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.