From Black Land To Fifth Sun: The Science Of Sacred Sites [1 ed.] 0738201413, 9780738201412

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
From Black Land To Fifth Sun
Preface
1. The Archaeology Of The Intangible
2. Dark Caves, Obscure Visions
3. San Artists In Southern Africa
4. Fertility And Death
5. Power And The Ancestors
6. Avebury: Landscapes Of The Ancestors
7. Stonehenge And The Idea Of Time
8. Two Livings: Agriculture And Religion
9. The Moundbuilders Of Eastern North America
10. The Bull Beneath The Earth
11. A Shrine At Phylakopi
12. Divine Kings Along The Nile
13. Xunantunich: "The Maiden Of The Rock"
14. The World Of The Fifth Sun
Epilogue
Guide To Further Reading
References
Index
Backcover

Citation preview

c

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of S

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M .7^

BRIAN FAG

N

S

—

Shapians,

mysterious cave paint-

enigmatic earthworks, and temples

ings, ,

spirit niediunis,

—the

rehgious and spiritual lives of our forebears have

always seemed inaccessible to archaeologists.

Now, however,

From

the veil.

lift

science

is

finally

beginning to

the Nile's black land to the

Aztec's world of the Fifth Sun, from the ^shrines at

Mayan ceremonial

Phylakopi to the

Xunantunich, sophisticated

scientific

center of

techniques

our

are giving us insight into the intangible:

ancestors' relationship with the cosmos, their

notion of cyclical cvclical time, their dependence on

and worship of

—the

earth, indeed, their very

Master storyteller and respected archaeologist '

J3rian

Fagan draws upon

disciplines

~

—from botany,

a

wealth of scientific

zoology, and geology*

to neuropsychology, palynology (the study

spores andvpollen), and nuclear physics explore

this

new

—

of to

"archaeology of the mind." His

fiscinating tale begins over 15,000 years ago in

the

Cro-Magnon

caves of Lascaux, Altamira,

and the newly discovered Grotte de Chauvet western Europe.

The dmily

Ice

lit

Age

found within these caves have always been

What motivated

source of deep mystery:

man

to create such

audience?

works of

Armed with new

art?

Who

a

early

was the

recording technolo-

^g^esthat expose the paintings'

hew radiocarbon

in

paintings

finest detail

dating methods,

and

Fagan

describes a revoludon in our understanding of ^;irfie

world's

first artists.

^rts us to western Asia, agftts are

From Europe, he

trans-

where modern palynol-

using flotadon machines to analyze

.jeeds and cereal grasses that

marked the

transi-

,;#on from hunter-gatherer societies to close-knit /arXuitig villages^a dramatic shift that also

'

5!

Jtbmed- ancestor sind

Mother Goddess worship

iMiio family rituaKin places like ancient Jericho ;;^"

and Turkc\ \

C^atalh^oviik.

CK FLAP

Digitized by tiie Internet Arciiive in

2011

littp://www.arcliive.org/details/fromblacklandtofOOfaga

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

ALSO BY BRIAN FAGAN Eyewitness

to

Discovery (editor)

Oxford Companion

Time

to

Archaeology (editor)

Detectives

Kingdoms ofJade, Kingdoms of Gold Ancient North America

The Journey from Eden

The Great Journey The Adventure ofArchaeology The Aztecs Clash of Cultures

Return

to

Babylon

Elusive Treasure

The Rape of the Nile

FRO

BLACK LAND TO FIFTH

SUN

The Science of Sacred

BRIAN FAGAN

HELIX BOOKS

TA

ADDISON-WESLEY Reading, Massachusetts

Sites

CD BR

BL250 .F34 1998

t\ Many

of the designations used by manufacturers and

tinguish their products are claimed as trademarks.

designations appear in this a

sellers to dis-

Where

those

book and Addison- Wesley was aware of

trademark claim, the designations have been printed in

initial

capital letters.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fagan, Brian

From

M.

black land to

fifth

sun

:

the science of sacred

sites /

Brian

Fagan. p.

cm.

— (Hehx books)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-201-95991-7 1.

Religion.

2.

Archaeology.

I.

Title.

BL250.F34 1998

97-42843

CIP

291.3'5— dc21

Copyright

©

1998 by Brian Fagan

All rights reserved.

No

part of this publication

may be

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any

reproduced,

form or by any

means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the pubhsher.

Printed

m

the United States of America.

Addison- Wesley

is

an miprint of Addison Wesley Longman, Inc.

Jacket design by Suzanne Heiser

Text design by Karen Savary Set in

12

1

1.5-point

3 4 5 6 7 8

First printing.

Bembo by GAC/Shepard Poorman

9—MA—0201009998

May

1998

Find Helix Books on the World Wide Web http / / w\\^v. aw. com/gb/ :

at

CONTENTS

PREFACE

vii

1

THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE INTANGIBLE

2.

DARK CAVES^ OBSCURE VISIONS

3.

SAN

4.

FERTILITY

AND DEATH

70

5.

POWER AND THE ANCESTORS

100

6.

AVEBURY: LANDSCAPES OF THE ANCESTORS

115

7.

STONEHENGE AND THE IDEA OF TIME

1

8.

TWO

166

9.

THE MOUNDBUILDERS OF EASTERN

ARTISTS IN

1

23

SOUTHERN AFRICA

LIVINGS: AGRICULTURE

AND

51

RELIGION

NORTH AMERICA

1

43

84

10. THE BULL BENEATH THE EARTH

220

A SHRINE AT PHYLAKOPI

251

11.

12. DIVINE KINGS

ALONG

THE NILE

13. XUNANTUNICH: ''THE MAIDEN OF THE ROCK" 1 4.

THE

WORLD OF

THE FIFTH

SUN

270 302 332

EPILOGUE

367

GUIDE TO FURTHER READING

374

REFERENCES

383

INDEX

386

— 1

PREFACE

From Black Land

modern

use

to Fifth

Sun describes

how

science to study ancient cosmologies and religious

beliefs. All archaeologists

behavior in the

past,

analyze the material remains of

using such durable finds

They

have turned from the material to the intangible.

human

stone tools,

as pottery,

building foundations, and food remains. In recent years,

some

scholars

ask a question

was unthinkable even twenty years ago: What can archaeology

that tell

archaeologists

us about the relationships

world

as

they perceived

it?

between ancient

of a still-young discipline that treads

a fine line

and

cultures

The answer comes from

their

the cutting edge

between science and

the free-for-all world of imagination and pseudoscience.

Archaeology

is,

fundamentally, a science that

Without such

methods described Archaeology proofs.

We

is

common

sense, the

at intervals in these

and sometimes maddening and

interpret, the past

which means

although hopefully close

Cro-Magnon

pages would be meaningless.

study people in

describe,

a

their bewildering

perversity. Inevitably,

through our

that

all

own

we

cultural biases

also

and

our conclusions are only mere

—approximations of

reality.

Imagine asking

family of 15,000 years ago to describe and interpret

twentieth-century France with the aid of a spark plug,

cow

common

sophisticated scientific

not, however, an exact science replete with irrefutable

archaeologists

diversity

perspectives,

on

heavily

and plain old-fashioned

logical observation, reasoning, sense.

relies

a

handful o{

bones, a computer keyboard, a chess piece, and the concrete

foundations of a shopping mall, and you will understand the complex

VI

— FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

viii

By combining

albeit in the opposite direction.

archaeological and sci-

they are achieving remarkable success in using

entific techniques,

surviving artifacts

Our

undertaking

task that archaeologists today are

and challenging

as a

mirror to

reflect the intangible.

story begins in the late Ice

Age of 15,000

years ago and

ends with the Spanish conquest of Aztec civiHzation in A.D. 1521.

Each chapter

in this

book examines

a sacred place fi-om the past

uses multidisciplinary science,

and sometimes

move beyond

artifacts

and

architecture

Rather than provide have compiled a

historical sources, to

and into the

a fully referenced,

and

and

spiritual world.

distracting, narrative,

I

Guide to Further Reading, which gives basic refer-

ences for readers wishing to delve into the technical literature in

more

A list

detail.

end of

this

been tree-ring

common

of works referenced in the text

book. All radiocarbon dates calibrated;

scientific

to

Sun was

Fifth

a

all

parts

lengthy developmental

of the world.

those friends and fellow archaeologists

questions, tolerated

my

who

presence in the field,

I

cannot possibly mention them

take this

acknowledgment

as

my

all

I

am

visits,

There

by name.

I

and

grateful to

have answered

and shown

their sites, or, at times, entire ancient landscapes. that

metric, the

in

are

many years of traveling, site and museum

discussions with colleagues in all

measurements

all

also appears at the

than 6000 B.C. have

convention.

From Black Land process, involving

later

me

my

around

are so

many

hope they

will

heartfelt thanks. In particular,

Professor Richard Leventhal of the University of CaHfornia, Los

Angeles, and his field colleagues were wonderful hosts tunich, BeHze, and deserve a special

Pat

Leddy undertook the laborious

draft manuscript,

the beginning,

tinuing

task

of editing the rough

and Jack Scott drew^ the maps and text

my

figures.

From

my

con-

agent, Victoria Pryor, has encouraged

on what has proven

to

Xunan-

at

word of thanks.

be an unusually arduous

literary

My thanks also to Amanda Cook,Jefi'Robbins, and Lynne Reed of Helix Books for their many kindnesses and suggestions. Copy editor Alicia Jones achieved editorial iniracles with a complex

journey.

manuscript.

I

am

gratefial to

the

Department of Special Collections of

the Davidson Library, University of California, Santa Barbara, for their assistance

with some

illustrations.

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH

SUN

chapter one

THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE INTANGIBLE All right,

I

You know

will

take you to the world of legend.

that time, that place well

where animals talked and walked as men, untamed, unchanged, Hilda Austin, a

real

people

Nie?kepmx

still

.

.

.

elder from the Sailshan tribe of British

Columbia, Canada (quoted from Swan 1994, 320)

Deep

in

the

African

Central

the

savanna,

mourned the Ila chief all night. One kilometer away, vation camp near the Kafue River, we slept uneasily.

our exca-

at I

drums

tossed and

turned to the insistent drumming, musing on an elder v/ho had died full

of years, with hundreds of head of cattle to

weeks before, we had drunk beer and and

hunting, spears, and

cattle,

across the

open

camp out

to the far horizon,

vista

name. Only two

men

do, of

had gazed with aged eyes

Flats,

which extended from our

remembering the

buffalo hunts of his

youth, and carefree days of driving cattle to higher ground river flood came.

for grazing, stories

with

We

had talked of rain and the high

of the right way to burn off a

brought the landscape

spears,

alive

of stalking warthog

—

but they will

alive again.

come home

when

tales

of lechwe antelope

in thick reeds.

my

to the cattle."

I

As he took

sons.

the

grasses perfect

field to fertilize the soil.

that evening, the chief said: "I have taught city,

women

He

rifles.

of the Kafue

his

talked, as

They

His

slain

his leave

live in

the

was never to see him

2

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

As the sun rose

in a

hazy sky illuminating

a

grey dawn, heavy

wood smoke from burning fields, The chief's five sons had returned home to

drums

with the smell of

the

silent.

the cattle and

fell

buried their father before noon. They were indeed city men, dressed in nice clothes

and possessed of a Western veneer. Nevertheless, they

danced on the grave and,

the fine dust rose, sent his spirit to the

as

bush, thus returning their father to the land that had nurtured

and generations of Ila farmers and

him

herders before him. In a few

cattle

months the chief would become an honored ancestor, one of those who had gone before a guardian of the land.

—

saw the dancing from

I

ancient village the deep pit

midday. The

my

down

more than 1,000

had Hved and died

As

to get a better view.

I

across to the

looked back

I

noted

excavation that lay dark in the brightness of

stratified layers

extending

village,

date

mound

of

and walked

a distance

of ash and charcoal exposed

village after

3 meters from 300 years ago to a founding

years in the past.

Untold generations of farmers

in these settlements.

people had deep roots in the Kafue

The

late

chief and his

Ila

Flats.

A new moon rose that evening, a thin sHver set against a tapestry of

brilliant stars.

The

excavation began.

I

tracked constellations

heavens.

sea, it

Some

me

guided

was

night sky had been our

moving night by

years before, the

stars in

Ila

the skies.

—

My

all

across the

hills

my

of

from long nights

English homeland.

at I

verities

of procreation,

fertility,

measured by the passage of sun, moon, and

mind turned

"Thus the sum of things

is

to the

Roman

poet Lucretius:

ever being renewed, and mortals live

dependent one upon another. Some races and

in a short space the generations

and

like

increase, others diminish,

of living creatures are changed

runners hand on the torch of life" (Bailey 1947, 75).

The on

hour by hour,

roots in the land; of endless cycles of

and harvest; of the

and death

since the

and wane, and

Southern Cross high overhead had

the soft

as familiar as

planting, growth, life,

night,

to distant Pacific islands. An old friend

thought of the deep ancestral

birth,

companion

moon wax

had watched the

chief's sons

his grave.

The

had come back to

torch of

life

had passed to

material and spiritual worlds remained

people stayed on the land.

his cattle.

They had danced

new

unchanged

hands, but the as

long

as

the

— The Archaeology of

My

friend the

told

me

of

impala antelope in

tall

grass,

He

detailed descriptions

—

alive as a

arm

and nuances of facial

gestures,

hunt long ago,

a

how

muzzle loader

he had stalked an

in hand.

His sharply

and dramatic delivery brought the landscape

the smells and sounds of dry leaves crackling underfoot, loud

gunshot in the windless

air;

the hunter freezing

as

the suspicious

impala looked up; agonizing minutes standing absolutely slowly

3

chief was a famous storyteller, a master of

Ila

clipped sentences, subtle emphasis, expression.

the Intangible

moving forward

crablike toward shelter

behind

stealth,

unblinking concentration, moving only

grazed.

A

still,

then

a tree. Silence,

when

the antelope

gust of wind, musket being raised ever so slowly, the

antelope only a few yards away. Crack! Missed!

The impala jumping

high and the thump of the startled animal's hooves ringing out.

Throughout

his

long

life,

the chief had existed comfortably in

the midst of a living landscape, defined for

by

a lifetime

of experiences.

skills as a storyteller.

with him, but

The

The

his ancestors

shared these events, utiHzing his vast

an ancestor endured.

reminded

me

that

human

history takes

from generation — down documents, by word of mouth, sometimes enduring only form—which where come

forms

many

to gener-

passed

in

set

and

riches of his historical experience vanished

his legacy as

Ila chief's tale

He

him by

in material

ation

archaeologists

is

I

am

an archaeologist,

in.

a scientist

who

studies ancient

human

behavior and long-dead societies firom surviving, material remains of the past.

My "canvas" covers more than two-and-a-half miUion years,

from the very beginnings of humanity tures

of pre-Columbian America, and

to the recently vanished culclassical

Greece and

Rome

and even encompasses the technological achievements of the Industrial Revolution. past

—with stone

I

converse with material "voices" from the

artifacts

and pot

animal bones, and minute seeds

human tales

behavior,

such

as

sherds, ruined buildings,

—durable

made and used by

those of the

Ila

legacies

broken

of long-forgotten

ancient cultures.

My

finds

tell

chief, but their narratives are usually

incomplete, describing for the most part the business of day-to-day living. The real storytellers are

long

silent.

The myths and

chants that

were an integral part of their vanished world have died with them, but the

artifacts offer hints into

the lives of people deeply in tune

4

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

who

with their environments, with ancestors and

believed that their cosmos was

spirit beings.

the material and spiritual worlds

came together

orders that defined the essence of human

own. Ever since

I

saw the

filled

Their existence was one in which

in

in

How

mythic world

ways quite unlike our

dance on

chief's sons

grappled with a fundamental question:

life

his grave,

I

have

can archaeologists use

science to recover symbolic worlds of the past, and the mythic and ritual

settings that defined

between the tangible and

How

them?

intangible, to

can we bridge the gap move from the material to

the spiritual?

A COMMON FRAMEWORK

We

are

Homo

sapiens sapiens, capable

knowledge and

ideas through the

of

subtlety,

medium

and of passing on

of language.

We

possess

consciousness, self- awareness, and the ability to foresee events.

We

can express ourselves and show emotions. Studies of mitochondrial

DNA

have traced the roots of

modern humans back

to tropical

Africa between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago (see information in

box, page

5)

.

Archaeology

in western Asia at least

tells

us that

Homo sapiens sapiens had

settled

90,000 years ago, and in western Europe

(replacing earlier Neanderthal populations), 35,000 years before present.

Sometime during this ancient diaspora, these anatomically modern people developed a unique capacity for symbolic and spiritual

thought; for defining the boundaries of existence, and the

relationship

between the

do not know when these cave art least

tells

us that

humans melded

30,000 years ago.

societies

common

individual, the group,

By

beliefs,

but

late Ice

Age

the living and spiritual worlds at

10,000 years ago,

appeared in western Asia, elements or

and the cosmos. We

capabilities first developed,

when

the

human cosmology

first

farming

shared several

which form the framework of our

sci-

entific story.

The first common humans formed part of a

principle was that the world of living

multilayered cosmos,

which included the

supernatural otherworlds of the heavens and an underworld sand-

wiching the human plane. Gods, goddesses,

spirit

beings, and

a

The Archaeology of

the Intangible

5

MITOCHONDRIAL DNA AND MODERN HUMAN ORIGINS Molecular biology has played a significant role

human of

evolution

Homo

and

now

is

yielding important clues as to the origins

sapiens. Researchers have utilized mitochondrial deoxyri-

bonucleic acid (mtDNA) tions

much

in their

faster than nuclear

studies,

because

DNA, and

is,

through the maternal

DNA.

Thus,

line; it

it

it

accumulates muta-

therefore, a useful tool for

DNA

calibrating mutation rates. Mitochondrial

paternal

dating earlier

in

inherited only

is

does not mix and become diluted with

provides a potentially reliable

link

with

ancestral populations. The geneticists studied the rate of mutation

mtDNA

samples

determine the lineage of each sample. They deter-

to

mined the differences on the basis of the amount

mtDNA, which was establish the

approximate age of the population.

Europe, Australia, and the samples

5 populations were

some

of diversity

then used to calculate mutation rates,

mtDNA

researchers analyzed the

among

New

all

of

When

147 women from

the

in

and

thus

genetic

Africa, Asia,

Guinea, they found that the differences

were very

small. Therefore, they

argued

of comparatively recent origin. There

that the

were

differences, sufficient to separate the samples into 2 groups

and another comprising

set of African individuals

groups. The biologists concluded that

and inhabited,

—

individuals from

all

modern humans derive from

all

a 200,000-year-old African population. From

this

groups migrated

to,

World, with

or no interbreeding with existing,

little

in

population, smaller

the remaining areas of the

Old

more archaic

human groups.

