Viral Mythology

by Marie D. Jones

  Figure 2-1: Replica of 31,000-year-old paintings found on the Chauvet Cave.

  Another fascinating and well-known art-packed cave site is Lascaux in southwestern France, believed to have some of the most sophisticated cave art of the Paleolithic period. Lascaux is really a series of interconnected caves depicting more than 2,000 figures of everything from horse to bison to mammoths, ibex, deer, lions, wolves, and even a human, dating all the way back to 15,000 BC. The cave paintings were allegedly discovered in 1949 by a group of French children, have since become among the most critical finds in the field of primitive art, and are said to be in mural form as they tell a story of hunting rituals and practices of the day. Folklorists have been said to find a narrative in the mural-like depiction, according to Dr. Michael Lockett in The Basics of Storytelling. Lockett writes, “It is believed that the cave was used for the performance of hunting and magical rituals. Whatever its purpose, it serves as evidence that stories and storytelling have been around for a long, long time!”

  Lascaux is also rich with engravings and even abstract designs created most likely by the light of torches and lamps filled with animal fat. The artists of Lascaux, like those of all caves throughout history, chose these hidden, dark places to describe and convey their interpretation and perception of the world they lived in, which was focused then on survival and thus gave special importance to the animals that provided the means of survival for the species. But because of the threats of tourists and exposure to elements, the Lascaux Cave and others are being replicated for visitors to avoid contamination of the original sites, which are now only open on a very limited basis to qualified researchers.

  Needless to say, cave paintings and art exists at various historical intervals all over the world and are often designated as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Many of the caves mirror those of their region, but some stand out, such as the Edakkal in Kerala, India, which depicts actual images of tribal chieftains and queens. Dating back approximately 7,000–8,000 years, the imagery is described less as art and more as “pictorial writings” as history progresses toward the prominence of the written word.

  North American Cave Art

  In the North American region, Native American cave pictographs are found all over the continent that depict humans often in headdresses, along with animals and other often geometrical symbols, dating back to thousands of years ago. The Chumash Indians are known for the numerous cave paintings attributed to their culture throughout the Southern California region. Researchers argue over whether the images depicted are dreams, visions, or even astronomical symbols, and even Chumash elders have had a difficult time interpreting the art of their ancient elders, which they see as not just links to their past, but stories of their heritage.

  One of the oldest known cave art sites in America dates back a good 6,000 years. One wouldn’t expect the Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee to hold such a unique part of history, but archeologists have recently discovered the oldest cave and rock art scattered in caves around the area that spans from the Kentucky border down into northern Alabama. But it is in Tennessee that the oldest image, a painting of a hunter, was dated as 6,000 years old, which would make it the oldest of its kind in the States. These caves are part of what is called a “dark-zone” of cave sites east of the Mississippi, and archeologists are discovering new caves all the time. A dark-zone site is a location where the natives who created the artwork did so at personal risk, underground in the darkness, most likely only lit by their own torches or crude lamps. Twilight-zone sites, on the other hand, cover cave mouths and entrances that were able to maintain diffuse sunlight.

  Most of the images are dated between 500 and 900 years ago, but the oldest images come from locales in the middle of Tennessee, including those on the Cumberland Plateau, which is riddled with various types of caves, including pit caves, dome caves, and the wider tourist caves. The glyphs dating back about 800 years appeared to belong to the Mississippian people, ancestors to today’s Southeastern and Midwestern tribes, and appeared to be of the category “Southeastern Ceremonial Complex—SECC,” which was a part of a little understood religious movement that swept the Eastern part of the continent in 1200 AD.

  In a June 2013 interview with CNN’s Matt Smith titled “Ancient Tennessee Cave Paintings Show Deep Thinking by Natives,” University of Tennessee anthropologist Jan Simek commented on the enormous scale of the painting complex of caves: “There is a cosmology being expressed...and one of the things we’re trying to suggest is the composition has an enormous scale.” The art depicted throughout the 94 sites were very thematic. Above-ground works at 44 of the sites were done mostly in red that may have represented life and the dramatic sky of the spring and summer months, which would have been more impactful from these south- and west-facing locations. Images were found possibly suggesting an “upper world” of weather, sky, and starry influences, with locations nearer the surface focusing more on “middle world” people, plant, and animal life. In many of the images, humans are portrayed doing things and doing, as Simek describes, “otherworldly” kinds of things, which parallels the Native American belief that caves are places where the boundary between the natural world and the spirit world are thinner and can be crossed.

  Anthropomorphism is a popular theme in these caves, first appearing during the Archaic period, and showing human figures with clearly animal or birdlike qualities such as wings or exaggeratedly long fingers and horns.

  According to Simek, “The art sites, predominately found in caves, feature otherworldly characters, supernatural serpents and dogs that accompanied dead humans on the path of souls.” This imagery is painted in black and represents a much deeper symbology than just which animals were to be hunted for dinner that night. These mysterious creatures are described as mythical and representative of Native American beliefs, and are much more elaborate than the more crudely carved or drawn imagery of hunting rituals. Glyphs found in the Mud Glyph Cave in particular are the most detailed and elaborate, with human imagery that speaks of ceremonial actions such as flying, shape shifting, and reaching through rock surfaces, according to Nicholas Herrmann, also a part of the scientific research group studying the preserved artworks of the Cumberland Plateau.

  Another common symbol found throughout the caves is the circle, which in the Dunbar Cave is shown in the form of rayed circles, circles with crosses inside, and alongside concentric circle pictographs. Interestingly, some of the initially discovered images even appeared to have been ritualistically mutilated, as in stabbed with a stick.

