Archive for the ‘Prehistory’ Category

« Older Entries

Ötzi the Iceman

Monday, September 19th, 2011

Erika and Helmut Simon usually liked to complete their mountain excursions in a single day; they were experienced climbers and knew what they could comfortably manage. On Wednesday 18th September 1991, therefore, they knew that by getting held up whilst crossing a glacier, and then still pressing on to climb the peak that was their aim for the day, they would have to spend the night on the hill. That was no problem as there was a refuge nearby. The next morning dawned bright and, like any other climbers, Erikaand Helmut found the conditions irresistible and decided to bag another peak. It was on their return to pick up their rucksacks from the hut that it happened. Erika saw it first: a brown smudge in the snow, which, as they came closer, took the form of a man. For mountaineers, death is always a possibility, so the find, gruesome as it was, did not unduly surprise them and they tried to prise the remains out of the ice with their axes. What they had no way of knowing is that the body, christened Ötzi for the region in which he was found, had been dead for 5,300 years. He was the oldest frozen mummy ever known.

Dressed for travelling, Ötzi wore leather trousers, a deerskin coat, and a cape fashioned from woven grass. His shoes were finely made with bearskin soles and stuffed with grass as a precaution against the cold. His cap was pieced together from odd bits of fur but it would have been warm. He also carried a backback, an unfinished bow and arrows, some tools including a fire-lighting kit, and a copper axe. He was, perhaps, as much as 45 years old when he died, a grand age for a man at this time. What he was doing so high in the mountains remains a mystery but the circumstances surrounding his death are slowly being pieced together by an international team of experts; bringing to life the sorry tale of a time almost five millennia ago.

Ötzi came from the southern side of the Alps and was born and raised in the folded valleys of the foothills. He probably left a settlement in the Val Venosta, in Italy, on that fateful morning of his flight into the mountains. We can be reasonably certain about this as the microscopic bits of stone in his gut, originating from the stone tools used to prepare his food, leave a geological signature that can be precisely located. He was dressed for the hills and carried much of what he would have needed to make an extended stay comfortable, that is, provided he did not venture too high. Ötzi also carried something valuable and new: copper. A copper axe may have marked him out as a wealthy man and, perhaps, even a leader that others followed. If so, then his reign as leader was shortly to come to a dramatic end.

Ötzi was not in the best of health; his backpack contained medicine and modern analysis of his body shows signs of frailty. Maybe others saw this as a chance to seize power. Discontent was clearly festering as Ötzi had suffered a cut to his hand just a day or so before he died. The few nicks on the edge of his axe-blade may have been as a result of this altercation although we shall never know whether he was using it as a weapon or as a symbol for his diminishing status. It seems likely that similar threats forced him to make that fateful journey into the mountains. Pollen layers in his gut show that he travelled through the low altitude hornbeam trees, moved up to a stand of high altitude pines, before doubling back and visiting the hornbeams again. Perhaps he was trying to elude his pursuers. It did not work. Eventually, and probably through sheer desperation, he followed a pass up into the mountains where an arrow, expertly aimed so that it cut an artery, caused him to bleed to death. Before he died, his assailant removed the arrow, perhaps to mask the tell-tale mark of his or her identity. To make sure Ötzi was truly dead, his assailant also struck him on the head. An ignominious end for an old man. Whoever killed him, and there may have been more than one involved, left Ötzi’s belongings, including his axe, where they lay. Again, this may have been a precaution to avoid later detection but perhaps the items were just too special and too closely bound to Ötzi that their removal could not be countenanced. Enough harm had been done that day. With the last of his strength, Ötzi seems to have reached out for his axe – even today, his arm remains stretched across his body – but it was not to be. Whether he realised the sacred object was still close by or not, it could do little for him and he died alone, frozen in time.

In a bizarre twist, Simon Helmut, the man who jointly found Ötzi on 19th September twenty years ago, shared the same fate as his sensational discovery. In October 2004, his dead body was recovered from the ice where it had been trapped, just like Ötzi’s had, so many years before.

Comments (0)

The Evolution of Sex

Friday, April 1st, 2011

The human line began with apes. Anyone watching documentaries about bonobo chimps knows that they shag almost constantly and our distant lineage was probably no different. In fact, the bonobo chimp humps through virtually anything. Some birds might do everything on the wing, bonobo chimps do everything whilst performing the horizontal hustle with their partner. And not always their partner but their friend’s partner, their friend’s same-sex partner, their sister, their mother, their grandma, for goodness sake. If our distant ancestors were indeed like this then the complete human line started as an inbred group of monkeys. Actually, that explains a lot.

The first recognisable human, well, recognisable through its habit of walking on two legs not carrying an ipod and wearing aftershave, was Australopithecine. You can tell straight off the bat that this poor creature had very poor PR to come up with a, quite frankly, bizarre name like Australopithecine, but there you are. Lucy was the first of the species to be found and, without being too harsh, she resembled a monkey. Sex was likely a bit passé; she hadn’t even got breasts. Mind you, walking on two legs did have advantages. It had the effect, as the palaeontologists tell us, of thrusting out the hips and this meant that sex could take place face-to-face and lose none of its, er, thrust. That’s if you would want to look at Lucy’s face if you were shagging her. I suppose if you were another Australopithecine you might want to. Some clearly did as Australopithecines rapidly – million years or so – gave way to a new species, Homo.