A

storm of criticism has descended on

Eve" hypothesis, most of of genetic mutation.

it

The methodology

is

five

to

new and evolving data now available from

thousand modern individuals, there

display more diverse types of tions

elsewhere

in

"African

very

rapidly. Nevertheless, with mitochondrial

some

this so-called

directed against the calculations of the rate

mtDNA

is

evidence that Africans

than other present-day popula-

the world, which suggests that they

had more time

develop such mutations. Recent research has

normal (nuclear)

DNA

to

now moved beyond mtDNA

to the use of

confirm the original conclusions.

larger database of normal (nuclear)

DNA

(also nuclear

An even

DNA

of blood

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

groups and enzymes), displays a hierarchy of primary

between Africans and non-Africans, then a

split

between Eurasians and southeast Asians. This implies

humans originated in

Asia.

It

There

clusters.

in

one

later

modern

that

Africa, then dispersed from there to split again

thought that the ancestral population lived

is

was a

in

Africa

between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago. Therefore, assuming a constant rate of genetic diversification, arisen

in

the past

150,000 years

all

human

variation could have

or so.

ancestors inhabited these supernatural layers of the cosmos. This uni-

began

verse often

puts

it,

A for the

a

dark sea of primordial waters,

as a

or, as

Genesis

a vertical axis served as a

support

world "without form."

second shared belief is that

bowl of heaven, and linked the various cosmic

times this vertical axis was depicted syinbolically Eliade,

one of the

layers.

Many

Mircea

as a tree.

of the twentieth

greatest religious historians

century, stressed the importance of this axis mundi (axis of the world),

which joined the sacred

place.

living

and

Supernatural

spiritual

power

approached the surface of the earth

worlds

places

—

natural or

springs.

man-made

—and

landscapes associated with them, played a vital role in Eliade called

them instruments of orthogenetic

tings for the rituals that a place

Hindu Mount Meru, Black

Hills,

to the next. Sacred

the Greeks'

all

societies.

transformation: set-

or places such

as

—cosmic

Condor Cave

axes

in familiar chants passed

mountains such

Olympus, and the Lakota

San Rafael Wilderness, famous for changeable points

the mythic

ensured the continuity of cultural traditions;

where the word of the gods rang out

from one generation

and

sacred locations such as caves,

prominent mountain peaks, and permanent

Such sacred

—

mythic center otherworlds

the

filled

at

at a

its

where

as

the

Indians'

in southern California's

rock paintings, were interspirit

beings could travel over

into the natural world.

The Egyptian pharaohs linking the

domain of the sun

erected pyramids

as

to the realm of earth.

sacred mountains

Mayan

lords built

great ceremonial centers as symbolic representations of their world of

The Archaeology of

sacred mountains, caves, trees, and lakes.

the Intangible

To demolish

was to destroy the essence of human existence

itself.

7

a sacred place

Spanish con-

Hernan Cortes razed the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan in the of Mexico, knowing its temples and plazas reproduced in stone

quistador Valley

and stucco

The

a

cherished and all-encompassing supernatural world.

third

common

between them.

An

human cosmology

belief of

material and spiritual worlds

formed

a

on earth was

"external" landscape

"internal" landscape of the mind, or "landscape of

phenomena had

other

spiritual associations

the intermediaries

They looked

—

between the

after the welfare

that the

also

an

memory," where

of trees, cardinal directions, and

colors, jagged peaks, streams, groves

mythology. Usually, ancestors

is

continuum, with no boundary

those living

who

and

their places in local

had gone before

—were

and the supernatural worlds.

of the living and were guardians of

the land.

A fourth element that was shared by past societies was that individuals with unusual supernatural powers, either shamans or spirit

mediums, had the abiHty sciousness

to pass effortlessly in an altered state of con-

between the material and

spiritual realms, to fly free in the

Such "men and

supernatural world through ritual and performance.

women

of power" had direct and personal links to the supernatural

world. During soHtary quests they experienced visions of dots. Hues, spirit animals, gods,

and even ancestors.

their spiritual journeys, they painted spirits

When

images of their vision quests, the

and supernatural events they had witnessed. From these dream

journeys, shamans acquired the

wisdom

balance with the sacred, and the

power

natural world. They

who

they returned from

were able

Lastly,

it

also

in

to influence events in the

become

bring the

rains,

sorcerers

and

set off

and even wars. was commonly beHeved

by the cycles of the seasons

—by

The word "shaman" conies from with unusual

keep their world

to cure others, or to

could cause disease; they could

factional strife

to

spiritual

powers.

that

human

life

was governed

seasons of planting, growth, and

the Siberian

word "saman," meaning someone

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

harvest, identified

by movements of the heavenly bodies. Notions of

fertiUty, procreation, Hfe,

human

existence.

and death

Myth and

lay at the core

of such

a cyclical

played an important part in

ritual

defining this world order, and allow^ed the material and spiritual

worlds to pass one into the other

Through

as a single constellation

of beUef.

and evocative surroundings,

poetry, music, dance,

a

deep

sense of a sacred order emerged.

The

intangible assumes

many

forms, but these commonalities,

observed by anthropologists and religious historians in societies tific

throughout the world, provide

a viable

investigation of ancient sacred places

performance

—

many human

framework

for scien-

the settings for mythic

(figure 1.1).

Architecture provided the setting, a powerfial form of nonverbal

communication

that kept the messages

of

ritual,

and of the mythic

world, in people's minds. The performers reenacted the idealized roles

of gods and ancestors in shrines, in scripts

changed

as

plazas,

and turned according to ever-shifting

The

and atop pyramids. Their

the years passed; the choreographed dances twisted ritual

formulae.

bright colors have since faded, hieroglyphs have eroded,

and the incense has long been extinguished.

No

banners

fly

temples; the dancers, priests, and narrators have vanished

wind. Only the ruined and weathered settings

now

earthworks, pyramids, and temples

—

are

archaeologists'

once

on the

provide clues to

the evanescent worlds of gods and ancestors. Silent burial

landscapes

over

set in natural

mounds,

and

cultural

documents; the raw material for

reconstructing the intangibles of the past, discourses between the living

and

spiritual worlds.

The Victorian

archaeologist Sir Austen

for his spectacular excavations at biblical

archaeological bestseller, Nineveh and archaeologists as seeking

children gather

We

of the

societies

past.

Layard, famous

Nineveh and author of an

Its

Remains, once described

societies

had

left

behind, "as

artifacts,

on deserted sands" (1849, 213). food remains, and other material

From them, we

build mental pictures of ancient

up the coloured

excavate and collect

relics

what ancient

Henry

shells

formed fiom the fragments of an incomplete archaeological

record. Inevitably, our reconstructions

stone circles

at

fall

short of past

reality.

The

Avebury and Stonehenge and the courts of Knossos

The Archaeology of

the Intangible

9

10

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

and the Mayan pyramids

now empty

are

stages,

mere

skeletal

rem-

nants of sacred places that once swirled with charismatic activity.

They

are

Austen Henry Layard s "coloured

reassuring chants to the gods filled the

toward the heavens, silences resonated

and the

—

shells"

—

the places

where incense

air,

where drifted

where eloquent orations and equally measured the transparent things through which the cosmos

past shine. Fortunately,

opaque curtain of the

modern

science sometimes parts the

and leads us into vanished intangible

past,

worlds.

THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MIND And

the crippled Smith brought

broad as the

on a dancing

circle,

once

on Cnossos' spacious

for

laid out

Ariadne the

girl

gifts of

bear

Daedalus

circle

fields

with lustrous hair.

Here young boys and with costly

art to

all his

girls,

beauties courted

oxen, danced and danced,

linking their arms, gripping

each

others' wrists

And now

rings

on

they would run

in

.

.

.

their skilled feet,

nimbly, quick as a crouching potter spins his wheel,

palming

it

smoothly, giving

practice twirls

and now they would

rows,

to

see

in

rows crisscrossing rows— rapturous dancing.

run,

it

(Homer,

The boys and

girls in

Iliad

book

XVIII,

performed today

vital role in

run

at

to

come

alive, as if

we

trace the intricate grapevine steps

in circle dances.

performance,

in

as translated by Fogies 1990, 487)

Homer's stanza seem

were there ourselves to see them still

it

Dancing has always played

occasions both secular and ritual. So

a it

should not surprise us that British archaeologist Peter Warren located 3 circular platforms of carefully constructed masonry in the

most recent

levels

of the Palace of Knossos, dating to about 1400

B.C. (see chapter 10). solid,

low platform

largest

is

about 8.38 meters in diameter, a

was

a

dancing floor just

like

Could it be that Warren unearthed the very dancing remembered by Homer centuries later? The possibility is an in-

that in the Iliad.

floor

The

that Warren believes

The Archaeology of

How

triguing one.

11

can \ve bridge the chasm between the material

and intangible with only

One way

to guide us?

the Intangible

art, artifacts,

and look for any

to study folk dance,

is

and food remains

architecture,

surviving past cultural customs in present-day rural folklore, an art that

is,

unfortunately, vanishing rapidly

m

the face of industrial

civilization.

A despair

generation ago,

when

many

up

archaeologists threw

their

hands

m

One anonymous

confronted with ancient religion.

the "last resort of troubled excavators."

cynic described religion

as

Any unexplained

or structure ended up in a vaguely defined

artifact

category called "ritual."

About

a

generation ago, a small group of

move beyond artifacts should we interpret the past in

archaeologists challenged their colleagues to

and food remains. They asked: Why

terms of purely ecological, technological, and other material factors?

Some of the scientific

religion line

best intellects in archaeology today are

methodology

and

belief.

for studying

Such

a

human

methodology

is

grappHng with

a

consciousness, especially

critical,

but there

is

a

fme

between rigorous science and what archaeologists Kent Flannery

and Joyce Marcus

"a kind of bungee jump mto the Land of The emerging "archaeology of mind" is a mar-

call

Fantasy" (1993, 261).

riage of cultural systems theory, settlement archaeology, environ-

mental reconstruction, contextual archaeology, and the decipherment

of written records.

Cultural Systems

Since the 1960s, a

new

generation of archaeological thinking,

developed by Lewis Binford of the University of Michigan and others, has

emerged, in which

tural systems."

human

cultures are thought of as "cul-

Systems theory, developed in the 1950s,

is

a

body of

theoretical constructs that are used to search for general relationships in the empirical world. In systems theory, a unit

subsystem of

a

much

larger,

more complex

is

system.

seen

The

as

being

a

subsystems

within the larger system interact with and affect one another. Thus, to understand a system as a whole, the smaller units (subsystems),

the interactions

among them, must be

studied.

The

approach to archaeology envisages cultural systems other systems, such

as

the natural environment.

as

and

systems theory interacting with

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

12

Every cultural system has many interacting subsystems nology, subsistence,

art,

and so on

religious beliefs,

—

—

tech-

of them

all

reacting constantly to internal and external stimuli. Binford and his followers

call cultural

systems "open systems" that interchange both

energy and information with their environments. Populations, societies, live,

and cultures

as a

whole influence human beings who

and die within an open system. In other words,

much

moved away from

artifacts

and

broader studies of relationships between

sification to

their environments;

approach assumes that beliefs

touched

human

all

tions to their

cultures

of linkages bet\veen the different compo-

human

became

environments

The

systems

consciousness, cosmology; and religious

aspects of existence and cultural

intangibles

artifact clas-

human

nents of ancient societies, including religious behefs.

fore,

endures

longer than the lifetimes of its individual members.

Binford and others

and

are born,

a society

as

much

as artifacts

a part

There-

activity^

of people's adapta-

or architecture.

Settlement Archaeology

The

systems approach embraced another fundamental change

in archaeology^: shifting focus

on

to the study

away from excavation of single

sites

and

of entire regions and changing ancient landscapes

settlement archaeology. Settlement archaeology began in Europe

new

during the 1930s, but gained

World War

II.

The

neered regional surveying with Valle\; Peru, in 1948,

settlements,

from

impetus

m

great Harvard archaeologist

where he

a

the Americas after

Gordon Willey

pio-

remarkable study of the coastal Viru

identified entire hierarchies of human

large ceremonial centers to tiny hamlets

—

ancient

settlement patterns that shifted dramatically across the landscape over a

period of more than 3,000 years. In the 1950s, another archaeol-

ogist,

Rene

Millon, developed

veyed the entire

city

a

long-term mapping project that sur-

ofTeotihuacan in Mexico. The multiyear survey

revealed a sprawHng, well-planned metropoHs with over 200,000 inhabitants (for

These surveys

m

more information,

box on p. 350). more comprehensive lanscape Old and New^ Worlds. Pennsylvania State see

early surveys triggered

both the

University archaeologists under William Sanders and Jeffrey Parsons spent the late 1960s and 1970s surveying the archaeological

sites

of

The Archaeology of

the Intangible

13

the Valley of Mexico, from the earliest times up to the Spanish

Conquest of

1521. Like Willey, they developed detailed

A.D.

hierarchies, that

were due to changes

site

that occurred over time as dif-

came into prominence and colobscurity. They documented the massive population shifts and

ferent ceremonial centers

lapsed into

that resulted

cities

from the growth of Aztec Tenochtitlan,

thousands o{

as

moved closer to the great capital and its swamp gardens and markets. By studying entire landscapes and changing settlement patterns over many centuries, archaeologists can reconstruct the ways in

people

which peoples such

as

the Aztecs laid out their

prominent landmarks such

with reference to

sites

or mountains, which had astro-

as caves

nomical or symbolic significance.

The

shown

regional surveys of a quarter century have

of divorcing archaeological

homelands

in

archaeologists

sites

from

which they had once engaged

in

the folly

their natural settings

—

the

flourished. In recent years,

survey

landscape

turned

have

to

Geographic Information Systems (GIS), computer-aided systems that

and

are used for the collection, storage,

GIS

data, including archaeological finds.

analysis is

puter database with mapping capabiHties.

best thought of as a It

new

GIS

data

comes from

com-

incorporates computer-

aided mapping, computerized databases, and has the ability to generate

o( all kinds of spatial

statistical

packages, and

information based on existing data.

digitizing

maps and from remote sensing

satellites, as

well as manual entry of other information

Italian archaeologists

have used GIS technology to capture and

Roman

Pompeii, which was destroyed by an

devices such as

of all kinds.

interpret

life

in

eruption o^ the volcano Vesuvius on August 24, A.D. 79. Their database

of information

consists

researchers use an

and

local terrain,

grally to

IBM

computer

and to link

collected

since

1862. These

to digitize archaeological

visual representations

of artifacts inte-

both detailed descriptions of each find from the

locations

where they

turn to the

maps

are found.

These

artifact

maps

city

and the

images are linked in

to provide detailed insights into individual houses

and rooms. The enormous Pompeii database with

its

50 gigabytes o{

detailed information about the city can be used to study such topics as

the relationship

between

Hfestyle

and distribution of wealth, or to

14

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

correlate fresco motifs

another.

GIS

on house

walls

found

communm; some

human mind.

site to

used to understand the myriad relationships that

is

works of art, buildings, and individual and

one end of the

at

It

ot

which

are

artifacts to

tie

an entire culture

not readily perceived by the

even permits archaeologists to create computer sim-

"what

ulations of possible settlement patterns in elaborate forms of if" scenarios.

GIS

for the study

of sacred places and ancient landscapes.

has enormous, and

still

largely unreaHzed, potential

Environmental Reeonsfrutfion

Although human

societies

may be

history, they leave distinctive imprints

a part ot

on

the earth's natural

their environments.

Stone

Age foragers left a light impression. They were predators among many carnivores; perhaps more riithless than others, but nevertheless as much a part of the animal kingdom as antelope or Rons, even though they used Farmers had

a

tools

much

environments within settling

down

in

to

adapt to their natural surroundings.

greater impact. They drastically modified their a

few generations of adopting food production:

sedentary villages, clearing natural vegetation,

planting crops, and then

moving on or

rotating their fields w^hen the

became exhausted of its nutrients. Environmental change became even more extreme as human populations grew. Cultivators adopted more intensive agricultural methods such as irrigation or swamp

soil

tarming, and estation

cattle,

sheep, and other domesticated herds caused defor-

and overgrazing. These landscapes

the local mythic geography, of the relationship

also

became

symboHc world. There

is

part of a close

between the way people perceived and exploited

their

environments and their world view which makes environmental reconstruction

a vital

Powerful gists

part of the study of the intangible.

scientific tools fi-om

many

discipHnes help archaeolo-

study environmental change. For example, palynologists can

identify ancient pollen grains

from samples taken from bogs, marshes,

and even ancient land surfaces under earthworks. They compare

their

pollen diagrams with identifications of seeds and actual plant remains

recovered from the same intersects lusca,

with data from

levels. soil

At

times, this botanical information

chemistry, identifications of tiny

and rodent bones with such precision

that

mol-

one can draw

The Archaeology of

conclusions regarding the placement o( burial sacred

monuments

with distinctive

habitats,

chapter

(see

such

mounds

as refuse

15

or other

of environment, such

in specific types

fringes of cultivated land

the Intangible

as

the

7). Beetles and other insects

heaps, can

tell

the archaeol-

ogist whether an abandoned structure was used as a residence or for some other purpose. For example, a British beetle, Ptiniis fur, thrives in

buildings, food debris,

and old

Thus,

straw.

it

serves as a useful

for interpreting well-preserved, but enigmatic

wooden

marker

structures.

Confexiual Archaeology Artifacts, architecture,

and

art set in precise

contexts of time and

space are the ultimate foundations of the archaeology of mind. synthesis

of data recovered irom

a

network of objects, buildings, and

other finds recorded in context can reveal

much

We

from ancient Jericho or

can admire

a plastered

finely painted vessel

work of art. Such from

from

a

human Mayan

artifacts are,

A

skull

about sacred places. a

museum as a when divorced

grave displayed in a

however, meaningless

their original archaeological context in the ground.

The law of

superposition

came

to archaeology

from

strati-

graphic geology, the assumption that the layers of the earth, or an archaeological

site,

were

laid

down

in succession, the lowest layers

being the earhest. Careful stratigraphic observations provide one

element of archaeological context.

The law of association deals with spatial relationships, with the associations among individual features, artifacts, and other finds within a single layer. In its original context, the Mayan painted pot displayed in our hypothetical museum may have lain in a royal grave, in associatioti with,

and thus contemporary with, the skeleton

same sepulchre. Associative context

is

vital to

in the

the study of shrines and

other sacred places, where the relationships between closely placed artifacts

and small rooms, even benches and niches,

tell a

revealing

story.

