Archive for the ‘Mesolithic’ Category

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.

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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.

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Being in the Prehistoric Forest

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

Our prehistoric ancestors, who lived when forest covered much of Europe, experienced their world very differently to us. The trees would have hidden much of the landscape and people could only move between separate locations by well-worn tracks. Time, for them, related to distance.

The trees would have been hugely significant and individuals probably interacted with their favourite tree at a spiritual level (think of the Na’vi in Avatar). We can perhaps imagine people measuring their life’s progress against a tree, perhaps carving images on its trunk, or even singling it out for use as a totem pole. Modern hunter-gatherer forest dwellers in Siberia do similar.

In deciduous forests, people would have noticed the passing of the seasons from the trees, with the buds, leaves, and fruit forming key means of orientating the time of year. The subtle nuance of such change, experienced by people who lived their entire lives in the forest, is probably beyond our understanding. The sounds they would have noticed as they travelled through the forest told their own story and people probably relied upon their ears as much as their eyes.

People would have been far more aware of the cycle of the moon and the times when its light enabled them to move freely through the night. Rather than organising their sleeping patterns around the sun, as we do, they were probably far more in tune with the dark and light times of the lunar cycle. In coastal regions, the shifting tides would determine people’s activities, with intense periods of fishing and gathering interspersed with rest. The rising and setting of the sun may have been irrelevant.

In each case, Mesolithic people took their cues of time from the natural world and the environment in which they make their living. For many of us, it is a completely different way of being in the world.

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