The first species of real human, as opposed to those who climbed trees and drank PG Tips and went into politics, was Homo habilis, meaning handy man. Immediately, you can tell their PR is better. If you’re an early human looking to get laid, there is no better advertisement to the opposite sex than saying you’re a handy man. You’ve seen the videos, yes? Plumbers, electricians, even window cleaners. They turn up at some sorority house and before they can even whip out their tools they’ve whipped out their tool and are hammering away like there’s no tomorrow. Homo habilis was like this. Sex on legs. For a rocking Friday night in the Palaeolithic, there was only one call to make.

Next came Homo rudolfensis. But with a ridiculous name like that he got absolutely no sex whatsoever and that is why the entire line of rudolfensis is represented by a single skull. I imagine when we find the rest of him old Rudolf will have a hugely enlarged wrist and several subscriptions to some dodgy magazines.

The most successful human after Homo habilis had steep competition to outdo the handy man image. He doubtless agonised over what to call himself that would get the chicks to leave the window cleaner alone and come flocking. Not known for his subtle approach, this new type of human settled on Homo erectus. Girls, I bet you’re wet already. Homo erectus was so incredibly popular that he ranged widely and, according to evidence of fossilised Kleenex tissues and cigarette ends, shagged his way around the world. In particular, he is well known from the islands of south-east Asia and, let’s face it, most people today if they were named for their constant erection, would probably end up there. He also learnt a new trick: cooking his own food. So you have brains in the kitchen and brawn in the sack. It’s a wonder Homo erectus ever needed to evolve into anything else.

But he did and along came Homo heidelbergensis. He was German and had corresponding sex appeal, which is to say, absolutely none whatsoever. It should be noted that, even then, female Homo heidelbergensis did not shave her armpits. Enough said.

Next on the scene and, frankly, with Homo erectus away in the South Seas it wasn’t a particularly happening scene sex wise, were the Neanderthals. These were the real deal. Archaeologists are in complete agreement that Neanderthals had big brains, pecs of steel, and threw the best parties since the monkeys’ orgies. Neanderthal was legendary. Females used to dress in fur and required no more foreplay than a crack over the head and dragging back to your place. To them, the G-spot was the position on the headboard that their head whiplashed onto when the fireworks started. Absolutely outstanding. Admittedly the brow ridges were a drawback, and they couldn’t read a train timetable to save their lives, but in the bedroom department Neanderthal man could go all night and still have energy to wrestle a woolly mammoth for breakfast. In an age when Brian Cox is the new pin up, we can perhaps appreciate that these were real men with a real appetite for sinking the pink torpedo. In fact, the Joy of Sex textbook was written by Neanderthals. Just look at the pictures.

It’s incredible that the human line didn’t stop with the Neanderthals but it didn’t. Next were Homo sapiens, meaning thinking humans and that says it all really. Brian Cox was on his way. Whilst the Neanderthals still rumbled the jungle, Homo sapiens fussed over the cave decorations – do you want the picture of the rhino on this wall or on the wall with another thousand pictures of bloody rhinos. Sex was low on the agenda. This may be why several of the women sought out Neanderthal men and got a real old-fashioned seeing to. Apparently, we are all 4% Neanderthal as a result, although some people have a lot more than that. Like footballers. In a desperate attempt to work up some sex appeal, Homo sapiens tried to emulate Homo erectus and go around the world. Good call buddy, but you blew it with the arctic. Nobody thinks an eskimo is sexy.

There is evidence that some women took matters into their own hands – literally – and a number of dildos are known from cave sites in eastern Europe. Nothing has changed much in that part of the world since, but it is notable that the dildos are all at least eight inches long and very thick. This is the best evidence we have that early male genitalia was a little lacking in the size department and that their women were still lusting over those horse-hung Neanderthals. Shame they went extinct really.

Sex never really recovered from the loss of the playboy Neanderthals but at least the time that earlier humans used to spend hiding the sausage was now put to more productive pursuits. Farming, civilisation, cities, and writing blogs; what an incredible curve of human excellence. But from a high point with the Neanderthals, sex withered and died until it reached a real low point when the Romans came. From contemporary records, this was always too quick and never with real vigour. It’s no wonder they had time to forge an empire.

Comments (6)

The Winter Solstice in Prehistory

Monday, December 20th, 2010

Humans probably always noticed the movement of the sun across the sky, and celebrated the extremes of its rising and setting on the days of the solstices, but it is only when people began to build monuments during the Neolithic, about 3,000 BC, that we have clear evidence of the importance of these times. 

Stonehenge is perhaps the best known of all the Neolithic monuments and is generally associated with the summer solstice, but this may have more to do with modern use of the site rather than ancient practice. New research at adjacent Durrington Walls reveals a Neolithic village, although the makeshift nature of the houses suggests that people did not live there all year round but only visited at special times. These were clearly rowdy occasions, as the copious remains of butchered pigs attest, and sumptuous feats were definitely on the menu. But the remains tell us something else. Most of the pigs were around eight or nine months old. Assuming that they had been born in the early spring months, people were eating them around the winter and not the summer solstice. Since these same people almost certainly held ceremonies at the neighbouring stone circle at Stonehenge, it suggests that it was first and foremost, a winter monument. 

Walking towards the stones from the avenue that winds up from the river, the setting sun of the midwinter solstice bisects the circle as it sinks across the plain and into the underworld of night. Perhaps this was the most auspicious and dangerous times for these communities and a great monument and attendant celebration was necessary to ensure that the sun returned the next morning and, with it, the lengthening days that promised new life and the continuation of their world. 

It may also be significant that a timber circle contained within Durrington Walls was aligned to the rising sun at midwinter (as were the ‘walls’ themselves). If people returned to the village after watching the sun set at Stonehenge, they did not have far to go to see it rise. Maybe this was the dichotomy they sought: death at Stonehenge and life at Durrington Walls. 