Careful

observation of archaeological context depends on

meticulous excavation, backed by careful research design. Unfortunately,

many of the worlds most

private collections

spectacular sacred artifacts

and public museums, ripped from

lie in

their historical

contexts by looters, or found before the days of rigorous excavation

16

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

methods. However, with careful digging, even the most prosaic objects can reveal unsuspected ritual associations.

known ritual associations about new ritual activities. San Jose

Exotic Artifacts. Exotic artifacts with

can provide telling information

Mogote was

a large village in

Originally, the village

shared

1

Mexico's Valley of Oaxaca in 1300

B.C.

of thatched houses with about 150 inhabitants

During the next community of 80 to

larger, lime-plastered public building.

Mogote grew

century, San Jose

rapidly into a

120 households (400 to 600 people) living in rectangular houses with clay floors, plastered

Public buildings built covered.

and white-washed

on adobe and

walls,

and thatched

roofs.

earth platforms have been dis-

We know they were ceremonial structures because fragments

of conch-shell trumpets and

turtle-shell

drums were excavated from

them. Clay figurines of masked, costumed dancers were

San Jose Mogote s ceremonial buildings,

as

well

also

found

in

as stingray spines, that

were used in personal bloodletting ceremonies by

all

Mesoamericans

many centuries.^ Conch shells and stingray spines reached the highlands from the Gulf of Mexico. The appearance of similar ritual artifacts in other communities like San Jose Mogote is no coincidence. They arrived at a time when common art styles had come into widespread use

for

throughout Mesoamerica. Exotic objects have always played important parts in ritual activities,

selves.

and

are

sometimes of great symbolic importance them-

Such ornaments became prized heirlooms of great

passed from individual to individual over

many

generations. This

symbolic exchange of prestigious ornaments validated

commerce

in

relationships trolled

a

huge

more commonplace items by strengthening

between powerful

trading

relationships.

leaders

prestige,

and entrepreneurs

prosaic

individual

who

con-

High-technology science provides

valuable tools for studying trade and ritual exchanges. Spectrographic analysis

and other methods identify

trace elements in artifacts such as

^Conventionally, archaelogists refer to "Mesoamerica"

America

in

equivalent area

as that

region of Central

By the same token, the Andean of South America, much of it centered on Peru.

which

civilizations arose.

region

is

the

The Archaeology of

mirrors

made of volcanic

glass,

metal

the Intangible

and

artifacts,

glass beads.

17

This

information can then be used to recognize ancient trade routes and connections between major ceremonial centers. Architecture and Iconography. In societies where information passed orally from one generation to the next, architecture and art

communicated powerful messages. As

villages

became towns and

towns became cities and palaces, organized religion replaced the more informal ceremonial rituals of village life, and became an instrument of political power and chiefly authority. As we shall see in chapter 10, Minoan rulers on Bronze Age Crete used their sprawling palaces as settings for formal ceremonies that reinforced their spiritual

and secular authority. They adorned the walls of their palaces with friezes

of goddesses and male gods and symbols of bulls. Their

reli-

gious artifacts formed a distinctive nonverbal vocabulary: horns of consecration, libation vessels, and sacrificial

study

them

as if

tions,

artifacts

and

shrines

altars in actual

from ornaments and

regalia

—from

the placement

and wall-painting depic-

unearthed in palace rooms, and

from meticulous dissection of bone fragments and situ

Archaeologists

reading picture books without captions. Sets of reli-

gious beliefs are revealed through associations

of sacred

altars.

ritual objects in-

where they were once abandoned.

The

classic

Andes survived

iconographies of Mesoamerica and the ancient for

many

on

centuries. Distinctive artistic motifs

public buildings, statues, clay vessels, and even textiles help scientists

decipher the complex meanings of religious symbolism ilization itself.

as

old

The Olmec people of lowland Mexico used

as civ-

a

com-

plex symbolism of forest animals to express an enduring ideology early as the

second millennium

Mesoamerica sculptures,

to portray their

B.C.

Olmec

dominance

rulers

were the

first

in carvings, paintings,

through grotesque depictions of half-humans and

felines. Birds,

caiman, serpents, and spiders also appear on

as

in

and

half-

Olmec

works of art, but jaguars dominate. Fortunately, archaeologists can

anthropological information from societies to achieve

jaguar,

which

draw on

modern

a large

native

American

some understanding of Olmec

prefers to

hunt for

its

repository of forest

ideolog\'.

The

prey in watery environments.

18

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

personifies rain

and

fertility.

The Olmec homeland with

many

its

swamps and waterways was an environment where farmers relied on river levees and canals to control water suppHes, and abounded in jaguars. In time, village leaders acquired close supernatural links to

the jaguar

as their

means

Olmec

Like their illustrious successors, rulers,

who

and

for controlling rain

floods.

were shaman-

lords

ruled by virtue of their ability to cross effortlessly from

Olmec

the living to the spiritual world.

depicted the hallu-

artists

cinogenic visions of these shamans: a half-human, half-feUne figure

with snarling mouth that may have been the Olmec rain god, and other composite creatures that melded the bird, the jaguar, and the serpent, perhaps giving biith to such mosaic deities as the mythic figure Quetzalcoatl ("Feathered Serpent"), a

wind and air, who was such Mesoamerican belief. Analogy*

Ethnographic

Ethnographic

often controversial, scientific tool.

ethnographic information

associated with the

prominent part of much

a

parison between living and ancient peoples

vital

god

Rich

still

—

analogy is

—

the

later

com-

a long-established, if

archives of oral tradition

survive

among

the

many

and

rapidly

vanishing South American groups, and have helped greatly in interpreting archaeological finds and ancient art traditions.

A

century ago, Victorian archaeologists thought nothing of

comparing

living

Eskimo

cultures

with entire

late Ice

Age

societies in

more than 15,000 years. more cautious, using analogy at many carefully levels. They make comparisons of artifacts such as arrow-

France, although they were separated by

Today, scientists are controlled

heads over large chronological distances, probably with reasonable credibility.

More commonly,

method": working back from

analogy employs the "direct historical recent,

well-documented

by-step into earlier times. This approach has

societies step-

worked well with Pueblo

Indian societies in the American Southwest; with historic Shona

peoples in Zimbabwe, Central

American Colonial controversial isons; for

when

villages.

Afirica;

and with

historic sites such as

Ethnographic analogies become more

researchers attempt to

make

less

obvious compar-

example, taking data on nineteenth-century shamanism in

southern Africa, and applying

it

to Ice

Age

cave

art.

Even

in this

The Archaeology of

instance, however, the approach has

and

for there are broad,

easily

the Intangible

some vaHdity

at a

19

general level,

demonstrable, similarities in altered

of consciousness and shamanism between ancient and modern

states

societies in

many

of the

parts

w^orld. Yet

another example involves

the revering of ancestors and the layered cosmos. Ethnographic

analogy

utilizes invaluable archives

of information about the

of many living societies, to make intelligent much older cultures. rely heavily on generalized

observations

w^orlds

about

I

analogy in

book, not because there are precise

this

specific ancient

and living

gives us broad insights into

societies,

how

spiritual

ethnographic

parallels

but because analogy

between

at this level

people conceived of their world

as it

appears in the material archaeological record.

The De€iphermeni of Wriffen Retards

The most the intangible

successful applications of scientific

come from

instances

methodology

records provide amplification of archaeological records.

pherment of the lization

rank

scripts

among

centuries. With the

our

sides,

we

The

deci-

of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Mayan

the greatest scientific triumphs of the past

cuneiform

tablets

to

where contemporary written civi-

two

and papyri of these cultures

are able to experience the voices

of the

at

past: their

thoughts, their prayers, and their beliefs. These writings speak with authority, but require cautious interpretation,

from

societies

where communal

coming,

as

they do,

rather than individual thought and

action were the norm. Text-aided archaeology requires meticulous critical skills

and

a

healthy awareness of the limitations of ancient

documents. For instance, Egyptian hieroglyphs litanies

recite the standard

of worship and adoration of kings. They

flatter

and

glorify,

presenting an ideal world peopled by a masterful, aU-powerful

pharaoh. However, behind the sycophantic phrases and ritual for-

mulae

lie

general patterns of religious belief and cosmology that

provide a framework for broader scientific interpretation. Utilizing

other writings from the same time period,

we

can reconstruct the

general significance of the pharaohs' earliest pyramids, and unravel the

complexities of Egypt's

first

unification 5,000 years ago.

The decipherment of ancient Mayan our perceptions of their

civilization.

writings has transformed

EarHer researchers had assumed

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

20

Maya were

that the

peaceful astronomers and priests

who

were

obsessed with the heavenly bodies and the measurement of time. In

dramatic contrast, deciphered glyphs reveal a warlike, bloodthirsty society of ambitious, competitive lords vying for

by every means set

down

possible.

Mayan

royal genealogies,

Mayan

full

vast

latest

amounts of astronomical

Mayan By using

multi disciplinary

potential of archaeology

inscriptions, researchers are

and glyphs.

beginning to unravel not only the

of Mayan cosmology and religious beHefs, but

intricacies

prestige

inscriptions lay out poHtical histories,

and preserve

and cosmological information. The research shows the

power and

also the sig-

nificance of the orientation of individual buildings at major cere-

monial centers.

A

husband and wife team, Harvey and Victoria

from an inscription over the

Bricker, have used astronomical glyphs

Mayan Palace of the Governor at Mexico's Yucatan to show how the ruler Lord Chac

central

doorway of the

Uxmal

in

classic

ordered the carving over his palace door of a zodiac band that replicated the sky at the time Venus rose A.D. 910.

The

at its

southerly extreme in

glyphs depict the lord in his role

as

Skybearer sup-

porting the heavens, enthroned on a building oriented toward a Venus

extreme, about 28 degrees south of west (242 degrees). Such research

demands graphic

a

daunting array of archaeological, astronomical, and epi-

skills.

The

voices of ancient people also

and pieces,

down by

set

come down

to us in small bits

anthropologists, explorers, missionaries, and

native peoples

themselves.

priceless value.

One

The more complete

chronicles have

such document, the sixteenth-century Fran-

ciscan missionary Bernardino de Sahagun's General History of the

Things of New Spain (Anderson and Dibble, vols 1-12, 1954-1969)

almost singlehandedly preserved the lore of Aztec civilization for posterity.

The

Navigating such accounts, however, requires extraordinary

care.

researcher has to develop an awareness of the subtle nuances of

native tongues orally.

public

from cultures where

all

knowledge was transmitted

For example, Aztec authority came from an

—from

oration, song,

and chant

—words

ability^

to speak in

that created a vision

of the world. Therefore, in order to document Aztec culture, de

Sahagun had

to record

mnemonic

accounts of early Aztec civilization

The Archaeology of

that

were

of nobiUty in

drilled into the children

them down

in writing for the

first

but lacked

a

21

state schools, setting

employed

time. (The Aztecs

aide-memoire for formal

codices, a type of picture script, as tions,

the Intangible

recita-

formal script like that of the Maya.)

Spanish and other colonial documents provide useful infor-

mation on

early

with their

Andean and Mesoamerican

societies,

but require

and interpretation, since they were written by people

careful analysis

own

political, religious,

and

racist biases.

However, under

careful scrutiny, archives such as the Jesuit Requirements

reports of missionary activity) can be

found

to contain

(official

important

ethnographic data on populations and village distributions, and

sometimes discussions of indigenous ceremonies and

rituals.

Sometimes, controlled use of historical documents and archaeology produces extraordinary

results.

When

archaeologist

Olga

Linares studied a cemetery of high-ranking people in central Panama,

she drew

on sixteenth-century Spanish accounts of local chiefdoms

engaged in constant warfare and raiding, and on detailed information species. The graves

of local animal

polychrome

vessels

—open

contained flamboyantly decorated

pots designed to be seen from above

where mourners could glimpse the animal motifs painted upon them. The pots were considered so valuable that sometimes they were

exhumed from one

grave

and placed into another. Historical

accounts mentioned that the highly competitive chiefs vied with

each other for leadership and prestige. They tattooed and painted their bodies

wore

with badges of rank and bravery. Each group of warriors

different

symbols associating them with their leader. They went

to their graves

with helmets, weapons, and painted pottery.

As she excavated the cemetery, Linares studied the graves with sixteenth-century Spanish documents that described the culture and

modern information on animal

species

by her

side.

Both sources

amplified the archaeological data a great deal. She observed that the art styles rarely

depicted plants. But

many animal

species

commem-

orated aggression and bravery. Dangerous beasts like crocodiles, large felines,

sharks,

stingrays,

appeared on funerary stingray

spines

scorpions, and

vessels.

The dead

poisonous snakes often

lay

with

shark's teeth

and

adorning their bodies. The Panamanians never

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

22

coninieniorated prey animals or innocuous species like monkeys, but instead used carefully selected animals to

most admired

in chiefs

communicate the

The archaeology of mind

will never

Pursuing the intangible requires large data

be an easy undertaking.

sets,

excellent preservation,

and sophisticated theoretical models. The pursuit

sometimes unexpected, and tific

relies

methods from dozens of

botany, nuclear

qualities

and warriors.

physics,

heavily

scientific

on

is

often frustrating,

broad array of scien-

a

disciplines,

among them

and zoology. Australian historian Inga

Clendinnen, herself the author of a notable book on the Aztecs, us

"Ahabs pursuing our great white whale." She

catch

him

...

imagination think

of

we

it is

we

"We

will never

our limitations of thought, of understandings, of

test as

we

quarter these strange waters.

see a darkening in the deeper water, a

—and then

a fluke

adds:

calls

sudden

And

then

we

surge, the roll

the heart-Hfting glimpse of the great white

its own particular light, there on (Clendmnen 1991, 275). So it is with her guiding light for encouragement that we embark on such a scientific journey, beginning in the late Ice Age world of 15,000 years ago, and

shape,

its

whiteness throwing back

the glimmering horizon"

ending with the glittering Aztec

capital, Tenochtitlan, in A.D.

1521.

chapter two

DARK CAVES, OBSCURE VISIONS

Caves are dark, mysterious places, where daylight does not

exist.

Some of the

oldest sacred caves lie in the

of France, where deep

Dordogne region

streaked with dark lines and furrows

cliffs

overlook placid rivers and lush water

meadows

(figure 2.1).

sands of years, people have entered caves to feel the earth

and gain access

For thou-

power of the

to the enigmatic spiritual world. In pitch-black

chambers, they confront the

unknown and

experience revelation

as

hallucination.

In the past, the cave functioned as a primordial sacred place,

with

its

passages leading to the dark

the earth. Caves also served

as

unknown

—

to the very bowels

of

the entrance to the spiritual world, the

gateway through which shamans journeyed and flew through the

domains of the otherworld. The trolling altered states

art

of being

of consciousness within

darkness, with rhythmic

a

shaman involved con-

society. In the flickering

drumming and bone

flutes

and other instru-

ments imitating animal and bird sounds, the "multimedia have been mesmerizing,

Shamans rience

them

in search

for the

first

as

human

effect"

may

chants resonated off the cave walls.

of visions (and novices determined to expetime) separated themselves from others and

penetrated deep into the silent recesses of caves. Here, they controlled the range of images by reducing the personal element and focusing

the nervous system in the direction of specific mental imagery,

seeking altered

states

of consciousness that provided their

After a time, the quester's visions

may have

visions.

projected themselves

on 23

24

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

Fig.

2.1.

Map

showing the archaeological

sites

(underlined)

mentioned

in

chapter 2.

the cave walls like a slide show. Perhaps, as scientific analyses of paintings in

then to

made

Niaux Cave

in southwestern France suggest, the quester

a hasty sketch, either

normal consciousness. The

while in

Other cave

art,

formed

such at

as

was

a

work of art.

the large, impressive images in the

Altamira in northern Spain,

a special function.

may have

per-

People hallucinate what they expect, or

have been led to expect. Thus, the the entrance of this

or after returning

resulting painting or engraving

recreated vision, a living, breathing

famous bison chamber

a trance,

chamber

art

may have been

placed close to

in order to prepare vision questers for

Dark Caves, Obscure Visions

the hallucinations they

would experience deep underground. And

newly discovered Grotte de Chauvet,

the depths of the

that the bison-skin-clad

shaman waiting on the

of dangerous animals

frieze

25

it is

in

possible

wall near a great

watching the entrance where the

is

audience will approach. It is

difficult to

decode the

meaning of Cro-Magnon

full

art,

from us by more than 3,000 centuries.

Anamore developed than their famous predecessors the Neanderthals, the Cro-Magnons were some of the first artists in the ancient world. Thanks to the devoted labors separated

as

tomically

modern and

it

is

intellectually

of nineteenth-century anthropologists and inspired archaeological research a century

later,

we

have been able to

of passing millennia and enter

a

lift

a

corner of the

veil

Cro-Magnon world where powerful

images and dark caves allowed shamans to pass in trance from the living realm into a potent spiritual world. Perhaps such journeys at

the very core of human existence

LES

some 30,000

were

years ago.

COMBARELLES AND LASCAUX

TheVezere River flows through

a

land of deep Hmestone gorges, lush

water meadows, and dense woodland. In lennia ago, their high

Europe was

cliffs

in a

deep

and huge rock

forests for animals

freeze,

shelters

and humans

alike.

hemmed

in

by high

Age

times,

200 mil-

but the narrow gorges with

were an

oasis

of pine and birch

The Cro-Magnon people who

lived here dwelled in a circumscribed

sheltered and

late Ice

cliffs

environment of river with

a

valleys,

segmented view of the

sky overhead. Theirs was a world of horizontal layers set in a vertical plain: the sky above, the valley floors

Many I

that

late Ice Age Europe, so Cro-Magnons here rather than confuse the reader with a procultural terms. The Cro-Magnons (named after a rock shelter of

groups with different material cultures inhabited

use the generic term

liferation

and uplands, and, below the

of technical,

name found during

the construction of the Les Eyzies railroad station

were round-headed, anatomically modern people, during the

late Ice

contribute to

between from

a

flourished

m

m

1868)

western Europe

Age, between about 32,000 and 11, 000 years ago. Their genes

modern Europeans:

a living

who

Somerset

recent

man from

cave in the same region.

DNA studies

have confirmed

southwestern England and

a

a

still

genetic link

9,000-year-old skull

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

26

ground, an unknown, and potent subterranean world accessible only

by dark

caves.

