Paleolithic Cave Art

Wilber (2007) explains the difference between the phenomenology of experience and the rules that structure and govern that experience. Only by studying a number games one can determine the rules that govern how the cards are played and then give meaning to a particular game. The images of the Paleolithic animal figures are found in a number of caves that stretch over a 20,000 year period. Each of the major caves shows evidence of the expression of a separate group of shamans. Thus the images of the six body types of the animals in the artwork of these caves can be considered the cards, each animal species the suits and the way the shamans-artists sequence the animal figures identifies the how the meaning of the symbol system is designed to reveal aspects of the worldview of the shamans-artists for that cave.

Then by studying a broad range of figures/panels it is clear that the shamans-artists who were the inspiration and creators of the artwork developed cognitive “conventions” to provide a structure that gave integrity to the artwork over the ages. I have identified seventeen conventions that apply across the cave art during this long period. Here are some examples:

  1. The alert awake state is the default state of consciousness.
  2. The head is the site of consciousness, knowledge and agency for each figure.
  3. Headless figures are alive and represent a figure in an unconscious state like sleep or under instinctual control like pregnancy and giving birth.
  4. Figures which show an animal turning its head in an acute manner show the animal moving from a less conscious activity into the present which is part of the spectrum of consciousness.
  5. Over-lapping animals show how there is a primary connection between the animals through touch as herd instinct. These figures represent how the early mind represented a correct view of an early but partial view of reality, later considered to be magical.
  6. Full-bodied figures represent animals alive in the natural world.
  7. Legless head-only figures represent the souls of animals alive in the spirit world except when they decide to sojourn inside the mortal body for the life cycle of the animal in the natural world or are spirit helpers.
  8. Composite figures, part human and part animal, are shamans.

When the figures in the cave art are considered within the context of the cognitive conventions they provides a base from which interpretations can be made with growing certainty. Considered this way the cave art describes a story. In sum the process is to combine the archeological data with the anthrological data integrated with the ethological data to unite the animal and human natures of our Sapiens Species as we move forward.