The dichotomy of life and death may also be evident within burial tombs, most famously at Newgrange in Ireland. Here, a shaft of sunlight from the midwinter sunrise pierces the passage to the burial chamber and lights the interior. Was this a way of symbolically bringing the dead back to life or a means of making their transition to the afterlife smoother. At another tomb, the Clava cairns in Scotland, it is the setting sun at midwinter that enters the tomb and lights the interior. Clearly, the meaning of the attendant symbolism was more complex than a single site can reveal. 

The Dorest Cursus, a ceremonial route running 10 kilometres across the land, was orientated so that anyone observing the setting sun on the midwinter solstice from within the western terminal of the earthworks would observe the glowing disc descend behind (or, in their eyes, perhaps within) a round barrow located on an adjacent ridge. It must have made a powerful spectacle. 

Similarly, at Long Meg and her Daughters, a stone circle in Cumbria, the outlying stone called Long Meg delineates the position of the setting of the midwinter sun for anyone situated within the circle. Like the Dorset Cursus, people had to be included and allowed into a sanctified space for the event for it to be truly appreciated. 

The inclusion of a special few, whilst excluding others (and this would have been especially pressing within the tombs, assuming the living witnessed the event at all) may hint at the politics of power that surrounded the solstice. An attitude that is prescient of all that has happened since, when the returning sun, has to many, become the returning son.

Comments (11)

Journeys to the Underworld in Iron Age Scotland

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

The recent discovery of High Pasture Cave on the Isle of Skye again highlights the Iron Age tradition of interacting with subterranean spaces. Here, people had carved steps leading down into a limestone cave, where they deposited butchered pig remains and, just before sealing the entrance at around 100 BC, deposited a woman and her two children, one newborn and one a foetus.

The excavator called the steps an entrance to the ‘underworld’ and it may be that by descending their course people did feel as if they had entered an alternative reality. High Pasture Cave is not alone, however.

As is well-known, at Howe on Orkney, a broch was positioned directly over a Neolithic chambered tomb. This was no accident since the entrance to the broch aligns exactly with the entrance to the tomb and people even dug an access to the burial chamber and cleared out its contents. As if to acknowledge that this remained a place of death, however, the Iron Age occupants left a cup-marked stone in the passage they dug (a design long associated with mortuary use) and they may have even buried their own dead there. This mirrors High Pasture Cave where the symbolism of death was also introduced into the space. At Quanterness, another broch in Orkney built over a chambered tomb, the original entrance passage into the chamber was retained and even the ancient human remains were left in place.

 However, there is a subtle difference between the two classes of human remains. The dead that Iron Age people introduced into these places were likely known to them – the woman from High Pasture Cave was certainly local – whereas the existing bones in the chambered tombs would have been unidentifiable and recognisably older.

Some tombs that were not covered by later houses, such as the Calf of Eday, also in Orkney, seem to have been the focus for feasting during the Iron Age, as copious pottery and animal bones were discarded around them. Moreover, at Unival on North Uist, the chamber of a tomb was incorporated into an Iron Age roundhouse and used as a cooking pit. This also matches High Pasture Cave, with its collection of butchered pig remains.

Cooking and other food preparation may have been seen as a process of transformation, where something raw and inedible, becomes something cooked and life-sustaining. However, there may have been even more at stake. Receiving food that had been cooked in a place associated with the dead may have been equated with taking life out of death and is striking that the brochs themselves emerge from an unproductive, almost dead zone, between the cultivated land and the sea. The two themes seem to mirror one another.

Even where brochs did not cover burial chambers, people sometimes dug steps leading to small cisterns, often naturally filling with water. Whilst these may have been wells, it would surely have been far more convenient to dig a conventional shaft and use a bucket rather than risk dark, slippery steps. Moreover, a similar well was dug into an actual burial mound at Mine Howe on Orkney; the small cistern at its base again filling with water. But perhaps people did collect their water from these places, once again drawing sustenance from an otherworldly location.

In each case, it seems that different themes are interposed and, to an extent, contrasted. The subterranean caves, cisterns, and tombs were places where things could move and transform from one state into another. Animal carcasses became food, raw became cooked, and the newly dead of the Iron Age communities became one with the ancestors of aeons past. Visiting these places, interacting with the themes that were represented there, and then emerging back into this world must have been a powerful experience, laced with symbolism and meaning. Like Aeneas’ experience recorded in Classical mythology, here were journeys to the underworld, except that these particular visits occurred in Iron Age Scotland.

For those interested, more information on High Pasture Cave can be found at High Pasture Cave

Comments (3)

Taming the Wolf – Domesticating the Dog

Thursday, September 30th, 2010

The first evidence for domesticated dogs has just got earlier with the recent dating of a dog’s skull and teeth from Kesslerloch Cave in Switzerland. That puts the transition from wolf to dog to over 14,000 years ago. Previously, the earliest date was from a single jawbone that was found in a human grave at Oberkassel, in Germany, dating to about 13,000 years-ago. (There are earlier dates claimed for the first definite identification of dogs but these are usually discounted by experts).

The finds from Switzerland were uncovered in 1873 but it was only last year that archaeologists at Tuebingen University in Germany recognised that the remains came from a dog rather than a wolf. The dating carried out on a tooth has revealed the animal died between 14,000 and 14,600 BP (before present).