For thousands of years they painted and engraved on

the uneven walls of these sacred places. I

visited Les

first

visitors passed

when

only

a

handful of

through the cave every summer's day Famous for

20,000-year-old in the corner

Combarelles in 1955,

Cro-Magnon

of a limestone

wall engravings, Les Combarelles

cleft,

w^hich opens into the

its

lies

woods above

theVezere River, near the small village of Les Eyzies in southwestern France. Les Combarelles that twist

and wind

people can explore

for it

The guide and

is

deep cave, with

small, aw^kw^ard passages

hundreds of yards underground. Only

at a

six

a

a

few

time.

of us walked along the narrow^ passage deep

into the earth, our only light delineating the outHne of the guide's

At times we squeezed through narrow

shoulders.

passes, or

bent

hung low above us. A hissing acetylene lamp cast yellowish shadows on the walls and threw the dark folds in the rock into high relief. Our guide's soft voice warned us of low ceilings. An oppressive stillness pressed on my ears. I thought of the dripping June world outside, where cascades of mist swirled around almost double

the roof

as

the high limestone cHffs and trees in the gloom. Two hundred yards

from the entrance, we discerned walls covered with

Mammoths, wild

engravings.

intricate

oxen, horses, and reindeer danced in the

soft acetylene Hght.

Held lines

close to the wall, the flickering Hght

shone on the incised

of a wild aurochs. In the yellow^ luminescence the figure became

so real that for a

moment

I

imagined myself in the midst of a bel-

lowing Ice Age herd in an open about to charge.

Its

valley,

head crouched

eyeing

a

huge, pawing male

in defiant profile, the Hnes

of the

engraving shimmered. As the aurochs charged, the Hght brightened

and moved to another the lantern.

A few

figure.

Then

suddenly, the guide turned out

exclamations were heard and then,

as

we

stood in

the dark chamber, except for occasional soft drips from the ceiling,

complete of

it:

silence. The darkness

was so intense

I

could

feel the

weight

the silence of death, of unexplained forces casting their

com-

pelling spell in this subterranean place. Bright flecks of Hght passed in front of

my

eyes.

Ocher, yeUow, and black images pressed

me. Pulsating dots became

lines

—changing

shape,

coming

in

on

alive.

Dark Caves, Obscure Visions

Moments

the soft hiss of acetylene impinged

later,

sciousness. Transitory images faded into the

back

my

on

background, and

27

conI

was

in the twentieth century.

was lucky to see Les Combarelles by carbide

I

Such

light.

lanterns, like flickering candles or pitch torches, heighten the illusion

of powerful animals lurking in the gloom. Today,

electric lights illu-

minate the once-dark passageways. Les Combarelles has become an Ice Age

static display,

living artists

performance and gyrating

wended

frozen in time, not

art gallery

their cautious

lights as

way through

was

it

when

the defile,

a

place of

a

the ancient

armed only with

small animal fat lamps and firebrands.

A greatest

few days

later,

I

visited

Lascaux Cave near Montignac, the

of all the painted caves near theVezere River. An iron door

protected the paintings. Inside, electricity bathed the chamber in a soft,

uniform

light,

highlighting the white, yellows, and grays of the

cave walls and reminding

me

of the flickering acetylene

Combarelles. Four small boys

when

Lascaux in 1940,

their

who were

light at Les

hunting rabbits found

dog became trapped

in an

underground

cavern. They fetched a rope and, to their astonishment, found selves in a

and

stags.

chamber adorned with huge, prancing

them-

bulls, bison, horses,

Bos primigenius, the primordial aurochs, galloped along the

walls, great

horns curved high (figure

was formidable prey

When

first

I

2.2).

This nimble, fierce beast

for ancient hunters.

saw the two black and red bison

in Lascaux facing

each other, and the row of stags, their heads slightly raised, across a stream,

I

felt

swimming

thunderstruck. The powerful, haunting beauty of

the yellow-brown wild horses prancing in abandon and the intricate

engravings of exuberant animals covering the walls looked vibrant

and

fresh

—even

after

15,000 years;

Then and now, people

call

it

was an awesome

sight.

Lascaux the "Sistine Chapel of

Prehistoric Art," the ultimate masterpiece of ancient artistry. Perhaps it

was the crowds and the

for thousands

of

Lascaux s painted

soft electric lights,

years, late Ice galleries, as

but

it

struck

me

Age men and women had

we were

visited

doing. But they did not

admire the paintings. They came for more profound, and

how,

come

still

not

thoroughly understood, reasons. Were the painted caves used for

ini-

to

tiation rites

and communal ceremonies?

Or

did shamans venture

28

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

Fig.

2.2.

One

of the Lascaux aurochs {Bos primigenius).

Photograph from

Artworks.

alone deep into their remote passages in quest of revelation and

enlightenment?

Seven years season,

later,

w^as there

I

During

I

returned to Lascaux early in the tourist

more time to explore. The expanses of more-or-less smooth walls had

almost alone and had

main chamber with

made an

when

its

ideal surface for painting large animals like the aurochs.

this visit

I

noticed greater

detail: deftly

executed manes, the

use of soft hues, tilted heads and well-defined eyes, and the expert use

of bulges in the rock to accentuate

relief.

The more

I

looked

at

the

honed over by generations of repetitious painting, the more power over me, the experience becoming much more than merely a visual one. animals

the paintings assumed a

become prehistoric art galleries, name of mass tourism. Now a visitor

Today, the painted caves have sanitized

and illuminated in the

to Lascaux has to

been lucky

to

be content with an exact replica

built

nearby

I

had

have experienced the cave paintings moving in

darkness, picking out the miages with candle or flashlight. The scale

Dark Caves, Obscure Visions

of the cave,

stage props

The

dimensions, and the darkness focus your attention on

its

—

menacing power

the images'

29

the animals

come

aHve, set amidst

of dark, Hght, and shadow.

very act of painting and engraving reveals the close identi-

of these people with their natural world. The sight of the

fication

magnificent

bulls,

which seem

shimmer and move, makes one

to

wonder what Lascaux had been Hke when aurochs were

when shamans

alive,

chanted and people crowded close together in half-

What compelled

darkness surrounded by depictions of their prey.

Cro-Magnon

still

to penetrate

artists

deep underground for

For generations, archaeologists have grappled with

their canvases?

this

question and

have utihzed various research methods in their attempts to answer

it.

COPYING CRO-MAGNON ART Scientific research into

Cro-Magnon rock

art

is

lenge to archaeologists' ingenuity and scientific lenge begins with the need to

make

an immense chalabilities.

The

chal-

accurate, scientifically neutral

copies for comparative purposes.

A

century ago, researchers had only rudimentary photographic

technology, so they relied

on

skills. The legendary French Abbe Henri Breuil, began his

their artistic

archaeologist and Catholic priest.

copying in the early years of this century, and became the doyen of

Cro-Magnon rock on end,

more than 50 years. Slim and agile, wedged into narrow defiles for hours

art studies for

he often worked on

his back,

tracing faint images onto

florist's

or rice paper (the most

translucent drawing surfaces then available) taped to the rock or held

by an

assistant,

Breuil lay

on

who

was roundly cursed

sacks filled with straw

illuminate the bison paintings above artists

had used

directly

on the

measured the the paint

figures.

At

he fidgeted. At Altamira,

and ferns with only candles to

him

(figure 2.3). Since these cave

pigment, he was not able to place paper

a pasty

figures.

if

Instead, he

first

made rough

he tried watercolors

sketches, then

as his

medium, but

would not dry in the damp atmosphere. He then switched had no black, so he lit a fire outside the cave and

to crayons, but

equipped himself with burnt

sticks

and corks. All the time, inquisitive

30

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

An

Fig. 2.3.

Spaniards tracings

Altamira bison. Photograph from Scolo/Art Resource, NY.

bombarded him with

and sketches into

photographs to check the

As an

Magnon

painted surfaces

details.

became

a

human 2. 4).

Many

palimpsests for mazes of animal figures and

figures appear;

reindeer headdress,

Ariege (figure

The Cro-

using the same rock "panel" again and again.

indecipherable signs, swirls, and meandering dots.

wearing

his

approached their work differently and for other-than-

artists

sionally did

worked

questions. Later, Breuil

watercolors, using black-and-white

Breuil thought in terms of friezes.

artist,

artistic reasons,

lines,

full

is

one of them,

found

What, then, did the

a

at Trois Freres

art

Only occa-

dancing

Cave

man

in the

mean? This question

has

intrigued scientists for a century Breuil's paintings are

superb renderings, even

if modern research

shows some of his reconstructions to be somewhat imaginative. Like all

artists,

figures

he had

from

his

own

different sites

distinctive style,

look more

which tended

to

make

similar than they actually are.

His paintings have been reproduced again and again, to the point that

modern

researchers visit these sites with preconceived notions of

what cave paintings look

like.

Dark Caves, Obscure Visions

Fig. 2.4.

Abbe

Henri Breuil's rendering of a

dress, from Trois Freres.

In contrast to

hand

—supple

Abbe

plastics

Breuil's inadequate lighting

and

markers. Direct tracing

sometimes

set

up

shaman wearing a reindeer head-

Photograph from Musee de I'Homme,

today's rock art copyist has an arsenal

is

acetates,

now

31

Paris.

and materials,

of vastly superior materials

at

and many forms of pens and

scientifically unacceptable, so artists

a sheet in front

of the wall and trace from

a

short

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

32

distance away,

all

the while checking their renderings with photo-

graphs and measurements. (Microphotographs taken

show how paintings.

even flicked dust off paintings with

The advent of color photography and World War

II

the

the

his handkerchief!)

35mm

camera

after

allowed systematic recording of entire friezes in

of the time needed by an

fraction

later

damaged some of

Breuil's direct tracings slightly

He

many years

can be enlarged to

full size,

a

Individual figures or friezes

artist.

then traced before being checked against

the original. Photography and tracing

complement one

another, for

they allow accurate recording without impacting the images, and also

enable one to disentangle figure superimpositions by tracing each

image from the photograph, often under laboratory condi-

separate tions.

Color photography

also allows for the statistical

recording of

economic time

paintings throughout entire cave systems within

frames. This approach was the basis for Andre Leroi-Gourhan's quantitative analyses

of Cro-Magnon

art (described later in the chapter).

Usually photographs are taken perpendicular to the wall, but

photomontages of paintings or engravings

awkward

narrow

in

spots are often used. Today's researchers use

black-and-white film, diverse light sources such

and

tronic flash,

filters

to enhance

transparent, to the point that

ments under red

figures

is

painting.

or other

both color and

lamps and elec-

contrast. Infrared film or light

makes red ochers

which

as

defiles

and even identify

you can

see other pig-

different paint

mixes

extremely beneficial w^hen reconstructing the sequence of Ultraviolet

(UV)

causes

radiation

calcite

and

living

organisms on cave walls (but not manganese and other ochers) to flu-

which allows the researcher

oresce,

caused by wall growths. Thus,

lamp or

film,

(also

UV

light

can highHght painting detail buried under calcite

Ultraviolet lamps

Niaux

a

damage to paintings source, whether from a

to assess

were invaluable during

described later in

layers.

a recent research project at

this chapter)

Today, the process of recording goes hand-in-hand with accelerator mass spectrometer radiocarbon dating (see section direct observation,

rapher employs carefully controlled light

—

film

to

on

p.

39),

and analyses of paint composition. The photog-

photograph

friezes

and

figures

—

fiom

identify faded portions of the paintings.

and, at times, infrared different angles,

The

and to

scientist also uses a

Dark Caves, Obscure Visions

33

binocular microscope for close-up views of the painting, especially

when

of homogeneous composition and paint

issues

analysis are

involved.

Other new processes include tomer that

and polyesters

silicones

produce exact, durable

cave walls. ratory,

The

and can

casting technologies that use elas-

—quick and

casts

easy-to-apply materials

of even the

finest

away

casts are readily carried

engraved

for study in the labo-

be displayed to the public. The researchers can

easily

coat the cast surface with a mixture of ink and water that

wiped away

on

lines

to expose engraved lines, a technique that

is,

is

then

of course,

unthinkable with regard to original paintings. Today's researchers are also using computers to scan photo-

graphs and then enhance and fine-tune the pictures for accuracy. Digital storage of photographs

is

coming

also

into use, and

pho-

togrammetry, the same technique used for generating contour maps

from

aerial

photography, offers the prospect of contoured, three-

dimensional images of clay figures and other delicate

many of these to

approaches are

still

fairly

new, their

art

full

works. Since

potential

is

yet

be seen.

PAINTINGS AS ARTIFACTS: "SYMPATHETIC HUNTING Miles Burkitt was the

first

Cambridge University

archaeologist

in

I

MAGIC

ever met, as a freshman

at

the mid-1950s. Master raconteur and

teacher extraordmaire, Burkitt had enthused generations of undergraduates about archaeology. In his youth before

World War

I,

he had

explored the Vezere Caves alongside archaeologists like Breuil,

when

the paintings were fresh and had not suffered from a surfeit of visitors.

A letter of introduction from Miles Burkitt enabled me Breuil in the

River.

He

short, gruff",

had been warned

in his

mouth.

gladly

and was well

this century,

I

set in his

that Breuil did not suffer fools

archaeological ways. In the early years of

he had been one of those

sequence for

meet

museum at Les Eyzies, high above the Vezere now stout, and rarely without a cigarette

Abbe

was

to

late

Ice

Age

who

had developed

cultures in southwestern

a cultural

France and

northern Spain based on numerous rock shelter excavations and the different artifact forms found in successive cultural levels in

34

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

Cro-Magnon

Like his contemporaries, he tended to think in

sites.

Hnear terms, of late Ice Age cultures that followed one another in a

He

ladderlike, almost geological sequence.

himself had subdivided

30,000 years of French Stone Age culture into different cultural stages using antler spear points and barbed harpoons

We

started in the

museum

as

"type

fossils."

study collections, sifting through

drawers of artifacts from the nearby La Madeleine rock

shelter,

which

was occupied by people living on the Vezere's banks more than 12,000 years ago. His pudgy hands antler

harpoon,

as

from

flitted

antler

harpoon

into a six-part subdivision of the "Magdalenian culture,"

had devised

as

long ago

as

a

a

wanted

I

A moment later, he

barbed antler harpoon: "Magdalenian VI."

drawer of double-barbed harpoons with fine

barbs.

I

peered into

engraved on the

lines

moved

to savor each delicate artifact, but Breuil

secure in his classifications.

which he

1906. "Magdalenian IV," he pronounced,

fingering a short, forked-based antler spear point.

pointed to

to

he categorized them item by item, slipping them

was

It

as

if,

on,

in his mind, the Magdalenians

had been factory workers, stamping out hundreds of identical double-barbed harpoons, each conforming to

"Magdalenian

a

culture" specification.

Breuil s briefing was an archaeological tour de force. privately

whether he thought of the paintings

and Hnear terms.

Cave near Les curving

tusks.

I

soon found out. We

Eyzies,

famous

To show

me

for

its

I

wondered

Font-de-Gaume

of mammoths with long,

the masterpieces, Breuil used a flashlight

to amplify the electric lights, shining

superpositions for me.

visited the

frieze

I

in similar impersonal

it

at

an angle to decipher the

saw two engraved and painted reindeer head-

to-head, the doe kneeling. This time, there were no tricks with I

was reviewing

out with

a

a scientific,

walking

ologist overruled

meaning of the magic"

—

stick.

Abbe

art,

Hnear analysis of changing

On

this occasion,

Breuil the

artist.

Abbe

When

I

asked

him about

the

paintings created to ensure the success of the hunt and the Hfe.

Breuil and his contemporaries viewed late Ice

tinuum.

pointed

Breuil the archae-

he stated that they were "Sympathetic hunting

continued abundance of game and animal

same way

styles,

lights.

that they

The

caves

viewed

late Ice

and rock

Age

shelters

cultures

—

Age

art in the

as a single

con-

of southwest France and

Dark Caves, Obscure Visions

northern Spain contained layer occupation, each with

after stratified layer

own

its

of

late Ice

35

Age

characteristic artifacts (table 2.1).

Archaeologists of the day believed there had been a uniform, orderly

development of Cro-Magnon

culture, in

which

society followed

the regularity of geological strata (see information in

society with

all

box,

Breuil beHeved he could trace the evolution of Cro-

p. 37).

Magnon

art in the

same way, by deciphering the superpositions of

paintings and engravings in major caverns like Altamira, Font-de-

Gaume, Lascaux, and Niaux. He argued that the earliest and crudest paintings and engravings would be at the base of the friezes and stated that Cro-Magnon art began with the Aurignacian people (see table 2.1). They executed engravings and outline paintings in which the necks, bellies, and other anatomical features of the animals were grossly exaggerated.

the viewer. After artists

Their heads and

many

became expert

objects. They used

in clay to

produce

at

found

depicting their prey, especially on small

polychrome hues and shading, and even modeled bas-reliefs

Clearly, Breuil

tools

were often turned toward

thousands of years, according to Breuil, these

and small

sculptures.

thought of the paintings

be analyzed and treated in

shelters.

feet

much

the same

enigmatic

as

way

as

artifacts, to

the stone and antler

in the dense occupation layers in Les Eyzies's rock

Faced with the seemingly impossible task of explaining the

meaning of Cro-Magnon

Breuil instead turned to familiar

art,

archaeological research tools of artifact classification, such as the fre-

quency of animals

in different caves

—

the most

being the preferred prey. In so doing, he missed

a

common

animal

fundamental point:

Tools and art are pieces of a single continuum, in that they comprise a part

of the entire constellation of ancient cultures

painting, ritual, integral

A

and the

daily business

in

which

artifacts,

of obtaining food were

all

components of living. generation

later,

we

have

moved

a

long way from the

paintings-as-artifacts perspective. Careful observation, high-tech

tography, and

computer inventories of paintings

at

pho-

dozens of

sites

provide comprehensive data for studying the placement of the art

within the caves. They also reveal

many

inconsistencies in the Breuil

"hunting magic" theory. For instance, in the case of the famous

Niaux Cave

in southern France

s

Ariege, bison are the most

common

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

36

TABLE 2.1:

CRO-MAGNON CULTURAL SEQUENCE

WESTERN EUROPE

IN

Date in Years ca.,

32,000

Culture

Named

Characteristic

Name

After

Artifacts

Aurignacian

Aurignac rock shelter,

Notched and sharpened blades

Ariege,

France

Split-based antler points

ca.,

32,000

Perigordian

Perigord,

Fine blunt-backed

France

stone points

Antler/bone points

ca.,

23,000

Solutrean

Solutre

Leaf-like stone

rock shelter.

points

Perigord, France

ca., to

Magdalenian

19,000

La

10,000

Madeleine

At least

six

stages

rock shelter.

or variants. Rich

Dordogne,

antler/bone tech-

France

nology.

