Before trying to answer those questions, let me first clarify what I mean when I say 'mythological thinking'. I am not here referring to myth as meaning something false or untrue. Instead I am referring to myth and mythology as being patterns of thought and belief which constitute an intrinsic and accepted part of the world view, if not the whole world view, of those that the particular myths belongs to.
Mythological thinking is thinking that extends past that which we can see and touch and into matters that go beyond the earthly and yet are experienced as/believed to be entwined with it. Mythological thought is invariably accompanied with rites and rituals. Examples of such are burial rituals, totems and the use of talismans and rites of passage (eg. childhood to adulthood or marriage). It would be erroneous to assume that mythology belongs only to ‘primitive’ cultures, for even to this day rites and rituals are common occurrences in all cultures.
Joseph Campbell once said “Mythology is other peoples’ religion.” He is referring here to the tendency that we hold our own adopted views as truth and those conflicting or different views of others as untrue. Therefore they are relegated to the realm of mythology. However in so doing we miss the point altogether, but more on that another time. I’m using the quote here also to point out that mythological thought and religious thought are essentially synonymous. But let’s get back to looking at the proposed origins of mythological thinking.
Several years ago I was reading in Joseph Campbell's, Myths to Live By how the earliest evidence for this emergence of mythological thought is found with the Neanderthals.
“Our first tangible evidences of mythological thinking are from the period of Neanderthal Man, which endured from ca. 250,000 to ca. 50,000 B.C.; and these comprise, first, burials with food supplies, grave gear, tools, sacrificed animals, and the like; and second, a number of chapels in high mountain caves, where cave bear skulls, ceremonially disposed in symbolic settings, have been preserved. The burials suggest the idea, if not exactly of immortality, then at least of some kind of life to come; and the almost inaccessible high mountain bear skull sanctuaries surely represent a cult in honor of that great, upright, manlike, hairy personage, the bear."Joseph Campbell, Myths To Live By p32
Now I am well aware that the above is speculative in nature but it is informed speculation. Moreover there is little else we can do when interpreting such archaeological findings since obviously the Neanderthals left no written history for us. It may well be that this is not yet convincing enough for you so here’s a more detailed look into the Neanderthals, bear worship and the first known burial sites of hominids. By the end you will see how we can link the pre-historical to modern times.
Amongst various archaeological sites where remains of Neanderthals have been uncovered there have been those that contained what appear to be burial sites. In a cave at Shanidar in Iraq one of those sites included large amounts of pollen in the immediate area around the body, indicating that the dead were ritually buried. However some scientists claim that the pollen comes from flowers that burrowing animals had collected and stored.
Another site is found in the Atapuerca mountains in Spain. There they have uncovered the earliest known European hominids. Particularly in "Sima de los Huesos" (translated : pit of bones) a great amount of, yes you guessed it, bones have been found. Bones belonging to 30 different specimens of Homo Heidelbergensis have been identified. Along with these remains many animal bones have found; foxes, wolves, lions and bears. There is a debate as to whether these remains have been buried there or as the competing theory goes, that natural causes account for their presence there.
While most likely the disagreements like those described above will continue, as seems to be the case with most discoveries, I shall leave the final word on that to the experts. However I am quite certain that the ritual burial answer is a very possible and, with the scientific data, also a very probable reality. It serves my purpose therefore to indicate that there have been more than one type of hominid to bury their dead. And in the case of H. Heidelbergensis also extending this practice even further back in time than H. Neanderthalensis.
Aside from the burials there is the matter of Neanderthals taking care of members of their group that were injured or debilitated. Here too the site at Shanidar is a good example. A skeleton designated as Shanidar 1 his skull bears evidence of massive trauma and likely blindness in the affected side of the head. Examination determined he was only able to use one arm, possibly he suffered from partial paralysis and his right leg was crippled. His age is another distinguishing feature, being around 40 years of age would have made him a geriatric in modern terms. All this points to the group having a social awareness and taking care of those that could not do so themselves. Also the cave at La Ferrassie in France was an important discovery, yielding one of the most complete skeletons and leading to the discovery that the Neanderthals were not as different anatomically from modern man as was previously thought.
There remains one more point and that is that of the bear skulls. When discoveries of cave bear fossils (Ursus speleaus) first started to be described in the 18th century they were thought to have belonged to dragons or even unicorns. Exemplary of this is Drachenhöhle (Dragon’s Cave) in Austria, discovered by soldiers during WW I. Fossils, stone tools and open hearths were discovered there. The finding of cave bear fossils became so prolific at a time that they were simply used as phosphates for industry and obviously destroying a lot of potential evidence in the process. Also the earlier discoveries and following excavations in the 1900s were not conducted as carefully as present day archaeological digs are. But nothing we can do about that now, it's all in the past. (OK that was bad, I apologize)
In Switzerland in the Drachenloche (Dragon's Lair) cave the remains of more than 30.000 cave bears have been found. This seems like a very high number, but the time span during which cave bears could have lived there can account for the high number of fossils. Given the fact that bears regularly die during hibernation for example and by just having a single or several deaths a year over the course of many thousands of years this comfortably accounts for such numbers. At the Dragon’s Lair cave not just cave bear fossils were found but also tools made and used by hominids. Now while just the presence of both at the same cave is not proof in itself of bear worship the way that the skulls were found seems to indicate that this was the case. Some of the cave bear skulls appear to have been specifically arranged. Either in their orientation; skulls all facing same direction, or composition; the skulls had the limbs positioned under them or bones placed through the eye socket.
"In a chamber of the Drachenloch in Switzerland, a stone cist had been built to house stacked bear-skulls: piles of sorted long bones were laid along the walls of the cave. Another heap of bones contained the skull of a bear through which a leg bone had been forced, the skull resting upon two other long bones, each bone was from a different beast."J.M. Coles, E. S. Higgs (1969): The Archaeology of Early Man, New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969, p. 286-287.
But Neanderthals were not anatomically modern humans, they were archaic homo sapiens, just like H. Heidelbergensis and neither of which were direct ancestors of us. They did however have similar brain size to modern humans and one could therefore assume they at least had the potential to achieve the same level of thought as anatomically modern humans could. The archaic humans and anatomically modern humans (the Cro-Magnons) co-existed in overlapping time and space. The oldest discovered Cro-Magnon made figurines include zoomorphic/anthropomorphic ivory carvings belonging to the Aurignacian period. The Lion-Man figure (shown below) that was discovered in Germany is a great example and it is dated to be around 32.000 years old.
So there we are, archaic humans and anatomically modern humans both with evidence that indicates the development of mythological thinking and rituals. But I did say I was going to link this to modern times didn't I? I will, in part 2.
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