These early dates are curious, as hunting strategies at that time would not necessarily require the assistance of dogs. Studies from northern France show that hunting was ambush based with animals speared as they passed through natural bottlenecks in the landscape, such as the Ahrensburg Valley. Here, the use of a spear-thrower increased the effectiveness of the weapon and the migrating reindeer died in great numbers. Interestingly, some people engraved their spear-throwers with scenes of the hunt but none shows the appearance of dogs. Indeed, in such a massacre, it is difficult to see how dogs would fit in at all and, yet, the remains from Switzerland suggest that they existed by this time.

Stalking, the hunting method where a dog might have proved invaluable, came later. The warming climate at the end of the Ice Age caused large game animals to either die-out or move north and it was red deer and wild boar that took advantage of the advancing tree cover to expand their range. The people of the time changed their hunting strategy accordingly and the bow and arrow now became the weapon of choice. Dogs would have proved invaluable for stalking, flushing, and tracking dying animals. This is the time that we might expect people to have actively sought to domesticate the dog but, from the evidence at Switzerland, it had already happened, presumably without any human intervention. The change from wolf to dog requires a different explanation.

It is likely that wolves had always been aware of humans in the landscape. Scavenging human kill sites would have been a sure way of obtaining food and it is likely that this became the main survival strategy for a few packs. Over time, they may have ventured closer to human camps and even started to forage leftovers or eat any excrement that lay nearby. The people at the camp may have welcomed this cleaning service and tolerated the presence of the wolves. They may have even kept other, more dangerous predators at a safe distance.

Over time, it is likely that animals that chose to live with humans bred with other animals that adopted a similar lifestyle, replicating the traits that made the animal tolerant of humans. Slowly, the camp-wolves became the camp-dogs. In effect, the dog domesticated itself.

It is likely that the dogs did not remain in packs for long but divided themselves between the family groups of the hunters. Evidence from modern hunter-gather villages where semi-tame dogs roam, shows that these animals do not necessarily form packs but tend to organise themselves into groups of no more than three, which then adopt a particular dwelling (and its occupants) as their own. In the past, perhaps this was the reason that people began to interact with dogs on an individual basis and the first relationships, with which we are now so familiar, began.

A burial from Israel dating to around 11,000 BP contained an elderly woman with her hand resting on the flank of a puppy. This may be the first sign of the affection we still hold for dogs but it was not until much later, during the Mesolithic, that the esteem in which people held them becomes apparent.

In the earliest cemetery at Skateholm in southern Sweden, dating to around 5,000 BC, dogs were sometimes buried in the same graves as people. These were likely animals that were sacrificed to accompany their masters into the afterlife. Clearly, the dog was considered indispensable by some.

Other dogs were afforded their own grave and people gave them items such as tools and weapons that would usually be the preserve of a hunter. But then, perhaps this is exactly what these dogs were considered to be: hunters and, accordingly, they were buried as such. At this time, grave wealth usually accumulated to the young and fit, likely reflecting their ability to provide food for the others. The dogs were no different: they provided food from the hunt and they were honoured in the same way. Moreover, this was a time before any other animal had been domesticated and the cognitive boundary between humans and animals was still fluid enough to be breached: sometimes human into animal and, on this occasion, animal into human. It was a very different way of seeing the world and is almost diametrically opposed to everything we think about animals.

It was not to last. Perhaps familiarity bred contempt, but in a later cemetery at Skateholm (and possibly dating to only a few hundred years after the first cemetery), dogs were afforded a separate area for their burials, before being excluded altogether. Dogs had moved from being equal to humans in the hunt to being subservient to their masters. Perhaps, as their usefulness increased, their worth actually diminished. We still retain something of this contradiction in our own relationship with dogs. They can be our closest companions but are also the source of our cruellest insults. A bitch can be both our best friend or our worst enemy.

There is even evidence that the minds of dogs have evolved since they have been interacting with humans. Observing and identifying the attention state of others was thought to be the sole preserve of humans and yet it appears to be something dogs can also accomplish. Anyone who has had their dog watch their every move when they walk towards the dog lead will know how this appears.

Our relationship with dogs has come a long way since the first wolves started to follow the camps of our Palaeolithic forebears. We may never know for sure what made these wild animals befriend us and change to become an altogether different species but I am sure that I am not alone in being extremely grateful that they did.

Comments (1)

Images of the Sacred

Friday, August 13th, 2010

This is the fifth of five edited extracts posted on the Gate this week from my new book, Prehistoric Belief: Shamans, Trance and the Afterlife. After the Bronze Age yesterday, we now move into the Iron Age, the time of the Celts when witches and Druids began to control access to the spirit world.

During the late Iron Age at Larzac, in France, Severa, daughter of Tertiu, took a lead sheet and scratched onto its surface a most extraordinary tale. A coven of witches had been cursed by another and sought the help of a wise woman to negate the spell and diffuse the tension. The lead was then moulded around the top of a burial urn containing a woman. Could the burnt remains have been the person who had made the curse, her death being the price for peace? It is a rare glimpse of the shadowy world of Celtic sorcery and magic and the role that women played within it.

Although Severa did not record it upon the lead sheet, the women of the coven might have sought their power from a more elevated female group. Many representations of goddesses, for example, show them grouped into three and this might have mirrored the arrangement of women in the covens. The Larzac tablet mentions eight, possibly nine names, which would give three groups of three, a particularly significant number throughout the Celtic world. Although we do not know the names of the individual triple goddesses, they were probably Mother or Earth deities (‘Matronae’ in Celtic), although some may have related to springs and wet places (‘Saluviae’ in Celtic). One of the most sacred springs was the source of the Seine, in France, where people left modelled body parts, perhaps as part of a healing ceremony. It is striking that in many shamanic communities, healing is achieved through removing an intrusive spirit, thought to enter the body unbidden, which is drawn out and negated by being thrown into water (water is often seen as a portal to the otherworld). The carved body parts in the Seine spring may have accumulated as people tried to cast off invading spirits, using a model as a surrogate for their own afflicted body.