Many

spe-

cialized tools

The

original classification of

elaborate

scheme of two

which came together Magdalenian

ticated excavation

pation layers.

artifact

on

is

a

late

Ice

Age

which

has

a

more

Aurignacian and Perigordian,

is

the basis for the present cultural

been greatly elaborated due

statistical

at least

analyses of artifacts

to

more

sophis-

from individual occu-

eight for the Magdalenian alone

groupings of stone and ander

—each based

tools. Whether these

on

have any

matter of continued debate.

the walls (figure 2.5).

these people

developed by Breuil and

sequence gave way to

form the famous Solutrean and

to

branching sequence

The people who

the La Vache Cave across the valley,

commonly found

linear

researchers have categorized these cultural traditions into

—

statistical

cultural significance

at

the

methods, and

Modern

forms and

animals

in

in table 2.1,

numerous subdivisions

cultural traditions

parallel cultural traditions, the

cultures. This

framework shown

Cro-Magnon

During the 1930s, the

others was entirely Hnear.

visited

Niaux

where ibex bones

than those of bison, thus making

hunted primarily ibex, not bison.

^

it

are

lived

more

apparent that

Dark Caves, Obscure Visions

37

ROCKSHELTER EXCAVATION METHODS

No

one can blame

plistic,

the archaeologists of a century

linear interpretations of the

ago

for their sim-

Cro-Magnons. Their crude exca-

vation methods prevented them from understanding the

full

complexities of rock shelter occupations. Working with small, adzelike

handpicks, Breuil and

his

along the Vezere River

in

contemporaries dug arbitrary levels of

10

searching for finished antler, bone, and stone

deep rock

into to

20

shelters

centimeters,

artifacts.

They took

little

account of animal bones and subtle evidence of sporadic human occupation. Using "type fossils," they developed entirely linear cultural

sequences, as

if

one society had followed another

in

on orderly

manner.

methods and

Eventually, both excavation

became more Rock

sophisticated

shelter excavation

is

and

cultural

now among

artifact

analyses

sequences more elaborate.

the most sophisticated of

all

archaeological investigation. Modern-day Cro-Magnon excavations

move

Age

slowly, but attempt to place

more than 20,000 years

of late Ice

foraging within a complex environmental setting. Today's

field-

workers spend months refining the linear systems: areas that were once thought to be continuously occupied are

now

favored locations that were repeatedly visited

The process

is

meticulous

accurately chronicled as

— sometimes

long term.

and time consuming. The excavator

lays out a horizontal meter-square grid over the occupation deposits,

then digs each natural layer with brushes, dental picks,

following them from square to square zontally

and

vertically.

and

trowels,

and observing them both

hori-

Every square centimeter of cave earth passes

through fine screens, as the diggers search for tiny

artifacts,

beads,

rodent bones, plant remains, and environmental evidence.

In this

they isolate individual hearths, and even transitory

visits to

the site that

may have

a multidisciplinary

lasted but a

few days. The excavation

is

exercise, involving botanists, geologists, pollen experts,

and

zoologists,

among

others.

Sample columns

of

way,

soil scientists,

cave deposit are

subjected to flotation to recover minute plant remains (see chapter 4). Pollen in

and

soil

samples yield valuable information on climatic change

a region where the environment changed swiftly within individual

centuries, requiring rapid cultural response.

38

Fig.

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

2.5.

Bison

from

Salon

the

Noir,

Niaux.

Photograph

from

Photo

Researchers.

Another expert, French archaeologist Andre Leroi-Gourhan, working

in the 1960s

motives of the

art.

and 1970s, refused to speculate about the

He

used computers to analyze individual

paintings, their relationships to

cave walls

at

dozens of painted

one another, and sites.

on

their positions

Leroi-Gourhan subdivided each

cave into three sections: the entrance area, the

main

friezes,

and the

deepest zones. For each of the friezes, he assigned sexual value to the animals and signs, either male or female, beHeving there was a funda-

mental duaHty in paintings. Thus,

late Ice

Age thinking

he concluded in

(1964), that, in the celebrated

his

that

book.

Salon Noir

was reflected

in the

Treasures of Prehistoric Art at

Niaux, finely painted

female bison are associated symboHcally with male horses.

Leroi-Gourhan was deeply influenced by the anthropological

humanism of the essence." artistic

He

1930s,

which proclaimed

believed that

Cro-Magnon

movements of the human

past,

that art

art

was

a

"universal

was one of the great

and inseparable from

coherent religious system; therefore, one could not study the

a

art

without taking religion into account. Leroi-Gourhan's theories are controversial.

The complex

reality

of the paintings and engravings

at

Dark Caves, Obscure Visions

Lascaux, Niaux, and elsewhere defies easy analysis, and there are

exceptions to his gender duality. For example,

about the paintings

at

Niaux

is

all

that bison are the

that

many

one can conclude major animal and ibex

present. Their relationship to other species such as horses

unknown. The main reason

39

Leroi-Gourhan was unable

is

to

worked (AMS) revolutionized radioHe had no means of dating individual

analyze the paintings thoroughly, however, was because he

before accelerator mass spectrometry

carbon dating

(see p. 41).

paintings accurately, or

oi establishing the length o( time

took to

it

build up the associations in individual friezes. In recent years, scientists have turned

from generalized descrip-

tions like Leroi-Gourhan's to sophisticated analyses

new

and to

paints

precise dissection

of the

artists'

radiocarbon dating techniques that allow the

of individual

friezes,

such

as

those

at

Lascaux or

Niaux. These approaches, combined with research thousands of kilometers away in South African rock shelters (see chapter

new

interpretations of late Ice

Age

3),

promise

art.

ACCELERATOR MASS SPECTROMETRY RADIOCARBON DATING century, Breuil and his successors assumed that

For half

a

Magnon

art

late Ice

Cro-

many thousands of years during the thought this theory too simpHstic. They

evolved steadily over

Age.

A

few experts

compared the development of the

slowly growing tree with

art to a

branches, believing that the art was a result of many spurts in

many

growth and individual episodes of genius, among, perhaps, the in a single group.

on those very

However, no one could date the

rare occasions

when

contemporary occupation deposit

do

so,

on

walls with those

by using

a

a slab

of painted rock

fell

antler

into a

in the cave (Breuil attempted to

crude technique of direct comparison of art

on

artists

paintings, except

and bone

artifacts

found

in

styles

archaeo-

logical sites).

Then, University

in 1949, physicists Willard oil

Libby and

J.

D.Arnold of the

Chicago developed the radiocarbon dating method,

which dated ancient organic materials like charcoal and bone. Radiocarbon dating is the most common way of dating archaeological

sites

younger than 40,000 years

old.

The method was

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

40

developed from nuclear research during World War Il.Willard Libby theorized that because living vegetation (and animal its

own

tissue) builds

up

organic matter by photosynthesis and by using atmospheric

carbon dioxide, the proportion of carbon in atmosphere. Libby

knew

which entered the

earth's

product of this reaction

that

equal to that in the

it is

cosmic radiation produced neutrons,

atmosphere and reacted with nitrogen. The

is

carbon 14 (radiocarbon),

a

carbon isotope

with eight rather than the usual four neutrons in the nucleus. With these additional neutrons, the nucleus radioactive decay

is

unstable and

Carbon 14 (radiocarbon)

exactly like ordinary carbon

from

a

is

is

subject to

believed to behave

chemical standpoint, and enters

into the carbon dioxide of the vegetation in combination with

carbon. ceases

When

a plant dies, the intake

of carbon (and carbon 14)

and the process of decay begins. Thus, argued Libby, the

amount of radiocarbon bone and charcoal was

m

ancient organic materials such

a direct

as

burned

function of the length of time the

sampled organism had been dead.

Libby calculated that

it

took 5,568 years

(the "half-life"

of

carbon 14) for half of the carbon 14 in any sample to decay, allowing

him

to develop a time clock for the past

40,000

years.

He

radiocarbon dating with samples from ancient Egyptian

whose ages were burning them to create cases,

already a

known, cleaning

pure carbon dioxide

tested

mummy

the samples and

gas.

Then he used

a

lead-shielded Geiger counter to record the radioactive emissions

from the allowed

gas, free

him

A

of outside contamination.

to turn his counts into ages

simple formula

with appropriate

statistical

Hmits of error.

With cultural

this

new

technique, archaeologists could measure rates of

change and date important developments

like the origins

farming in widely separated parts of the world for the

However,

of

time.

old-style radiocarbon dating required large samples, for

only a small number of carbon 14 atoms break

hours of the sample. Back in the 1960s, plastic

first

I

down

over the

remember

many

collecting in

bags handfuls of charcoal from ancient hearths, the rule being,

the larger the sample the better. In those days, dating a late Ice

painting

directly

meant destroying the

quate organic sample.

No

entire

image

Age

to obtain an ade-

one w^ould countenance such

drastic

Dark Caves, Obscure Visions

action.

So cave

art

experts took

indirect

41

radiocarbon dates from

charcoal samples in layers lying on the cave floor below the

art.

By

the same token, scientists could not date small objects Hke seeds,

maize cobs, or tiny v/ood fragments embedded historic

of pre-

in the sockets

bronze spear heads: the samples w^ere too small. Such objects

are especially hard to date,

and very difhcult to pin down chronolog-

move upward or downward into older or younger occupation layers, either by human means such as trampling, or through natural phenomena such as burrowing animals. The development of a new radiocarbon method based on ically, for tiny finds like seeds can easily

AMS in

1983 revolutionized radiocarbon chronologies, for

it

allowed

the dating of individual seeds or of tiny charcoal flecks

removed from

an ancient rock painting without damaging the figure

itself.

Using an accelerator mass spectrometer, researchers estimate the remaining carbon 14 in

a

sample by directly counting carbon 14

atoms rather than counting decay events (beta counts). In doing

so,

they can date tiny samples.

The development of small, high-energy

mass spectrometers solved

a

major problem

—

of background

that

noise from ions or molecules of similar mass to carbon 14, masking the presence of carbon 14.

ground,

as a

The new

instruments

out back-

filter

proportion of the sample's atoms are propelled through

an accelerator toward

sample are pulled in

a detector.

Ionized carbon atoms from the

beam form toward

the accelerator.

A

magnet

bends the beam, so the lighter atoms turn more sharply than heavier ones, and

move toward

the inside of the diverging beam.

A

filter

blocks the passage of all charged particles except those of atomic mass 14.

The

accelerator pushes the stripped

beam-bending magnet ticles.

A

that filters out

any

magnetic lens focuses the beam

counts the

number of remaining

beam through

a

second

last

non-carbon 14 par-

as a

carbon 14 detector

ions, thus calculating the age

of the

sample.

Today, archaeologists use radiocarbon dates calibrated with tree rings, to give actual dates in years (see p.

175). Originally, Willard Libby

information in box, chapter

assumed

that the concentration

radiocarbon in the atmosphere remained constant that ancient samples

radiocarbon

as

would have contained

today In

fact,

as

8,

of

time passed, so

the same

amount of

changes in the strength of the

earth's

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

42

magnetic

field

and

alterations in solar activity have varied the

con-

centration of radiocarbon both in the atmosphere and in living things. Fortunately, tree-ring dates obtained

extremely accurate (see chapter

8),

from ancient

trees are

so radiocarbon experts have

developed calibration tables that convert radiocarbon dates into actual dates in calendar years.

far,

tables exist for the

v^hich convert most

A.D.

1950 to about 6,800

this

book. This calibrated time

coming

So

B.C.,

sites

described in

expand considerably

scale will

AMS

works with small samples, an archaeologist, instead

of extrapolating from generic dates derived from occupation

now

AMS

so,

layers,

date individual figures within a cave painting frieze and

work with blocks of AMS or

in

years.

Since

can

period

dates

from dozens of samples. In

a

decade

radiocarbon dating will give us finely detailed chron-

ologies for religious sanctuaries

and sacred

art. It

will also enable us to

study the relationships between individual material objects and the places in

which they

are found, a useful tool for establishing the

general nature of ancient beliefs.

AMS

radiocarbon dating of indi-

vidual antler artifacts and cave paintings may, one day, allow direct and

simultaneous comparisons between

art

on

walls

and engraved and

carved objects in different occupation levels and neighboring

Perhaps then

we may even be

able to identify the

sites.

work of individual

artists.

NIAUX CAVE AND CHAUVET, THE CAVE OF BEARS

AMS

dating

is

so

new

to cave art research that

French and Spanish

archaeologists have obtained dates firom figures in only nine caves. In general, these dates confirm earHer estimates.

Three of the famous

Altamira bison, located in northern Spain, date to about 14,000 years ago.

The most

Cave

interesting results, however,

in the foothills

come from

the

Niaux

of the Pyrenees Mountains in southern France,

and fi-om the Grotte de Chauvet in the Ardeche region of the southeast,

discovered only recently in

Niaux

is

a

deep

cave,

December

famous

for

its

1994.

Salon Noir, a high-ceilinged

cul-de-sac 700 meters from the entrance and measuring 20 meters across,

adorned with magnificent paintings of horses, bison, and other

Dark Caves, Obscure Visions

43

animals, executed with fine, black shading. Niaux's deep passages also

contain isolated friezes and figures, far from the great salon. For years,

everyone believed Niaux dated to about 14,000 years ago, about the time of Altamira. But

One

story.

AMS

dates in the Salon

at least a

Those

different

thus, the

Niaux paintings

millennium.

at

Chauvet extend over an even longer

the Grotte de

period of time. The

Ardeche

tell a

bison figure dates to about 13,850 years ago, another to

around 12,890 years before the present; span

Noir

Grotte de Chauvet

but nothing prepared

Some

depths of Chauvet.

cave art was

scientists for the

On December

of the

in the gorges

of the painted caves of Les

in southeast France, far east

Eyzies and the Pyrenees.

deep

lies

known from

the region,

magnificent figures in the

18, 1994, three local speleologists

with an interest in archaeology, Eliette Brunei Deschamps, Jean-

Marie Chauvet, and Christian in the

Hillaire,

crawled into

Cirque de Estre gorge. The entrance was

a

timeters high and 30 centimeters wide, but led to a

with

a small

opening

mere 80 cen-

narrow vestibule

a sloping floor.

The They

three explorers

felt a draft

flowing from a blocked duct.

pulled out the boulders that blocked

it,

and saw

a vast

chamber

3 meters below them. After returning with a rope ladder, they

descended into

a

network of chambers adorned with superb

columns. Calcified cave bear bones and teeth lay on the

calcite

floor,

and

they noticed shallow depressions where the beasts had hibernated. Suddenly, Deschamps cried out in surprise. lines

of red ocher, then on

The group then upon tives

figures

mammoth

hand imprints

—both

of mammoths and cave

dots emerging from

figure.

penetrated into the main chamber and

further paintings:

—and

a small

Her lamp shone on two

its

lions,

muzzle. As they gazed

one with at

came

and nega-

positives

a circle

of

the paintings, the

three explorers were "seized by a strange feeling. Everything was so beautiful, so fresh, almost too

much

so.

Time was

tens of thousands of years that separated us

these paintings

no longer

1996, 42). In their book.

how,

like the excavators

abolished, as if the

from the producers of

existed" (Chauvet, Deschamps, and Hillaire

Dawn

ofArtiThe Chauvet Cave, they noted

of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun three

quarters of a century before, they

felt

Uke intruders: "The

artists'

souls

44

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

and

spirits

surrounded

us.

We

we

thought

could

feel their

presence"

(ibid.).

The

Grotte de Chauvet had lain undisturbed since the

Age. Hearths on the floor looked

late Ice

had been extinguished the

as if they

day before. Flaming torches had been rubbed against the wall to

remove the charcoal

on top of a

so they

painting.

On

a

would

flare

second

visit later

anew.

One

such rubbing lay

the same evening, the

explorers found an extraordinary frieze of black horses, wild oxen

with twisted horns, and two rhinoceroses facing one another. There

were

lions, stags,

engravings of an owl, and animals never before seen

in cave paintings, covering an area

had half-open muzzles, outline had

been scraped

of more than 10 meters. The horses

their eyes depicted in detail. to

make

it

stand out better.

The

One

horse

artists

made

use of the contours and crevices of the rock to produce illusions of

A little farther on in the chamber lay a slab that ceiling. A bear skull had been set on top of and

relief and perspective.

had

fallen

from the

the remains of a small

it,

fire lay

behind

More

it.

than thirty calcite-

covered and intentionally placed bear skulls surrounded the

Realizing they had

slab.

discovered a cave that rivaled Altamira,

Lascaux, and Niaux, the three speleologists returned on Christmas Eve. Acutely conscious that the cave was undisturbed, they unrolled plastic sheets visit to

over the imprints of their footprints from their previous

ensure that later visitors stayed on the same route. In an end

chamber, they came across another 10-meter frieze of black figures

dominated by

lionesses or lions

without manes, rhinoceroses, bison,

and mammoths. Far to the right they discerned a bison head. this

immense

They wrote

that

it

frieze" (ibid., 58).

"seemed

To

a

human

figure

with

to us a sorcerer supervising

their eternal credit,

Deschamps,

Chauvet, and Hillaire took precautions to prevent trampling and unauthorized

visitation. Within a

few

days, the cave

rock

art

was sealed with

an iron door.

When archaeologist and top at

expert Jean Clottes arrived

the cave, he had his doubts as to whether the paintings were

genuine. But his skepticism soon vanished paintings lay under a layer of calcite, millennia. Piles of charcoal

The undisturbed

floors

when he saw

that several

which had formed over many

from burnt Scots pine branches

lay intact.

with their numerous bear bones and undis-

Dark Caves, Obscure Visions

turbed hearths archive of

left

no doubt

Cro-Magnon

and bones

artifacts

still

in his

mind

Chauvet was

that

painting preserved in in the exact places

its

45

a priceless

original context,

where they had been

dropped. Clottes identified at least a dozen analysis

mated

flint artifacts

of the edge wear might yield clues

that at least three

would be found once

hundred animal

and realized

He

esti-

and numerous

signs

as to their use.

figures

the cave was fully studied and explored.

noted that rhinoceroses were most common, followed by moths, wild horses, and bison. The overlapping the

heads

movement and numbers walls before painting

artists

But he

lions,

mam-

were masters of perspective,

of animals to give the (figure 2.6).

that

They even

effects

scraped

of both

some of the

them, to make the figures stand out better; and

spread the paint with their hands over the rock, to obtain values that

showed dimension or color

Fig. 2.6.

lines

tonality.

Rhinoceros frieze from Grotte de Cficuvet. The

of horns to

Researchers.

give the impression of a

herd.

artist has used multiple Photograph from Photo

— FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

46

After careful paintings to dates

stylistic

comparisons, Clottes dated the Chauvet

between 17,000 and 21,000 years

from two rhinoceroses and

However,

—making them

Two more samples from torch by AMS, to date to around 26,500

dated art in the world.

the walls were found,

AMS

bison produced dates from a

a large

1,300-year period around 31,000 years ago liest

ago.

the ear-

smears on years ago,

while two charcoal samples on the floor gave readings from about

24,000

years. Clottes claims

humans

that long period

is

still

Chauvet on several occaWhether they painted over

visited

sions over at least 6,000 to 7,000 years.

unknown, but

AMS

dates will ultimately

produce some answers.

