche region of France (Chauvet et al. 1996). Although it is with
cave, or parietal, art that this paper is concerned, there are equally striking pieces of
mobile art, exquisitely carved in bone, antler and ivory. Mobile art is found in
deposits in rock shelters, some of which are at the entrances to deep caves in which
there is wall art, as well as in the depths of the caves.
Since its discovery, cave art has been a topic of intense speculation and debate.
Why did people penetrate the caves to make images of horses, bison, aurochs, woolly
mammoths, and so forth? What functions did the images and the caves serve? What
did the images "mean"? Was it for the purpose of hunting magic? Or was the art
simply art pour Part?
conditions. Add "dreaming" to this list, and the experience by at least some Upper
Paleolithic people of altered states becomes indisputable. Altered states of
consciousness are part of being human, part of a "package deal" (for a review of
research on altered states see Siegel and West 1975). What Upper Paleolithic people
made of their altered states is another question altogether.
The ways in which altered states are experienced and interpreted are not "given"
or universal. In understanding this point it is useful to think of consciousness as a
spectrum. At one end is "normal" or "alert" consciousness. This grades into day-
dreaming, deep reveries, dreaming, "light" trance states, and, at the far end, "deep"
trances in which subjects are not aware of their surroundings at all, but are part of a
fully hallucinatory realm with its own rules of causality and transformation. That is
the way that many Westerners think of it. But the spectrum is divided up by each
society or subculture in its own way. What passes for madness in one community may
be esteemed as divine revelation in another. What is a vision to some people is, to
others, hallucination. The definitions of variously distinguished altered states are
therefore socially situated. But there is more to it. The definition of altered states
is also implicated in the negotiation of social statuses and political power. Visions
of the future may earn a person admiration in some societies, but they will hamper
rather than facilitate election to Congress. Because altered states are part of being
human, all people have to come to terms with them in one way or another.
So too, it must have been during the Upper Paleolithic. Were those people
hyper-rationalists who dismissed all altered states as aberrations? Unlikely. Or were
they like all known hunter-gatherers (and, of course, others as well) who place high
value on certain precisely defined altered states? Indeed, the ubiquity of cross-
culturally very similar altered states among hunter-gatherers points to the high
antiquity of the form of ritualized altered states that we call shamanism.
Membranous Rock
Many images incorporate features ot the rock surface on which they were placed.
Sometimes a small nodule became an animal's eye, sometimes a natural swell of the
rock face was taken to delineate the chest or shoulder ot an animal; sometimes the
edgeot ashclfbecameadorsal line. To these naturalfeatures,the artists added lines,
thereby transforming the given into the created. Frequently, these images appear to
be coming out of the rock wall. At Rouffignac, for instance, i horse's head is painted
on the .side of a protruding flint nodule. The n.st ot the horse is apparently behind
the rock face (Figure 1).
These and other features of the art suggest that people were searching for
animals, by touch as much a.s by si^ht, in the convolutions ot the underworld; not
"real" animals, but spirit-animals that could become their 'guides' and animal-
helpers. The caves were thus like the entrails of the underworld, and the flours walls,
March 1998 Altered Consciousness in the Upper Palaeolithic 17
(Begouen and Clottes 1981). The teeth and the artifacts must have been taken
underground with the express purpose of placing them in the niches. In all these
cases, people were sending things through to the underworld. Exactly what they were
thereby achieving, we do not at present know.
A Neuropsychological Model
So far we have dealt only with selected aspects of representational images. But
there is also a large non-representational, or geometric, component of Upper
Paleolithic art. These meanders, dots, zigzags and parallel lines have sometimes been
considered a separate, ifparallel.symbolling system. Indeed, one ofthe most puzzling
features of hunter-gatherer rock art worldwide is the intimate relationship between
representational and geometric images. The answer to this enigma is to be found in
the wiring ofthe human nervous system and the way in which that system goes deeper
and deeper into altered states. What has become known as the neuropsychological
model distinguishes three stages of altered consciousness (Lewis-Williams and
Dowson 1988).
As people begin to move along the spectrum from alert consciousness to light
altered consciousness, they sometimes experience geometric visual percepts that
include zigzags, undulating lines, bright dots in clouds or lines, meandering lines, sets
of parallel lines and so forth (Kliiver 1966; Eichmeier and Hofer 1974). This is Stage
One. The geometric percepts of this stage aTe variously known as "form constants,"
"phosphenes, and "entoptic phenomena." Because they are wired into the human
nervous system, they are experienced universally. All people, no matter what their
cultural backgrounds, have the potential to see them. They are induced by the
generating factors that we have already listed and also by migraine, the scotomata d
which are well known to many sufferers. Again, we must point out that it is the form,
or structure, that is universal. Selection from the full range o( forms and the
ascription of meaning to the selected forms is entirely cultural For instance, the
Tukano of South America take multiple undulating lines of dots to represent the
Milky Way, the L: >al of .shamanic flight (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1978). In other societies,
such dots may mean someching altogether different.
In Stage Two of altered consciousness, people try to make sense of entoptic
phenomena (Horowitz 1975). They do so in culturally specific ways and in
accordance with their emotional states. For instance, Westerners might interpret a
bright dot as a bomb if they are fearful or a cup or water if they arc thirsty. Christians
in a mood of religious expectation may take the bright dot to represent a chalice held
by the Light ofthe World.
Although first experienced in an early sta^e of altered consciousness, entoptic
phenomena persist into Stage Three — deep trance (bieyel 1977). Here they are
combined with iconic images d people, animals and monsters. They are therefore
an integral part ofthe spirit world, no matter what their specific Culturally controlled
meanings may be. Here, we argue, is the answer to the enigma of at least some
geometric hunter-gather rock arts and, what concerns as most at the moment, to the
combination of geometric and representational motifs in Upper Paleolithic art.
Conclusion
By drawing on the results of neuropsychological research on altered states of
consciousness and on those aspects of shamanism that are probably wired into the
human nervous system, we have outlined an explanation of Upper Paleolithic cave
art that brings its diverse features together into a coherent pattern. In a cave, the
mind fills the space with spirit-animals and beings. But there is also a cave in the
mind, created there by the wiring of the human nervous system. When the
topographical cave and the cave in the mind came together in the Upper Paleolithic,
new dimensions were created and a stunning art was born.
Notes
Acknowledgments: We are grateful to colleagues who commented on drafts of this paper, G. Blundell
and R. McLean. We thank M. Jean Plassard, the owner of the Rouffignac cave,/or the photograph from
which Figure 1 was made. Figures 1,2, and 4 were prepared by R. McLean. Figure 3 was drawn by Donald
Sutherland. The San Heritage Centre is funded by the Human Sciences Research Council and the
University of the Witwaterstrand. Neither institute is responsible for the views herein expressed.
March 1998 Altered Consciousness in the Upper Palaeolithic 21
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