As Caesar was conquering the Celts of Gaul (modern-day France), he recorded the names of many Celtic gods but, unfortunately, used only their equivalent Roman names to describe them. More helpfully, he also noted that the Celts consider that they are all descended from a single ancestor god, whom Caesar called ‘Dis’. Other Roman commentators were a little more forthcoming about the Celtic pantheon and Lucan records the names of three: ‘Teutates’, the god of the tribe, ‘Taranis’, the god of thunder and the sky, and ‘Esus’, the good or sun god. A later commentator on Lucan’s work adds a little more detail by revealing that each required sacrifices to be offered in different ways: Teutates by drowning, Taranis by burning, and Esus by hanging. Each seems to equate with one of the traditional elements – water, fire, air – with the Mother goddesses providing the fourth: earth (and possibly their own form of sacrifice as many bodies were placed into disused storage pits).

In charge of the sacrifices were the Druids, who, with the diviners or (O)vates, and the Bards, formed the priesthood of the Celtic world. It is likely that they formalised the roles that had previously fallen to the community shamans, although, as the witch covens demonstrate, it is likely that other people held roles that also required regular interaction with the supernatural.

According to Caesar, the centre for Druid learning was Britain, perhaps focussed on Anglesey in Wales. Training to become a Druid was arduous and could last several decades. Emphasis was placed on memory rather than writing since this was considered the best way to develop the brain; entire tracts of history and lore had to be learnt by rote. Work was undertaken in groves, woodland clearings, and the association between Druids and trees may reflect the origin of their name, thought to mean ‘knowledge of the oak’.

Whilst there are references to female Druids, most sources tell of women’s role in divination. Perhaps the most renowned was Veledā, the seer with so much power that, over time, she became akin to a Goddess. To divine the future, Veledā may have watched the flow of water across the surface of specially made ‘spoons’. These have been discovered across the Celtic world and comprise a flat surface, often etched into four quarters, with a hole for the water to drain. It is likely that the flow of water across the quarters would have meant something to the observer.

Many Celtic women were buried with mirrors in their graves and whilst this might seem a suitable accoutrement for the fairer sex (one Roman historian records how he had to berate his mistress for painting herself like a Celtic hussy), it is likely that they had a deeper meaning. Mirrors are used in shamanic practice to induce trance and, rather like the modern crystal balls, if they are used to focus concentration, shapes begin to appear on their surface. This may be why many mirrors had phosphenes (the shapes of trance) engraved on their surface, emphasising their role in accessing the wisdom of the otherworld.

Other methods of divination were not so benign and there are records of women cutting open the body of a sacrificial victim and discerning the future within the entrails. Siculus, another Roman historian, records only that the seers performed the sacrifice (without stating whether they were woman) but helpfully notes that the convulsions of the limbs and spurting of blood were considered significant. At other times, women merely slit the throats of captives and drained the blood into cauldrons. It is revealing that cauldrons were often deposited into lakes and bogs and perhaps there was a circularity about draining the liquid of a person before placing the entire assemblage into water.

Whether witches or Druids, it is clear that Iron Age women were no wilting wallflowers and that they were intimately involved in the spiritual life of the tribe.

Comments (3)

Portals to Another World

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

This is the fourth of five edited extracts to be posted this week from my new book, Prehistoric Belief: Shamans, Trance and the Afterlife. After the Neolithic yesterday, we now move into the Bronze Age, when people found novel ways to journey to the otherworld.

Having shrugged off most of our clothes, we crawl through the low doorway into a small cramped chamber. It is too dark to make out the form of the walls but it is clear that any gaps have been plugged with animal hides. Some have obviously not been cleaned very thoroughly and, in the confined space the smell makes us gag. As we crawl across the bare earth, we are careful not to bump into the water trough that takes up the middle of the space. We huddle near the back and wait whilst the others crawl in; there is an old woman, two men, and a girl. They arrange themselves around the trough and the old woman starts to chant. Almost immediately, a wooden paddle is thrust through the doorway, with several glowing rocks on its end. We noticed a small fire being lit as we entered the tent and now we know what it is being used for. The rocks are dropped into the tough and then more and more follow until the water starts to boil. The flap of skin covering the entranceway is then swung shut. It is now as black as night. Waves of hot steam begin to billow against our faces and we draw the thick, hot air into our lungs. More hot stones are added to the trough whenever the boiling subsides until the atmosphere becomes almost unbearable. Still, the old woman continues her slow, lilting wail. We are now fighting for every breath and can feel the stifling air pressing down on our bodies. You lie flat, hoping to take comfort from the cool of the earth. Our heads pound, and still the wailing sound continues. More hot stones are added to the water and we feel as if we might pass out from the heat. Then, quite suddenly, I feel a calmness. Shapes form in the darkness, and then a tunnel. I know it is the entrance to the otherworld and I wonder if you see it too.

Anyone familiar with the Native American sweat lodge might think that is what we have just experienced, since an almost identical practice forms an important part of many Native spiritual traditions, such as the Lakota inipi. However, the sweat lodge we visited did not exist in America but in Europe during the late Bronze Age.