The AMS his

data gathered

from Chauvet show us

that Breuil

and

contemporaries erred in thinking of a gradual evolution of Cro-

Magnon

art.

In

reality, as

proven by

AMS,

the art flourished and

many places at different moment when modern humans, our

reached high peaks of artistic achievement in times, starting

from the earHest

remote ancestors,

settled in

western Europe.

many of the

Interestingly,

dangerous members of the

animals

late Ice

Age

on the cave bestiary

—

walls represent

bears, lions,

mam-

moths, rhinoceroses, bison, and even, occasionally, the nimble and

But Grotte de Chauvet was

ferocious aurochs.

where

these powerful animals hibernated.

a

Did

bear cave, a place

bears use the cave

before humans? What was the relationship between bears and people? Clottes pondered the paintings and

the cave, with

its

wondered

if

human

visitors to

claw marks, hollows, prints, and scattered bones,

came to the chambers to acquire the potency of the great beast whose smell probably lingered in the darkness. Another approach not yet attempted at Chauvet that of highly detailed paint analysis promises some indirect clues as to the ways in which the paintings were executed, and, perhaps, for what purpose.

—

ARTISTS' RECIPES In 1902, a French scientist

named Henri Moissan

scraped flakes of

Stone Age paint from the walls of Font-de-Gaume and La Mouthe caves near Les Eyzies.

He

identified a

number of

constituents,

Dark Caves, Obscure Visions

47

including red ocher and charcoal, but lacked the analytical tools to carry out

more

New

precise analyses.

analytical techniques that allow scientists to analyze cave

now

paintings extensively are

available.

caves themselves. Archaeologists great care

first

The

process begins in the

photograph the paintings with

and examine them meticulously. They study ways

which

in

the paint was applied to the walls, and record any superpositions of

one painting over another. They geneity of composition, a paints

check the figures for homoit

establishes

were used. A binocular microscope provides

the painting in

such

also

vital step, for

situ,

and

a

much

a

how many

close-up view of

better chance of observing details,

shading, than conventional observation. Next, technicians

as hair

photograph the

with the aid of three optic

figures

fibers that

guide

light onto the painting. All of these observations and photographs

how many

provide the basis for research that determines samples will

Back

come from

individual figures.

in the laboratory, the analysis begins

constituents of the paint. The as

paint

charcoal or red ocher,

Cro-Magnon

artists

with the chemical used pigments such

combined with an organic binder or an

extender to ensure cohesion and

fluidity.

A scanning electron

micro-

scope attached to an X-ray detector allows visual identification of the

morphology of the

constituents and a basic analysis of the

main

chemical substances in the paint. Then, X-ray diffraction analysis provides information

on the

crystalline nature

of the minerals. The exact

chemical composition comes from proton linear accelerator.

The

beam

analysis,

using

a

paint analyses provide information about the

chemical composition, and, more important, about the quantities and proportions of the paint constituents, and the

amount they were

ground or otherwise processed. Spectrographic

analyses reveal trace

elements, rials

which sometimes can be used

to sources

some

distance

from the

to link original paint

mate-

cave.

Identifying organic binders requires careful selection of paint samples, for only those

be

tested.

with

where no pollution

Even touching

a painting

invisible oily deposits.

triglycerides, the

has affected the paint can

once can contaminate the sample

Gas chromatography

main constituent of

oil

identifies lipids like

or grease, and

sterols,

the

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

48

molecular structure that allows

scientists

determine whether

to

samples are of animal or vegetable origin. Mass spectrometry provides

confirmation of the identifications.

The new

paint analysis tech-

niques are expensive and time consuming, so research moves slowly

Niaux Cave

in the foothills

of the Pyrenees mountains Hes

amidst a cluster of Magdalenian occupation

The

sites

and painted

Lesse massif at the foot of a steep

cliff.

caves.

Cap de

great cave enters the pyramidlike, 1,189-meter-high

le

Niaux's cave system extends

nearly 2 kilometers underground, a labyrinthine system of chambers

and

side galleries.

peak, that might

The

itself

setting

is

spectacular, set into a conspicuous

have had spiritual significance.

Niaux is famous for its black animal figures, mainly centered in the Salon Noir (figure 2.5). Visited for more than a millennium, Niaux with its many images, some far from the open air is ideal

—

—

for paint analysis research. Jean Clottes has taken seventy-five paint

samples from the cave in recent years. In the Salon Noir, both observation and laboratory analyses showed that very often the

made

a

preHminary outline sketch in charcoal,

a

"cartoon"

as it

artist

were,

before executing the actual painting. Ostensibly the painter intended to create a specific, well-thought-out composition. is

relatively close to the entrance,

ures are painted

on the

where the

The Salon Noir

carefully prepared fig-

chamber often visited by the deeper chambers show no signs of

walls, in a

Magdalenians.The paintings

in

careful preparation. Rather, the artists painted the animals directly

on the

walls

without preliminary drawings, evidence that the

Magdalenians made only short expeditions into the remotest dark chambers.

The reds

paint recipes used at

Niaux were based on hematite for the finely ground charcoal for

and manganese oxide with or without

the blacks. The

artists also

used an extender: either potassium feldspar

or a combination of potassium feldspar and a large quantity of biotite. All

these

minerals are readily found near the

extractable. Extenders saved

on

paint and produced a

neous mixture that adhered better to the cave

artists

fats,

which allowed the

used

at least

two

artists

and

easily

more homoge-

walls. The binders

used

caves,

animal and

to use real "oil paints."

The Niaux

in the Ariege region contained water and, in

plant

cave

two

"recipes," replacing the earlier potassium

Dark Caves, Obscure Visions

which was more

feldspar extender with the biotite combination,

obtained and had better adhesion

easily

The

49

qualities.

discovery of at least two paint recipes in one cave destroys

which he had based on stylistic comparisons, the Niaux paintings had been executed as a con-

Breuil's earlier theory,

that

assumed

that

all

temporaneous whole and painted over

The new

very short period of time.

paint analysis approaches allow individual figures to be con-

One

sidered.

a

of the Niaux panels

the extreme

at

Noir was painted with only the potassium Almost

certainly, this panel

But the

artists

ments

left

of the Salon

feldspar/biotite recipe.

was conceived of as an integrated whole.

ran out of paint in the middle of the panel. Trace ele-

in the paint samples reveal that

batches were used. Other

two

Niaux panels

both recipes and were painted over

separate, slightly different

consist

of paintings that used

a considerable

period of time.

Clottes believes the accessible locations were chosen because of con-

By

venience. in

using paint analysis, he has been able to assign paintings

remoter chambers to

moments

specific

in

the

Salon Noir

sequence.

The Niaux analyses reveal that an apparently homogeneous sample of waD art has at least two different stages, so an apparent unity may conceal a complex reality. How long, then, did stylistic themes and conventions endure? We do know that the two paint recipes were used

rough chronology. But could the

in succession, giving us a

recipes have

had

different social or ritual

meanings? Perhaps the same

recipe was used for horses and bison, while different constituents

were employed sively,

or even

The

for signs

at different

exclu-

paint recipes that are techni-

will

sometimes rapidly supplant

and groups of sites

Cro-Magnon

some

some people even "paint" with

grams on computers. Thus, nificance. Thanks to

oils in

instances. Oil

over chalk, and ink over watercolor, according to

Today,

lines in charcoal.

women

new

pastels are preferred taste.

or

us that

tells

those in current use. Acrylics have replaced

personal

men

seasons of the year.

more economic

history of art

cally superior or

and animals, or by

a recipe

graphics pro-

can acquire a chronological sig-

AMS dating, we can study individual ancient sites,

as part artists

On

of a

much

bigger cultural landscape.

sometimes painted images by drawing out-

other occasions they used the paint like a wash

50

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

or even blew

it

on

As we have

to the rock surface.

seen, paint

manu-

facture involved the use of local ingredients, but the painting of large

images, like those in the Hall of the Bulls quantities

at

Lascaux, required large

of pigment that must have taken many people to prepare.

have not seen the Chauvet paintings: few outsiders have yet

I

had the chance. Nor should

they, for

them from harm. But

protect

impression of movement, of

where supernatural potency

our primary concern must be to

color pictures of the friezes give an subterranean, animal-filled realm

a

lurks

behind the rock

remote

faces, in a

cosmos of layers. The caves were the places where humans and the spiritual

world met and illuminated the darkness.

The famous polychrome crouch on the rocky

ceiling, are

in the rock (figure 2.3).

could

bison

Maybe

empower them through

at

Altamira,

modeled around

the

artists

natural protrusions

beHeved

a transference

which stand and that spirit-animals

of power that occurred

during the act of painting animal figures and from touching them. This activity was probably confined to a few individuals

shamans and

artists

who

as

acquired spiritual powers during solitary vision

quests in the depths of dark, sacred caverns. In the

through identifications

at

Chauvet, we

may be

same manner,

glimpsing one of these

ancient people, dressed in a bison skin, facing outward toward the

entrance to the chamber.

A

century

after the first authentication

have begun to take halting artistic tradition

may never

scientific steps

of Cro-Magnon

art,

we

toward understanding an

deeply embedded in an ancient hunting culture. We

fully discern the

motives behind the paintings of Chauvet,

Lascaux, Niaux, and other caves. But recent archaeological and

ethnographic researches in southern Africa (described in chapter

3)

have given us some fresh and provocative insights into the ancient spiritual alistic

world where

performance.

artistic traditions

play a significant part in ritu-

chapter three

SAN ARTISTS

As

work

a

young

SOUTHERN AFRICA

IN

archaeologist, time

in southern Africa,

where

I

had many opportunities

The San

the ancient art tradition of the San people. pejoratively, called

Bushmen)

me

and chance allowed

to

to explore

(sometimes,

are the indigenous hunter-gatherers

of

southern Africa. Today, small numbers of them survdve in the Kalahari

Desert of Botswana, where they have been in contact with farmers

and herders for many centuries. Their ancestors have lived in southern Africa for sively

10,000 years and have been studied exten-

at least

through numerous archaeological excavations of caves, rock

shelters,

and various types of open-air

of Good Hope. San

artists,

who

from Zambia

sometimes painted

but mostly in open, sun-filled rock

shelters,

over a century ago. Thus, their art

more than 25,000

paintings by

sites

My Matopo soft,

first

much

older

western

yellow winter

light.

Zimbabwe

work

a little

I

gained from

to understand the

paintings.

(figure 3.1)

shimmered

in the

Great weathered granite domes and vast

deep overhang

concavity in a rock, and giraffes

me

Cro-Magnon

boulders nestled in dense woodlands. a

at

sighting of African rock art was in late afternoon. The

Hills in

peak where

still

The education

studying San art was priceless in helping

motives behind the

Cape

separated from the Chauvet

is

years.

were

to the

in well-lit caves,

cast a

when

I

I

climbed high on

a

rounded

cool shadow on a smooth-walled

looked up,

I

could see painted red

with their elongated bodies outlined in white. Groups of San

hunters,

drawn with

sticklike precision,

prepared for the hunt below

51

52

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

Fig.

3.1.

Map

showing the archaeological

sites

(underlined) mentioned

in

chapter 3.

them. The intricate frieze ran for several meters;

a

wild maze of reds,

oranges, browns, whites, and yellows that included animals, humans,

and

a

multitude of dots, oval Hnes, and symbols. As the sun went

down, the paintings stood out

on the

clearer

light-colored wall.

Defying immediate interpretation and understanding, stood enthralled, caught up in the colors,

A few days later, of the Matopos,

where

I

lines,

went exploring by myself in

I

visiting several

I

nevertheless

and images.

more painted rock

a

remote corner

shelters.

Every-

went, the paintings were out in the open, not hidden in dark

caves like those of the

exploring a small

cleft

Cro-Magnons. Late

that afternoon,

between two enormous boulders when

across a single portrait

of

a red hunter.

walking calmly by himself, carrying

a

He

I I

was

came

had been depicted

digging stick and

bow

as

and

arrows on his shoulder. Quite alone, with no animals nearby, the

hunter was making vertical crack.

his

way

across the

weathered rock face toward

His manner, to me, appeared purposeful,

as if

a

he were

San Artists

intent

on

where

nearby. Apparently,

his destination. Strangely, there

figure walking toward

learned

was the

I

with

in

1927.

He

—

anyone paint

many

me

a year, cer-

—and admire him

did.

I

too had admired the rock paintings. to be decorations for the walls

he was wrong. Why,

that

by

a picture all

I

Miles Burkitt, had visited

lecturer.

"prehistoric wallpaper," as he called

hunter convinced

this solitary

reason in mind. Later,

a specific

admire him

However, he considered them visited caves

53

were no other paintings any-

person to have seen him in

first

Cambridge University

South Africa

Southern Africa

someone long ago had painted

a crack

tainly the first archaeologist to

My

in

itself,

by

a

it.

My

after

of ofi;-

solitary

all,

would

crack in a rock, just for the

Unbeknownst to me, two linguists and a magistrate had stumbled across some of the mythology behind San art more than a sake of

it?

century ago.

EARLY RECORDS OF SAN FOLKLORE

When Town

I

taught for a couple of months

in 1960,

I

at

the University of

spent hours in the Jagger Library

reading about the San.

The

Cape

the university

Hterature was enormous, scattered in

dozens of specialized, and often long-discontinued, I

at

scientific journals.

read early anthropologist George Stows Native Races of South Africa,

published in 1905; and discovered an 1874 article of his in the prestigious fournal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, in

which he

who did not who did. Stow

describes a meeting with a group of southern San

themselves paint, but had heard of distant neighbors

remarked

that this

"was spoken of in the

had been discontinued I

tired

at

the present time" (1874, 245).

delved briefly into folklore, myth, and linguistics, but soon

of the complexities of San

into Wilhelm Bleek and

long-forgotten

work

Lucy

lip clicks,

which

are set

dialects.

For

as

is

few hours

I

dipped

I

read of /Kaggen,

the

San dialects make extensive use of palatal tongue,

down with

conventions. For example, !Kung

a

Lloyd's Specimens of Bushmen Folklore, a

that appeared in 1911.

Khoisan languages such and

past tense as if the practice

a

exclamation marks and other standard scholarly

word

that

begms with

a palatal

tongue

click.

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

54

insect

known

as a

mantis and

trickster,

who assumed

form of

the

various animals; and of the children sent to throw the sleeping sun

myths

into the sky. Soon, however, the exotic

more

to the

familiar

that the Jagger Library

on San

folklore that

The

several reasons. Thousands

to

is

a

minor

of San perished

their

teenth centuries.

Many were hunted

I

returned

had no idea

scientific miracle for

as a result

of white

settlers'

homelands during the eighteenth and nine-

far

dow^n by farmers

when

Others retreated into the

settlers' cattle herds.

mountain and desert landscapes, a

I

be of great value to archaeology.

encroachment on

only

and

housed thousands of pages of research notes

would prove

existence of these archives

hunters raided

palled,

world of Stone Age archaeology.

from

the vast

settled lands. Additionally,

handful of travelers and scholars mastered the intricacies of San

dialects.

German-born

linguist

Wilhelm Heinrich Immanuel Bleek

(1827—1875) was one such scholar.

Bleek began

his linguistic research

with the Hebrew language,

then turned to the "so-far unexplored African languages." to Natal in

He came

1854 and spent 2 years recording Zulu languages and

ditions, living

among

tra-

on end. Two years later, British High Commissioner in

the people for weeks

Bleek became chief interpreter to the

Cape Town, a post that allowed him ample time to complete his famous monograph, A Comparative Grammar of South African Languages (1862), in which he classified both Bantu and Khoikhoi (Hottentot) languages. Bleek found himself increasingly fascinated by

San

dialects,

but was unable to

visit

any speakers of San in the

for the nearest groups lived far in the interior.

field,

By chance he

dis-

covered in 1870 that there were twenty-eight San convicts working

on the breakwaters of the Cape Town

men

in the breakwater

jail.

harbor.

He

The atmosphere was

interviewed the

uncongenial, so he

persuaded the authorities to release the better informants into care.

They

lived at his house,

sister-in-law

Lucy Lloyd on

working a

closely with Bleek

and

his his

compilation of vocabularies and

grammars. Almost immediately, Bleek and Lloyd realized that they

were collecting

a valuable

body of mythology and

folklore. Their vast

repository of material has proven to be a priceless source of infor-

mation

for students

common

San mvths.

of rock

art trying to interpret scenes

depicting

San Artists

Most of Bleek and

in

Southern Africa

55

came from

the

Lloyd's San informants

Strandberg and Katkop mountain areas of the east-central portion of the

Cape, where they

still

informants included young

lived

a

men and

partially

//Kabbo, w^ho lived v/ithWilhelm Bleek and 1873.

who

He was

life. The among them

nomadic

older individuals, his family

about 60 years old, and was apparently

a

from 1871 to

medicine

man

//Kabbo looked after the garden; upon finding the ground too hard in October of 1871, he went into a trancelike state, during which he said that he spoke to the rain, asking it to fall. He also claimed to have gone on a "journey" to his homeland and spoken with his wife and son. //Kabbo was at first hesitant to speak with Bleek and Lloyd, but soon became an excellent informant, waiting patiently while Lucy Lloyd laboriously tranwas

also a rainmaker.

scribed his words.

He

contributed over 3,100 pages of material to

Lloyds notes. His descriptions of rainmaking

rituals

have

all

the

immediacy of firsthand accounts.

Between 1866 and 1874,Wilhelm Bleek filled 27 notebooks with San linguistics; while Lucy Lloyd collected no less than 10,300 pages of folklore between 1870 and 1884. She set down the material in /Xam, for which Bleek developed a phonetic script. Then she translated

it

and read the story back to the informants

for verification.

Unfortunately, the mythology and vocabularies were too exotic for

popular

taste

and most of her collection remained unpublished,

buried in her notebooks, which, the University of Cape

Town

after

her death in 1914, resided in

Library.

Both Bleek and Lloyd were

interested in San paintings, but they

had few copies of them for their informants. Lloyd occasionally

showed them

a picture,

but was more interested in having the

informants identify the subject matter than in probing the meaning

of the paintings. The informants always accepted the

of their

own

people.

practice of painting,

Some of them were

also familiar

and had some of the same

terns as the artists of the

art as the

work

with the

basic conceptual pat-

Drakensberg Mountains of Natal

in eastern

South Africa.