Piles of burnt stones, often associated with a small trough and makeshift structure, were widespread across much of Europe at this time, often occurring next to flowing water. Hot stones were probably added to water in the trough and experiments have shown that this will rapidly cause it to boil. At first, it was assumed that people used the boiling water to cook joints of meat and, where burnt mounds occur on settlement sites, or have food residue around them, this may have been what they were used for.

At many burnt mounds sites, however, there is a dearth of food remains and, although the technology was identical, the water was clearly being used for something very different. Boiling water produces copious stream and, if trapped within the small structures that appear next to the mounds of burnt stone, would form a rudimentary sauna. While it may be that people in the Bronze Age had high standards of personal hygiene, the remote location of many of these sites makes another explanation more likely. Lengthy exposure to steam (coupled with the resulting abnormal body temperatures) is sufficient to induce trance. The Nenet shamans of Siberia use precisely this method to access the otherworld and it is likely that people in the Bronze Age were doing the same.

One reason for this may have been to allow people to visit the dead and in Ireland, many burnt mounds were located close to burial cemeteries. Similarly, in Scandinavia, some of the burnt mounds may have doubled-up as cremation pyres. One mound, located on the island of Pryssgården, had a spiral design of stones fashioned at its base, mirroring the tunnel that gives access to the otherworld.

At Bargeroosteveld, in the Netherlands, a curious structure within an area of raised bog may have been used for similar purposes. It comprises a small open building surrounded by a ring of stones, with horned ends to its roof-beams. Three bronze hoards buried around it may have been offerings for the spirits and at Tauberbischofsheim-Hochhausen, in Germany, a wooden post served as a focus for more metal hoards, concentrating, most appropriately, on spiral-decorated ornaments. Like the stone design at Pryssgården, it seems that spiral designs marked portals between the worlds.

Some burnt mounds in Cambridgeshire, in eastern England, formed part of larger ceremonial complexes and these could sometimes include upside-down trees. This is very similar to another nearby site, named with no more accuracy than its famous namesake: Seahenge. Fifty five split oak posts formed a circle, bark-side outwards, with a huge, upside-down, oak tree at its centre. The roots reached at least a metre into the air. Although it was made in the early Bronze Age (it can be dated exactly by its timbers to 2049 BC), there are signs that it was still in use in later periods. A track-way dating to the middle Bronze Age crossed a creek nearby and, with an absence of houses in the vicinity, it is likely that people were coming here to visit the monument. The immediate area, now almost inundated by the sea, would have been wet, marshy ground, a liminal location that matched the structure at Bargeroosteveld.

The upside-down tree which formed the main focus of Seahenge, has parallels in other Eurasian traditions. The Sámi of Lapland, for example, placed upside-down trees into the earth either to mark the position of offerings to the spirits or as offerings themselves. For the Evenks of Siberia, it was not offerings but the shaman who passed through the portal, and upside-down trees were arranged to form a route along which the shaman journeyed to the otherworld. It was likely that Seahenge was used in the same way, perhaps with people lying upon the inverted bole of the tree as they let their spirit be pulled to the otherworld. Intriguingly, near to Seahenge is a similar circle of posts with two large timbers at the centre. Hollows on the upper sides of both timbers may have been designed to hold a coffin or other platform and perhaps this was where the dead were once laid out, allowing their souls an easy path to the afterlife.

Comments (3)

Tombs of Rebirth

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010

This is the third of five edited extracts to be posted this week from my new book, Prehistoric Belief: Shamans, Trance and the Afterlife. After the Mesolithic yesterday, we now move into the Neolithic, when people began to build monuments and vast tombs to hold the remains of their dead.

We stand before the entrance to a large tomb. The stones that form the threshold are massive and provide an eerie presence in the flickering torchlight. The body of the dead woman lies just before us and, sitting over her, is an old man with long greasy hair and, from what we can tell, no teeth. It has been a while since the shaman, for this is what the old man is, ingested the drugs and he is beginning to sway, his chant getting louder. Just then, some younger men to his right start drumming, pounding their hands onto skins, pulled taught over wide-brimmed pots. The shaman gets up slowly and moves into the tomb. There is a gasp; he is now entering the otherworld of the spirits. He emerges almost immediately, his arms filled with bones, some with bits of flesh still hanging off them, and he jabbers incoherently at the small group of mourners about us. The drums continue to pound and we start to feel light-headed ourselves. The entrance to the tomb seems to take on enormous proportions and we know that to enter its confines means never to return. Suddenly, the shaman grasps the corpse of the woman and drags it roughly into the tomb. We can just see him scatter the remains of half-rotted bodies to make enough room. He then disappears from sight, swallowed completely by the tomb. It will be some time before he emerges and we wait, in awe of his powers.

For many traditional people, death has two stages: leaving the world of the living, followed by joining the world of the dead. Between these stages, the spirits of the dead are thought to stay close to the living and, if such a view prevailed in the Neolithic, this may explain why burial places had so much activity that went beyond mere disposal of the corpse. In effect, whilst they remained between the worlds, the dead became a resource that could be approached and perhaps, by undertaking trance journeys, even spoken to as if they were still alive.

It is likely that entire corpses were placed in the entrance passageways or even left outside of the tomb, where they would putrefy and rot. When the remains started to fall apart, certain bones might be removed and used for ceremonies in which the dead spirit may have been contacted. As the bones hardened and lost all resemblance of flesh, some were returned to the tomb, to be sorted and stacked with matching bones that already lay in the far depths of the chamber. Only now would the deceased pass to the afterlife and enter the realm of the dead. The individual had, perhaps, become an ancestor.

Although the interiors of these tombs were sometimes spacious, they were presumably crowded with bones, and the passageways leading to them were often small and cramped. Moreover, the space was probably highly charged with the presence of the dead and may have been considered dangerous even taboo. It is likely that only a certain few had the necessary ability to enter the tomb and remain among the dead. These were the people who regularly moved between this world and the otherworld as part of their vocation: the shamans of the community.

If the shamans were to interact with the spirits of the dead (and even to survive what must have been a hellish experience of being among so many rotting bodies), they needed to shift their consciousness into trance and, besides taking drugs, drumming may have been one way they achieved this. In fact, it seems that some of the tombs were designed to heighten the sound of the drum and to achieve the exact frequency required to facilitate trance. In some Welsh and Irish tombs, there are engraved patterns and these have been matched to the phosphene shapes seen in trances induced by psilocybin mushrooms. Perhaps this was the drug taken by the shaman we saw. Some of these images seem to mark significant stages of the journey into the tomb, perhaps marking places where the spirits needed placating. Even the form of the tomb itself, with a passageway leading to the realm of the spirits, closely matches trance journeys to the otherworld and the shared imagery would have been readily understood as referencing both experiences.

Within some tombs, there is tantalising evidence of the sort of thing shamans might do when they entered the chamber. At Barclodiad y Gawres, in Wales, for example, a stew made from the remains of fish, amphibians, a grass snake, and small mammals, was boiled and then poured over the smouldering remains of a fire, before being covered with small stones and shells. Although the full import of this event can probably never be understood, it is striking how the animals chosen for the stew mirror the realms of water and earth and the amphibians and snake that are at home in both worlds. Perhaps the stew also referenced the ability of the shaman to move between comparable worlds and was therefore a highly symbolic offering to make to the dead.

When the dead had served their community for as long as they were required, they were returned to the tomb to join the serried ranks of the ancestors. The bones now lost their individual identities and it appears that they may have even been sorted into matching groups, each with its own distinct place within the tomb. For the dead spirit, this was probably the time when it was thought to finally make the journey to the afterlife, leaving contact with the world of the living behind.

At a very small number of tombs, the way to the afterlife may have been guided by the rising sun, shining down the entrance passageway and illuminating the chamber itself. Such tombs are generally aligned so that this happens on a significant day, such as the solstices or equinoxes, and this is what happened at Newgrange in Ireland. On the midwinter solstice, the rising sun shone through a slot above the door, constructed so that the beam could be angled correctly to reach all the way to the inner chamber. It was a sight few would have witnessed (and those outside the tomb may have had to form a clear route for the sun’s rays to penetrate) but perhaps it was never meant to be seen by the living. When the sun reached the chamber, it hit a small section of wall, low down on the right hand side. Engraved on the wall were three joined spirals and these flare brightly under the glare of the sun. Is this the sign the dead spirits were waiting for: the illumination of the spiral that symbolised access between the worlds?

Comments (1)

Dance of the Deer

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

This is the second of five edited extracts to be posted this week from my new book, Prehistoric Belief: Shamans, Trance and the Afterlife. After the Palaeolithic yesterday, we now move into the Mesolithic, when dense forests began to cover the land and people found a new way to hunt their prey.

We are guests at a performance, in the far north of what will, one day, be called England. The wind is fresh but not biting, as if it is finally losing its memory of the ice. We stand not far from a small lake, its surface reflecting the fire that forms the centre of the roughly assembled camp. There are about half a dozen of us, all tightly packed and tense. Some are staring intently, their eyes fixed on the darkness beyond the fire. All of a sudden, there is a slight movement, and then another, and I feel a chill down my spine. You must have noticed as your form huddles against my back, pressing in closer to the group. Then, the others drop into a crouch and move away from the fire in a slow deliberate stoop. We do the same, although our movements are nowhere near as fluid. With a bellow, a shape crashes out of the darkness and rears up at the people arrayed before it. It is a deer, its antlers slashing through the air with a murderous sound. There is another bellow and another deer, then another, and another. We are surrounded. It is then that we see the bodies of the deer, but these are human bodies. These are not animals but humans, wearing the skull and antlers of the deer as a mask. But their movements and their energy is beyond human; the dancers have left their bodies far behind and have shapeshifted into their prey. These people are now deer.

As the ice withdrew from northern Europe, a little after 10,000 bc, it left behind a bruised landscape that had been scraped clear of all vegetation. However, it was not long before the plants began to return. Blown north on the breeze, the underbrush came first, rapidly followed by trees. Initially, birch, pine, and hazel proliferated in the warm, dry climate, with oak, elm, and alder following after 6000 bc, when the weather turned wetter. The new conditions were hard for the large animals of the tundra and mammoths and woolly rhinos rapidly went extinct. Other animals, such as reindeer and elk moved north, where they remain today. However, the forests were ideal homes for other deer species, the red and roe, and also for wild boar, which surged out of their Ice Age refuges in southern Europe. People soon followed and the site of the deer dance, Star Carr in northern England, is one of the earliest Mesolithic sites that archaeologists have found.

As the deer-masked dancers career about the fire, those who are crouched around us slowly creep forward, stopping dead if one of the dancers looks towards them. When they are as close as they dare go, we see them lift a bow from where it was tied to their back. Setting an imaginary arrow, they fire at the deer and then follow up their kill with whoops and wails. The deer dancers take their final steps before crashing to the ground, their bodies writhing in the throws of death. One lands not far from where we remain crouched and we can see the dancer’s eyes, rolled back so that only the whites show. The hunters stop and let the dancers complete their homage to the spirits of the deer. Perhaps the dance will bring more prey to the lakeside tomorrow.