M. Orpen, chief magistrate of St. John's Territory, San guide named Qing to accompany him on an official

In 1873,

hired a

J.

expedition to explore the Maluti Mountains of Lesotho,

a

short

56

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

from the Drakensberg Mountains. Qing had never encoun-

distance

tered a white

man

before "except in fighting," but had a passion for

two men got on well. Orpen set down while they were sitting around campfires. He always

horses and hunting, so the

Qing's stories

used interpreters, which must have weakened the impact of the stories.

He

therefore,

also

complained

he strung Qing's

that the stories

were "fragmentary," and,

stories together consecutively.

the magistrate's research methods were primitive by

Although

modern

anthro-

pological standards, there are striking similarities between the Lloyd

and Orpen material. For example, both

stress

mythical trickster /Kaggen. Above

both the Lloyd and Orpen

all,

the importance of the

mythologies placed major importance on the eland. Both said that

/Kaggen created the eland and cherished without

his

but hunters killed

it

thereby angering him.

his permission,

Orpen began

it,

work with Qing by

asking questions about

the rock paintings that the San pointed out to

him

as

they journeyed

toward the Maluti Mountains. Orpen made copies of paintings from four caves, which he sent to the editor of the

Magazine.

The

editor in turn sent

them on

Cape Monthly

to Bleek, but

without

Orpen's accompanying account, which recorded Qing's interpretations.

who

Bleek shared the pictures with an informant, Dialkwain,

gave a ready explanation. When the two interpretations were

compared, Bleek discovered remarkable accounts

—by San

living

similarities

between both

many hundreds of kilometers

apart.

Both

agreed that one scene from Sehonghong Cave depicted a rain-

making ceremony. Men have attached a rope to the nose of a rainmaking animal and are leading it over parched ground to break the drought. Since this was a hazardous task, the medicine

men had

first

charmed the animal with buchu, which are sweet smelling herbs (another scene from a different site in figure 3.2). Although Qing spoke in more complex metaphors, perhaps based on firsthand experience of trancelike visions, Bleek was convinced that his explanations of the paintings

showed how San paintings

"illustrated" their

mythology. Generations of later researchers, however, dismissed these

ethnographic accounts

as

being of dubious value, and instead

focused their efforts on systematic recording (see information in box,

p. 58).

San Artists

Fig 3.2.

J.

M. Orpen's copy

of a painting from

in

Southern Africa

Mcngolong Cove

in

57

the Maluti

Mountains, South Africa, of men leading a rainmoking animal. Photograph from San Heritage Center, University of the Witwatersrand.

SAN PAINTINGS AS THOUGHT PATTERNS Generations of scholars have tried to date southern African rock

art,

but have experienced problems similar to those encountered by the

who

archaeologists culties w^ere

studied the

compounded by

Cro-Magnon

a relative lack

paintings.

These

of portable

diffi-

art objects

could be excavated from dated layers and compared to wall

that

paintings. Painted slabs have

Namibia, which are

said to

come from

the Apollo

be about 26,000 years

1 1

old,

rock shelter in

contemporary

with the Grotte de Chauvet in France. However, the majority of sites date to

more

recently than 10,000 years before present; in fact,

most

surviving paintings were probably painted within the past 500 years.

Some San ities:

European

activ-

red-coated British soldiers, full-rigged ships, and cattle

raids.

paintings date to historic times and depict

AMS dating dates

San

is

only

now

being applied to South African rock

from individual paintings

will

art,

but

soon delineate the chronology^ of

artistic traditions.

South African archaeologist David Lewis- Williams expert

at

is

a

rock

the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

art

He

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

58

SOUTH AFRICAN ROCK ART COPYING As

Europe, scholars

in

in

southern Africa have experimented with

various rock art copying methods.

make

the

In

1

Abbe

890s,

Breuil

was

first

archaeologist to

art,

using butcher's paper. Another early scholar, Walter Battiss,

painted studies

the

came

950s.

1

color reproductions of South African rock

watercolors. The beginnings of a revolution

in

A

found. Willcox

finest

was somewhat

in

prosperous

took great joy

was

life

in their

practices. Patricia

In reality,

Vinnecombe

in

A 970s 1

Africa are to be

also

the paintings

worked

statistical

in

by the

of expert artists

and people.

invaluable source of information about ancient San

paintings

in

about the

lyrical

He wrote

depictions of animals

and compiled a remarkable

in

of a romantic. Captivated

of the ancient San.

"art for art's sake."

photography.

art

the Drakensberg

cave paintings

beauty and variety of the paintings, he waxed

said,

San rock

South African rock art expert, Alex Willcox, pho-

tographed thousands of paintings, especially

who

in

with the development of affordable color photography

Mountains, where some of the

leisurely,

the

the

This,

he

were an

life

and hunting

Drakensberg region

record with drawings and color

scholar, Harold Pager,

photographed the

black and white, measured the drawings, and then

returned to the

site to

color

in

the photographs. Another photographer,

Neil Lee, used color film, shooting the art from an overall perspective,

then moving closer This

and

closer to take detailed close-up photographs.

approach allowed him

to study the painter's technique, the

draughtsmanship, the types of brushes used, and the different paint types.

violently disagreed with the "art for

They

sake" theory and was struck

art's

by the uniformity of the paintings over

a large area

were, he beHeved, the product of shared beliefs and behavior.

But what were these

beliefs

and behaviors?

Bleek and Lloyd's long-forgotten notes

Town

of South Africa.

Library for answers and

at

He combed

through

the University of

became convinced

that

the Drakensberg Mountains, the Cape, and elsewhere shared

common

spiritual concepts.

Both the

art

and the

Cape

San groups in

many

oral traditions

— San Artists

Southern Africa

in

59

preserved in Bleek and Lloyd's collection over a century ago w^ere different expressions

of a single belief system.

In 1974, Lev^^is- Williams

and anthropologist Megan Biesele

gathered together a small group of !Kung San informants from the

camp in Botsw^ana "to talk" and formed a group of six !Kung men and v/omen who took the scholars' w^ork seriously. Lewis-Williams showed copies of some rock paintings to the mKalahari Desert

who

formants,

at a

were able to identify the animals

however, they were most interested

The !Kung recognized

in the

in the paintings;

more complicated

different species

scenes.

of eland, their sex and

and groupings of males and females characteristic of

dif-

ferent times of the year. Lewis- Williams left

Botswana convmced

that

!Kung and other San groups share

common

position,

the

a basically

cognitive

culture;

and that present-day accounts of eland hunting

puberty

rites,

amplify

much

The San

and trance performance can be used, earlier informants' remarks.

eland,

which

are

predominant

art appears, are the largest

lumbering animals foot.

One

that they

that can

be

and

easily

figures in

fattest

run

of

all

some

areas

where

African antelope

down by an agile hunter on many days, which meant

eland could feed a San band for

assumed great importance

in

environments where food

supplies could be irregular. Wilhelm Bleek's informants several

rituals,

cautiously, to

had dictated

myths in which they associated eland with honey,

with

a strong,

eland

when

sweet smell similar to that which

it is

rises

a

substance

from

a

dead

skinned.

Lewis-WiUiams has examined hundreds of eland paintings

in

the Drakensberg and elsewhere (figure 3.3). At Grant's Pass Cave, he

found its

a painting

of an eland with deeply sunken

eyes, staggering in

death throes. Dancers are cavorting around the animal, one deco-

rated with cloven antelope hooves crossed like those of the dying eland. White dots depict sweat drops falling trance.

from

a

dancer "dying" in

Lewis- Williams believes that these dancers are acquiring the

potency released by the death of the eland, antelope heads,

feet,

a

process

and hair on the dancers.

He

scene in dozens of other eland paintings, where

it

shown by

the

found the same appears that the

whole being of the medicine man and the people become merged with the most potent of

all

animals.

From

his extensive studies.

60

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

Fig. 3.3.

Eland scene from Fetcani Glen, Barkly West,

Cape

Province, South

showing intentional superpositioning of eland and figures. Photograph from San Heritage Center, University of the Witwatersrand.

Africa,

Lewis-Williams realized that painting

with the supernatural; and that the

was the medicine man,

who

altered state of consciousness

after painting linked society

medium "responsible" for

this link

entered the spiritual world during an

—

a trance.

San shamans induced

trance,

not by ingesting psychotropic drugs, but by intense concentration,

prolonged rhythmic dancing, and hyperventilation. Bleek's informants spoke of at least four categories of medicine

whom were associated with game, rain, and curing To achieve their ends, the medicine men went into trance, during which they manipulated a supernatural potency, which was

men, three of illness.

possessed by animals like eland and hartebeest, by at

puberty. Medicine

and to

travel

men

also

rainfall,

and by

used the same powers in curing

through supernatural realms outside their

own

girls

rituals

bodies.

Today, San in the Kalahari Desert will dance next to the carcass of a freshly killed eland.

A

medicine

man who

has special control over

eland potency will enter a trance during this dance, and then cure

everyone of

ills

by removing

directed against them.

I

"arrovv^s

of sickness" that may be

have seen medicine

men among the

Kalahari

San Artists

!Kung

activate their

n/um,

2.

sweated, then bled from the nose,

—an

eerie sight to behold.

eland, trembling with

melted

gushing

fat

likened this

like

By combining

trembled, then

the potency took hold of

as

Many

men

white hunters have seen dying

wide-open mouths, sweating blood from their

phenomenon

61

supernatural potency used for curing. As

they activated their potency, the medicine

them

Southern Africa

in

to "death" in a

careful

profusely,

with

Perhaps the San

nostrils.

medicine man's trance.

observations such

as

these with his

anthropological research data and nineteenth-century ethnography,

Lewis-Williams believes he can "read" some of the rock paintmg friezes

not

one rock

as art,

but

as

meaningful scenes.

shelter in central

He

claims that the art in

South Africa depicts San shamans

in the

midst of a trance dance. Their attenuated bodies convey the sense of

some

altered consciousness (figure 3.4). In

paintings, a

Hne of dots

along the spine of the central figure portrays the "boiling sensation,"

when potency

—

supernatural

—

power

rises

up the spine and "ex-

plodes" in the head. Perhaps the power comes from animals such

Fig. 3.4.

Stages of trance performance. At

left,

a medicine

man

as

collapses to the

ground, bleeding from the nose. Another figure, also bleeding, bends toward him. Fetcani Glen, Barkly East,

Cape

Province, South Africa. At right, a

bleeding from the nose and wearing a skin cloak, the trance. Halstone, Barkly East,

San Heritage Center,

man

dance to control Cape Province, South Africa. Drawing from sits

University of the Witwatersrand.

out the

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

62

the eland,

which

in the original painting

situated to the right of the

is

frieze.

Lewis- Williams's research has led him to believe that the San paintings are visual representations of the people's back-and-forth

thought patterns

—thoughts of

conscious

He

states.

young

the

girl

is

cites the

the

mind

example of a

said to have "shot

both the unconscious and

in

girl's

puberty

w^here

an eland." In the Eland Bull

Dance, miming and sounds make the eland appear eyes of the participants.

ritual,

real

As the medicine man dances, he

before the hallucinates

and "sees" the eland standing in the darkness beyond the glow of the fire.

As the dance continues, the dancers become one with the eland

—

they have become the remember their trance experiences, and paint what they hallucinated on the walls of rock shelters. These representations complete the transference process. The creative act of "seeing" has served the fimction of ritual, in which the object and the subject become interchangeable in the subtle web of San spirit,

and the transfiguration

is

complete

eland. Afterward, the shaman-artists

thought and

belief.

These visions of the unconscious

are

then

many

ways:

painted and thus transferred to the world of the conscious.

ALTERED STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS Altered states of consciousness can be brought about in

through the use of hallucinogens, fiom sensory deprivation or intense concentration, or even hunger, pain, or migraine. Although the San

used hyperventilation, rhythmic music, and intense concentration, their hallucinogenic experiences w^ere very similar to those

by

LSD

induced

(lysergic acid diethylamide), peyote, or other hallucinogens.

The nervous system

controls trance states. Neuropsychological

research using volunteers revealed that there are three general stages

of con-

in the sequence of mental

imagery during altered

sciousness. In the

the subject experiences entoptic phe-

nomena the

first stage,

states

(mentally generated images) These luminous visions take .

form of incandescent, shimmering geometric forms,

spirals.

The

curves,

and

patterns move, rotate, and at times enlarge themselves; and

appear independent of any Hght source. The imagery flows rapidly; so rapidly that the subject cannot keep up, although both training and

San Artists

experience make

it

in

Southern Africa

63

and describe

possible for the subject to observe

humans share similar nervous systems, we know that San shamans would have experienced entoptic images similar to those of modern subjects. Some of the geometric the images

more

accurately. Since

all

images that research subjects recorded are identical to those on panels

of rock panel engravings (though

rarely in painted rock shelters), so

can be concluded that the San shamans

who

used an altered

it

of

state

consciousness to see into the spiritual world and for other purposes

turned the basic entoptic forms that they had experienced in the stage

first

of trance into shapes and objects that had an expressed value

(figure 3.5).

During the second tries to

make

of altered consciousness, the subject

sense of the entoptic images

thing recognizable. Just

person in an altered sions

stage

—

them

to turn

into

some-

normal consciousness, the brain of

as in

state receives a

a

constant stream of sense impres-

suppHed by the nervous system. The

subject's brain

images against previously stored experiences in

his or

matches the

her brain, in an

attempt to identify them. Thus, an enigmatic round object seen in altered consciousness thirsty, a

female breast

excitement, or

may become if

he or she

some other

object,

cup of water

a is

in a state

if

the subject

is

of heightened sexual

depending on the

of

subject's "state

being."

A common nested,

"U"

on

entoptic motif found

shapes.

Some San shaman

shelter walls

is

interpreted these

honeycombs, even painting dozens of

a series as

of

curved

bees, complete with wings,

around them. Lewis- Williams beUeves that the hive-curve association

may have

resulted

an altered

state

from

a

humming sound

often heard by people in

of consciousness. The Kalahari !Kung believe that bees

possess great potency, and, therefore, dance

way of harnessing

their

when

bees swarm,

as a

power.

In the third and final stage of altered consciousness, the laboratory subjects experience a vortex that seems to surround them, the walls

of which are marked by

television screens,

of squares. These walls are

like

and carry spontaneous images of people, animals,

and other iconic images from erful

lattices

memory

emotional experiences. In

that are associated

this stage

with pow-

of altered consciousness,

these images appear startUngly real in a strange world of nonreaHty.

64

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

A San curing dance involving trance, from the Nyae Nyae region of Namibia, southern Africa. Photograph from AnthroPhoto.

Fig. 3.5.

San Artists

Some of the San

in

Southern Africa

paintings take us into this realm.

South Africa's Free State

shows

that

torrential thunderstorms.

A

a

rainmaking

saw

a cave in

with

bull, associated

zigzag enters or leaves

dots adorn parts of the body.

I

its

eye,

Rain shamans surround the

65

and white

most

beast,

with zigzags leaving their bodies.

The

zigzag

a

is

common

cinations. Zigzags often

Some

entoptic that

accompany human

associated with hallu-

figures in

San rock

art.

paintings with zigzags appear to represent shamans in stage-

on

three trance, with appendages feathers.

may

This

enters trance

their

arms that appear to depict

also portray a trance state, for,

folklore, the mantis, itself a it

is

and

flies

according to San

shaman, sometimes obtains feathers

when

away.

Dozens of San paintings provide evidence of religious expeThese are not representations of a shaman s solitary vision

rience.

quest in

which power

tions experienced

is

acquired. San rock art

sought, but rather the product of hallucina-

deeper stages of trance, long

at

may seem

after

serene and tranquil, but

it

power

is

was con-

ceived in the turmoil of powerful hallucinogenic experiences

as a

trancer explored the inner recesses of the spiritual world.

The dances and observed them.

on those who showed some Stow anthropologist George

trancing

When

left lasting

impressions

rock painting copies to an elder San couple, the

and dance. Her husband begged her saddened him. But she

Stow watched

to sing

to stop because the old songs

persisted. Eventually, the old

the aged couple

as

woman began

became

lost in

man joined

her.

the dance, exchang-

ing looks of deep happiness, the present forgotten.

IMAGERY AND INGREDIENTS San rock

art

combined the

real

and supernatural worlds. The dancers and dancing

often painted observable reahty such

as

ostrich hunts, or campfire

However, they

imagery in trance,

scenes.

a spiritual reahty that

also

artists

rattles,

acquired

was "seen" only by shamans,

creating an art with an ever-shifting reahty, the exact details of which are inaccessible.

During trance dances, shamans might draw every-

one's attention to things they can see, such as spirit-eland standing in

the semidarkness

beyond the

fire.

The

participants look in the

same

66

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

direction and share the a

normal

shaman

same

vision.

When

everyone has returned to

of consciousness, the visions

state

are

then described. The

then able to manipulate these visions for the audience,

is

using such things

as a

dance, flickering lights, or paintings, to direct

his narrative.

The San

attached great importance to the ingredients in their

paintings. In the early 1930s, anthropologist

conversed with

a

who had learned

Marion Walshaw

to paint

with neighboring

her red painting pigment was called qhang qhang. sparkled,

How

man named Mapote, San in his youth. He told

74-year-old Sotho (Bantu)

and came from nearby

basaltic

It

glistened

and

mountains. Mapote said that

the pigment had powerful supernatural associations and was heated

red hot, then ground between two stones into a fine powder. This

work was done by women,

When ingredient

— "the blood of

woman

young

girl

time

of partial San descent, whose father had been

When "M"

artist.

into the rock, implying that

after a successful hunt, a

trance dances

old

a

much painting when many communal took place. Another informant, known as "M," was an

would coagulate and soak took place

full moon. Mapote asked for another vital freshly killed eland." Only fresh blood

carried out at

asked to paint himself,

was interviewed

would accompany

a

shaman-

in the 1980s, she recalled

how

a

the hunters and point an arrow at their

prey that had been smeared with a "medicine" prepared by the

shamans.

back to

The

a place near the

made. The

making

artists

kill

the animal,

which was "led"

rock shelter where the paintings were to be

would then mix

fresh eland

blood with ocher,

the resulting painting a storehouse of potency.

Two eland,

hunters would then

and

types of blood were used in painting: that of the dying that

of the shamans, who,

bled from the nose

sometimes bleed offered a

when

as

mentioned

they entered trance, just

nasally as well. The preparation

way of expressing

changing ingredients to

previously, often as

dying eland

of paints, therefore,

consistent symbolic messages,

reflect different

by simply

meanings known

shamans. Thus, the San rock paintings were

far

more than

to the

pictures,

and the processing of pigments, which can be determined by chemical

analysis,

was

far

more than

a material technique.