The days of hunting deer in their thousands, such as people did during the Palaeolithic, have gone. Deer became more solitary during the Mesolithic and, hidden in the trees, required a new technique to catch them: stalking. The hunters we joined at the deer dance played their part by stalking the dancing deer before drawing their bows and loosing an arrow.

At Star Carr, in addition to stalking the prey, there is also evidence that people burnt the reeds around the water’s edge, perhaps to encourage new shoots that would attract the deer and leave them vulnerable to ambush. The efficacy of such ambush was probably improved by the wearing of deer costumes, people becoming the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing. When the site was first excavated in the late 1940s, several deer skulls, with antlers attached, were found in a ditch along with butchered bones and abandoned tools. Two eyeholes bored into the front of the skull suggested that they may have been worn as masks, perhaps with the pelt of the deer hanging down the back. Whether these were used as a hunting disguise or had a more ritualistic purpose, such as shapeshifting, is a subject still debated by archaeologists. However, in reality, there is no reason why the deer masks could not have been used for both functions. Dividing the sacred from the profane is a modern construct; it has no bearing in the past. This was a time where there was little division between this world and the otherworld, and spirits inhabited and influenced every aspect of people’s lives. Everyday life was ritual and ritual was everyday life.

This is demonstrated through the importance of reciprocity to early hunting communities. Anthropologist Peter Jordan, drawing from his time living and working among the Khanty of Siberia, shows that many northern communities of hunters believe that by showing proper respect to the animal that they have killed, the Master of the Animals will look kindly upon them and send more game to take its place. Moreover, the animals themselves are believed to give themselves willingly to the hunter, safe in the knowledge that their remains will be respected and treated with care. It is likely that such attitudes also prevailed in the Mesolithic. For example, among the remains at Star Carr were 191 barbed points (a hunting weapon resembling a small harpoon), all but two of which were made from deer antler. Although these points were made at Star Carr, they were then used elsewhere, before being brought back to the site to be deposited. Given that some of these points may have even been fashioned from the tines of the red deer masks, it appears that people were returning to the site what they believed belonged to the site, perhaps as a sign of respect to the spirits of the deer that they killed. Similarly, all the masks were also left behind, as if their use was proscribed to this single location. Hunting, like everything else in the Mesolithic, was a deeply spiritual activity.

Comments (1)

Bringing the Spirits to Life

Monday, August 9th, 2010

This is the first of five edited extracts to be posted this week from my new book, Prehistoric Belief: Shamans, Trance and the Afterlife. I really hope you enjoy them.

Nicholas Conard, an American archaeologist working in Germany, is usually very calm when he digs. He was excavating a cave called Hohle Fels during 2003 when something, in his own words, ‘got my heart pumping a bit’. Conard can be forgiven, for he had just lifted out of the ground a Palaeolithic ivory carving, dating to around 30,000 years ago. A wonderful find in itself but when he looked closely at the subject of the carving that his heart began to race: held in his hand was a figurine that was half-lion and half-human. He knew that, potentially, here was the proof that people in the Palaeolithic were shamanic and that they regularly shapeshifted into animals whilst in trance. For this was not the only half-human half-lion figurine that had been found. At Hohlenstein-Stadel, another cave in Germany, a similar figurine had been discovered in 1939. As Conard puts it, ‘If there are two, there must have been hundreds of these things; they must have been part of daily life’.

With the figurine, Conard also found the head of a horse and a water bird, both in ivory. The bird was stretched out, as if in flight, and it was not lost on Conard that, here, was another find with potentially shamanic roots. Water birds are equally at home on the water on the land, and in the air. Consequently, in crossing between these worlds, many shamanic people believe that they can also cross between this world and the otherworld. The birds were seen as messengers of the spirits.

Southern Germany is particularly rich in figurines carved out of ivory and most come from the earliest occupation of Europe by modern humans, around 32,000 years ago. Although many have finely carved bodies and heads, the limbs are often stumpy with no hooves or paws, as if the figurines are flying above the ground. However, if, like the water bird, these figurines represent the spirits of the otherworld, then perhaps an ability to fly was an integral element to their form. Moreover, as if to emphasise that these animals were indeed spirits, many of the figurines have geometric patterns engraved on their sides, which match the phosphenes that are sometimes seen in shamanic trance. These were not ordinary animals that were depicted but, like the paintings on the cave walls, these were animal spirits.

The figurines are often worn smooth by the hands that have carried them, or are stained red by being tied onto clothing (ochre was used as a preservative for animal hide and rubbed off with use). These images were clearly made to be seen and used in everyday life. Perhaps they were similar to Native American fetishes, carried for the power that is believed to emanate from them. If so, then the type of animals represented may give some indication as to what sort of power was being sought. Most of the animals represented are large land mammals and many are predators rather than prey. Moreover, many of the animals take aggressive or threatening stances, perhaps as a prelude to attack. A lion from Vogelherd in Germany has its ears cocked back in a threatening pose, and a bear from Geißenklösterle is in a similar pose. It seems that it was the strength and ferocity of these animals that people sought when they made and carried the figurines. However, a beautifully crafted stallion, also from Vogelherd, was not in an aggressive pose at all but, rather, was in a pose that seemed designed to impress the mares. Whoever carried this figurine had very different aims in mind; but then, since Conard also found an eight-inch, 28,000 year-old dildo in his cave at Hohle Fels, perhaps there were times when Palaeolithic man felt a little under pressure.

Comments (1)

« Older Entries