San Artists

Whatever the motives of

level

Since

have painted w^hile in

painters. In

rock painting

exhibiting an expertise at status in society.

a trance

—due

that they painted while in a state

of the

spirit

He

of potency rock

art

a relatively

as

—Lewis-Williams

believes

of normal consciousness, recalHng

world and then recreating, through that

were

their sources

on

poetry, San

powerful emotion recollected in tran-

quillity" (1981, 76). Today, Kalahari

erful spiritual experiences as

paintings parallel the

artists to

and being

to their trembling

state

writes: "Like Wordsworth's observation

should be seen

small

some areas, those individuals may have been given a higher

and the animals

their paintings, those visions

67

certain that a high

w^ould have been impossible for

it

sometimes in an almost unconscious their vivid images

art, it is

needed, and that only

artistic ability v^as

number of shamans were

San

for the

Southern Africa

in

modern

San shamans recount their pow-

everyone

listens intently.

The

ancient

verbal reports, giving a vivid impression

of the variety of things these modern-day shamans see in the

spiritual

world.

COMMON

ARTISTIC

GROUND

Westerners think of paintings

as finite

works of art

to

be admired and

cherished over generations, centuries, and even thousands of years.

The academic

of prehistoric

to "galleries walls,

on ancient

literature

paintings

art," as if

is

laden with references

the original

painted the

artists

then held open houses for visitors to admire their work.

southern African wall

art

lies

in full view, in

shadow and

changing character with shifting sunlight and clouds indeed,

on

display

But the paintings were

far

as if it

more than

sun,

was,

art to the

San; they were objects of significance, in and of themselves

with potent ingredients of ocher and eland blood. In

The

—images

many San

paintings, a figure or an animal enters or leaves a crack, climbs an

uneven rock

surface, or

may

be

actually

artistic

underground journey

emerges from the shelter

being

a

These

figures

representations of a specific San belief that an takes the

the rock shelter was seen itself

wall.

as

shaman

to the spirit world. Perhaps

an entrance into the

spirit

world, the wall

kind of curtain between the living and supernatural

68

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

shaman could coax an animal and other inhabitants world from behind the rock, and perhaps paint their

realms. Thus, the

of the

spirit

images on the rocky

veil itself. Whether this

do not know, nor can we discern for this

complex

role.

But the

alluding to another world

is

a

if the

was dangerous work, we

shaman-artist prepared himself

possibility

of a rock

shelter, a

rock wall,

compelling one to contemplate.

Lewis-Williams believes that the San paintings continued to have supernatural power associated with them long cution. His informant

"M" took him

after their

exe-

to a cave, arranged his hands

on

of an eland, and explained that the potency of the eland

a depiction

would flow into a person in this manner, giving him or her special powers. The San both looked at and touched their paintings. We

know

because some friezes display patches of paint that have

this

been worn

some rock

smooth, most

entirely

shelters, the walls

through hand contact. In

likely

bear imprints of human hands: the San

covered their hands with paint and then placed them on the wall. Clearly these were not

mere paintings of hands, but involved

ritual

touching of the rock.

"M" showed

Lewis-Williams

how

painted rock shelter to which she took

San people danced in the

him

—how they

hands during the dance and turned to the paintings

wished

to intensify their potency. As they

looked

at

raised their

when

they

the paintings, the

potency flowed from the images and entered into them. Thus, the painted images helped to form and constrain the stream of mental

images that flowed through the dancers' minds

as

they hallucinated,

and therefore, along with the dancing, clapping, and singing, the painted figures controlled the spiritual experiences of the shamans

and other members of the group.

Why,

then, the

rock shelters

jumble of paintings

may have

at

many

sites?

In time,

acquired exceptional potency. Here, the

returned again and again, adding

new

some artists

images on top of old ones,

building up paHmpsests of paintings.

San rock

art

tropical savanna

was painted by shaman-artists living

homeland

in a semi-

quite unlike the bitterly cold late Ice

Age

world of the Cro-Magnons. But can one use the San experience

throw more

light

on

to

the engravings and paintings in the deep

chambers of Altamira, Lascaux, or the Grotte de Chauvet? Here one

San Artists

on shaky

treads

scientific

between fourteen and points to

some

investigation of

in

Southern Africa

69

ground, for any comparisons have to bridge

thirty millennia.

However, Lewis- Williams

general similarities that emerge from the scientific

Cro-Magnon

caves.

His research, with

its

emphasis

on shamans and trance, suggests that much Cro-Magnon art was a form of shamanistic expression. He points to the placing of images in the depths of dark caves, the presence of human-animal figures, and the close relationship

between the

which they were painted

The combination of

as

figures

and the surfaces upon

evidence for the presence of shamans.

representational and geometric images also

carried an undertone of altered consciousness. Furthermore, the

Niaux Cave

paint analyses

tell

us that the

Cro-Magnons attached

great importance to the ingredients in their paintings

painted over existing figures with meticulous care,just

and as

that they

the San did.

Cro-Magnon artists may have acquired The ceremonies may have taken place in the

Thus, Hke the San, the their images in trance.

open

air,

inside rock shelters, or in large

depths of deep caves. people,

who

They may have

chambers not attracted large

far

from the

numbers of

witnessed shamans obtaining their visions. The shamans

and many of those present may have experienced

a

range of altered

of consciousness. Perhaps those in the deepest trances used psy-

states

chotropic drugs; others

may

have been caught up in the ecstasy of the

dancing and music. But everyone shared some of the insights of the shamans. Archaeologists can assume, based on scientific analysis, that altered states

major

of consciousness and painting or engraving played

role in the lives

of both

late Ice

a

Age Cro-Magnon people and

San hunter-gatherers of the past few millennia.

chapter four FERTILITY

AND DEATH

For tens of thousands of years, Stone Age huntergatherers Hved

m tiny family bands, moving across large hunting ter-

ritories in estabHshed patterns

were arranged, goods

according to the season. At times of

nomadic bands gathered.

plenty, the

shells

these periods, marriages

ceremonies were performed, and exotic

initiation

marine

like

Durmg

and commodities such

toolmakmg

as fine

stone were exchanged, before everyone dispersed for the lean winter

months. In the course of a lifetime, the average Stone

Age person

encountered few people by today's standards, spending most months

with only very

his or

flexible,

her

own

and always in

they could

settle their

band. Thus,

human

larly,

The

family. a state

life

of flux.

a

hunter-gatherer was

If two individuals quarreled,

dispute by simply

societies

of

moving away

to another

of the Stone Age spHt and fissured regu-

surviving by virtue of this

flexibility,

even though there was

usually constant tension within the small groups.

Farming began

altered

to farm, they

occupying small rhythms and

human

life

beyond recognition. Once humans

changed from nomads into permanent

villages.

realities.

No

longer did the

the seasons of wild plants determine cycles of planting

and

harvest, life

Crow^ded in small

movement of game

lifestyles.

new

herds or

Instead the continuous

and death, governed human

villages, closely tied to

western Asian farmers dwelled in 70

settlers,

Their Hves unfolded according to

Hfe.

their lands, early

a constricted world,

bounded by

and Death

Fertility

The

the family, household, and fellow kin. energies

on

their families

beyond the

herds;

and on the

unknown. Almost immediately,

village fields lay the

between people and

and

their ancestors,

assumed

I

beyond recognition,

many

village

as

the

and between the living

their land,

human

a central role in

tionship persists to this day in

focused their

villagers

of raising crops and tending

task

the dynamics of human society changed relationship

71

farming

This rela-

life.

societies.

have visited small Egyptian villages by the Nile that are remi-

The mud-brick houses

niscent of these ancient farming villages.

maze of lanes and paths. Cleared fields surround the villages with a sea of brown and green. The sun beats down inexorably, and the constant north wind blows fine dust in the air, stirred up by people's feet. The crowded crowd together around

small courtyards, set in a

my

houses appeared to crumble before

eyes, trickling into the soil,

repaired again and again with bricks fashioned from the

Come

warren comes to

sunset, the

life.

same

earth.

Herdsmen and their cattle alleys. The village pulses

return fi-om the fields and crowd the narrow

with renewed

women

life,

the

rhythm of evening. As the sun

prepare the evening meal,

dusk with their throaty light, as

as itinerant

cries. There

is

sets,

vendors

a timelessness

black-clad

fill

the quiet

about the fading

day passes into the night.

FLOTATION: DOCUMENTING THE CHANGEOVER In the 1950s,

humans changed over from farming sometmie before 4000 B.C., this

most experts beUeved

hunting and gathering to

that

date being determined from less than a handful of carbonized seeds

and

a

few radiocarbon dates from the Fayyum Depression west of the

Nile River.

No

one had found an

western Asia. At

this

Robert Braidwood searched of the Zagros Mountains. approach to such experts with

him

sites,

for early

He

farming

fanning

villages in the foothills

pioneered the multidisciplinary

However,

for

all

his expertise at

exca-

Braidwood did not have the technology

acquire large samples of ancient plant remains. finds

village elsewhere in

Chicago archaeologist

taking botanists, a geologist, and animal bone

into the field.

vation and teamwork,

early

time. University of

He

of carbonized seeds in hearths and storage

relied entirely pits

—

to

on

at best rare

72

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

discoveries. Inevitably,

of the

earliest

Thanks

he could obtain only

a

very incomplete picture

farming economies.

new

to

recovery technologies,

we now know

that the

economic changeover took place over a few centuries around 8000 and may have resulted from a combination of cooler, drier

B.C.,

cHmatic conditions, and the need to feed growing hunter-gatherer populations by supplementing wild products with limited food production.

When Yale

University archaeologist Andrew

large occupation

mound

at

Abu Hureyra

Moore

excavated a

in Syria's Euphrates River

Valley in the late 1970s, he discovered a hunter-gatherer settlement

lying under a very early farming village. Using sophisticated flotation

techniques, he acquired

enormous samples of plant remains from the

dry, ashy deposits.

Like so

many important

was developed from

scientific

methods, the technique of

a

simple idea. In the 1960s, archaeol-

ogist Stuart Streuver, confronted

with the problem of recovery of tiny

flotation

seeds

from ancient

villages at Koster, Illinois, tried to screen the

deposits through water.

He

discovered that seeds and other fine plant

remains floated on the surface, while heavier sediment sank to the

bottom. Streuver and other American excavators then began to use jury-rigged flotation machines,

made up of

fine screens

and

oil

drums, to recover thousands of seeds, which allowed botanists to

determine that Indian communities of 5,000 years ago exploited nut harvests and gathered large quantities of native important, the

new

grasses.

fall

More

samples provided evidence that demonstrated

deliberate cultivation of local plants, such as goosefoot,

by 1000

B.C.,

long before maize came to eastern North America. Over the past quarter century, flotation technology has evolved rapidly. Mechanized flotation

machines process samples

lection of

much

faster,

allowing for the col-

enormous seed assemblages, which can then be analyzed

statistically.

In the

Abu Hureyra

excavation, researchers took large

column

They poured each sample into a large flotation tank set at a higher level. An inlet pipe pumped air into the body of the tank at a constant rate, while a small amount of samples of the occupation

levels.

detergent was added to the water to help separate the seeds from the

Fertility

The

soil.

fine elements floated to the surface

and Death

and were carried away

into 2 gossamer-fine screens that caught the finest residues.

mesh

Mean-

bottom of the tank and were

while, the heavier elements sank to the

flushed out onto a fine

73

screen, thus enabling the operators to

recover small beads, tiny stone tools, and other minute objects from

Andrew Moore and his colfrom Abu Hureyra, some of them

the fine sludge. As a result of flotation, leagues recovered 712 seed samples

more than 500 seeds from over 150 different species. Gordon Hillman had so many seeds to work with, that he

containing Botanist

was able to study the ancient landscape almost

been there

he had

of the economic

in person. Thus, a chronological history

was pieced together.

transition

Abu Hureyra overlooked extensive grassland steppe. In rainfall

as easily as if

the

9000

Euphrates

B.C., a

and

floodplain

time of more abundant

than today, open forests rich in nut-bearing trees lay within

easy walking distance. Today they are at least 120 kilometers west of

the

site.

Hillman

flotation samples

's

showed how the

first

Within

wheat and

well as wild

scale; as

a

few

rye,

which grew

inhabitants

on

exploited hackberry, pistachio, plum, and medlar trees

a large

close to the

site.

centuries, people stopped gathering nuts firom the forest

because

fringe, possibly

was no longer within easy reach.

it

Much

drier conditions descended over the Euphrates Valley. In response, the

Abu Hureyra grasses,

people increased their exploitation of wild cereal

which would have flourished on the floodplain

much drier Abu Hureyra

as

the forest

Soon even

retreated in the face of

conditions.

resources diminished, as

lay in the grip

these

of a prolonged

drought. The people abandoned their settlement by 8000 B.C. Three centuries knit

later, a

new

community of

samples from

this

village arose

rectangular,

—

mud-brick houses. The

a closely

flotation

occupational layer yielded large quantities of

domesticated wheat and barley, and Flotation

on the same mound

documents

a

far

fewer wild plant forms.

dramatic change in

human

subsistence

caused in large part by drought, rising local populations, and the need

One

to feed the

growing masses.

grasses, to

extend the range of existing cereal stands. Within

centuries, foragers to the land,

and

had become

a radically

logical solution

village farmers,

changed

social

was to

with

cultivate

much

a

wild

few

closer ties

environment. Interestingly,

74

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

Theya Molleson has shown how women's

biological anthropologist skeletons from these

new farming villages show

mation resulting from long hours spent on

clear signs

of malfor-

their knees grinding

grain.

Excavations like

Abu Hureyra

offer

hope

one day we

that

will

be able to document the dramatic changeover from foraging to agri-

we

culture in such detail that

and even

ritual,

will also

be able to chronicle the

social,

changes that resulted from sedentary settlement and

the resultant closer bonds to farming land.

ANCESTOR CULTS Within

a

few

environment of

centuries, farmers transformed the

western Asia through the clearing of

fields,

the planting and har-

vesting of crops, and the grazing of herds. Deforested hillsides and

patchwork of small

floodplains turned into a

permanent

villages close to rivers large

surrounded

fields that

and

small.

The nomadic

hunter-gatherer of centuries earlier became the sedentary farmer, living side

by

with other households, usually in

side

mud-brick houses separated by narrow

small, flat-roofed

alleyways.

Although farmers inherited the botanical and zoological

knowledge of their hunter-gatherer predecessors, they focused efforts

The

on

a

few

acres, passed

down from one

stream of time flowed onward, season

rhythm of winter, and died, just

as

one generation

spring,

human

summer, and

life

fall,

generation to the next.

after season, in

an endless

where the land

itself Hved

flowed and ebbed in

to the next.

Homer

their

a

constant passage of

himself wrote of this renewal in

the //iW (Fagles 1990,200):

Like generations of leaves, the lives of mortal

now

the living timber bursts with the

men,

new buds

and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes

Within the span of

—

dead

a

the revered ancestors,

earlier years.

The

to

life,

few short

who

another dies

away

years, the living

.

.

.

became the

had once farmed the same lands in

cycle of time unfolded

from one generation

to the

and Death

Fertility

75

would

next, with each generation assuming that their descendants

inherit the same earth, the same world, following the pattern that

they and their ancestors had enjoyed. Such a cyclical view of life, of

time

itself,

fostered a close relationship

between the

and

living

their

ancestors.

The

now

farmers' sacred places reflected this intimacy with the dead,

the guardians of the land. Like

modern-day

subsistence farmers,

they clothed their surroundings with symbolic meaning. Thus, their sacred places

which was

a

moved

into the household, and ancetor worship

family ritual for these people

—was

conducted

usually

within the privacy of one's home.

From

Ancestors, land, and farming go hand-in-hand. earliest days pits,

of agriculture,

we

the very

find ancient ancestors in small cache

buried under Jericho house floors, also

Abu

at

Hureyra.

Apparently, ancestor worship was a family ritual, conducted within the privacy of one's

home.

ANCESTORS AT JERICHO The

me

9,000-year-old plastered skull with the aquiline nose stared

through sHghtly hooded

with

eyes,

a gaze that

inner recesses of my consciousness. This ancient the Jordan Valley (figure 4.1). Resting

and serene, an inhabitant of a very

on

penetrated the

came from Jericho

museum

a

at

in

table, timeless

world from that of the

different

Cro-Magnons, he had emerged from an archaeological excavation over forty years ago.

Jericho

is

one of the great archaeological

home of famous Bronze and

Iron

Age

cities,

sites

of western Asia,

and one of the

earliest

farming communities in the world. In the 1950s, British archaeologist

Kathleen Kenyon approached Jericho's deep ciplined, stratigraphic approach that started

city

mound

with

by cleaning up

and eroded trenches dug by earUer excavators. She then sank vertical cutting

down

to the base

a dis-

still-open a

deep

of the great mound, and began

excavating each occupation level separately and tracing the transitions in architectural

and pottery

and plant remains,

as

well

Her combination of

as

styles.

Kenyon

collected animal bones

charcoal samples for radiocarbon analysis.

disciplined excavation, precise stratigraphic

76

FROM BLACK LAND TO FIFTH SUN

^ r-

many

books about

archaeology, inch uding The Adirntun- i^'AnihH^^

JACKET OEv |A( I

KFT

ISAO INAI

(

»

I'll*

AUTHOR fHOTi

"In

a fascinating. mosaic

other-worldly

spirits,

of ancient symbols, mysterious monuments, and

Brian Fagan

us through the hidden

skillfully. guides

labyrinth of ancient religion. From Black Lund

to Fifth

Sun spans millennia

and continents to provide us with an absorbing and enlightening vision of the shared

spiritual heritage

of all peoples,

space-age techniques of modern archaeology.

A

as

revealed through

must-read for anyone

seeking answers to the religious enigmas of the ancient world."

—Neil Asher Silberman

;

Author of The Hidden

"To read

this

book

From Black Land

is

Scrolls

to unlock a vast stretch of the

to Fifth

Sun

is

human

experience.

anything but the same old archaeology^ of

behavior and economy. Brian Fagan adeptly weaves humanity into science, using the archaeological remains to explain everything sages

of symbols,

ritual,

from Avebury to Xunantunich. Here,

his

and religion in the pas-

of Lascaux, the palaces of Knossos, the pyramids of Teotihuacan,

a treasure trove

is

of knowledge. Readers owe to themselves and to their

sense of humanity this book, a pilgrimage to our past."

—Timothy R. Pauketat Associate Professor of Anthropology,

SUNY

Buffalo

52600

HELIX

BOOKS

/tADDISON WESLEY ?A;co;-;-i/ar

9

780201"959918

ISBN 0-201-95991-7 t&aii

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