  The oldest of the imagery features humans alongside wild dogs such as wolves and jackals, humans portrayed with tools, serpents and beastly creatures, and sometimes more celestial imagery that suggests a spiritual nature for the drawings, rather than purely informational. Simek stated, “The discoveries tell us that prehistoric people in the Cumberland Plateau used this rather distinctive upland environment for a variety of purposes and that religion was part of that broader sense of place.”

  Ancient Taggers and Old School Graffiti

  Who would have thought the art of graffiti dated back to ancient Egypt, Rome, and Greece? What we today consider vandalism and defacing public property with gang tags and mural art out of a spray can actually has its origins in times long before the advent of spray paint.

  The word graffiti itself comes from the Greek graphein, meaning “to write,” and the Italian graffiato, or “to scratch,” and is a technique that was often used on the walls of ancient temples, sepulchers, ruin stones, and columns. The earliest known example of ancient graffiti comes to us from the eighth century BC. Discovered in a tomb in the gulf of Naples, Italy, the graffiti consists of Greek text found on a vessel known as the Nestor Cup. A number of examples of graffiti have been discovered at an excavation near Smyrna in modern-day Turkey, incised or carved on marble, and consisting of everything from board games to prayers, symbols, and offensive and
pornographic comments and obscene imagery. This ancient pornography, according to Greek professor Angelos Chaniotis in an interview for Archeology News Network (April 19, 2013), was meant to offend and humiliate the opposition during games and battles. These peeks into the daily life of an ancient culture suggest that graffiti was the historical equivalent of cheers and jeers during, say, a football game, with one side attempting to anger or humiliate the other.

  Figure 2-2: Second-century pagan graffiti depicting a man worshipping a crucified donkey or mule, with the inscription “Alexamenos respects God,” found in the Palatine Hill Museum, Rome, Italy.

  Whether in the form of inscribed words or drawings, ancient graffiti was symbolic of the culture and lifestyle of the time, and was just as often serious and sarcastic as it was humorous and witty. Graffiti found at the ancient city of Pompeii is said to include cuss words of the era, as well as love poems, advertisements for local brothels, magical spells, political slogans, curses, and wisdom quotes that provide insight into the history of the region. Ancient graffiti has been found in the Mayan culture, the Norse and Scandinavian cultures, and the British Isles, and suggests that scrawling, carving, and painting on walls was a means of expression just as today’s urban culture utilizes.

  Primitive Art Categories

  If cave walls were nowhere to be found, primitive artists used what was around. Rock art can be broken up into three categories:

  1. Petroglyphs are incisions, carvings, and engravings on rock.

  2. Petrographs are images drawn or painted on rock.

  3. Petroforms are art created with rocks and boulders to form patterns and shapes.

  Rock art has been found all over the world, dating back thousands of years and again offered a ready-made canvas for cultural expression. The first rock art traces back to the Neolithic era, before the advent of metalworking led to the Bronze Age and more sophisticated art mediums, and the Iron Age, where writing systems began to appear, spreading from Ancient Egypt to China. As stated earlier, the oldest known petroglyphs have been discovered in the Bhimbetka Caves of India, dating as far back as 300,000–700,000 years. In the Blombos Cave of South Africa, engraved stones have been discovered dating back more than 70,000 years, though the markings were crude grid and cross-hatch patterns.

  Many petroglyphs mirrored imagery found on cave art, such as animals and hunting scenes, but others also included humans and even the precursors to writing systems, which began to appear between 7,000 and 9,000 years ago. These precursors were in the forms of pictographs and ideograms.

  Pictograms are either pictures or images that represent or resemble a physical object. Using pictures to symbolize something was considered an art form as many of these images were inscribed, carved, and drawn on cave walls and rock arts in Pre-Columbian time.

  An ideogram is simply a symbol, picture, or image that represents an idea or concept, rather than an actual physical object.

  Ideographic communication and imagery was a precursor to writing systems used in the Bronze Age and is mirrored in the Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sumerian cuneiforms, and Chinese logograms. Before we learned to write with actual words, we wrote with images and symbols that eventually evolved into the alphabet, phonetics, and more sophisticated writing systems.

  Some of the oldest recognizable petroglyphs, aside from more crude representations of scratches, cross-hatch marks, and animal shapes, were actual maps and trail guides to nomadic tribes, detailing the presence of water and the type of terrain, as well as possible territorial lines. Later glyphs carried a strong religious and cultural meaning that may have served as a way of passing on information to future generations, somewhat similar to our headstones and grave markers and inscribed historical monuments of today.

  Symbols and Spirits

  Aboriginal rock art found in Australia dates at least 40,000 years ago, and combines representations of both known animals at the time and mythical creatures that may have been ancient creators that taught the native people what they needed to know about the world around them. Rocks inside well-protected caves and outcroppings may have sheltered Aboriginal tribes and their cave and rock art, much of which is spiritual in nature and symbolizes the creation of the world as understood by the natives.

  Aborigines believed the paintings actually contained spiritual powers of the entities and beings that were represented and they went to extreme lengths to revere, protect, and preserve these paintings, often actually repairing damage and touching up images all the way up to modern times. Though again most images were of creatures indigenous to the region, many were also considered “Mimi spirits,” located at the highest points on the rock and walls. These paintings were said to have been artwork of the Mimi, which are thin, delicate, almost stick-figure-like entities that lived in the cracks and nooks of the rocky landscape. The Mimi also taught the natives how to paint, hunt, and create music, and were often depicted in action, dancing, hunting, fighting, and running.

  Figure 2-3: A Type 1 Pictish stone with incised symbols, found at Dunnichen, Angus, Scotland, an example of Medieval stone art. Image courtesy of Catfish Jim and the Soapdish.

  African rock art in the high mountains of Southern Africa features more than 20,000 rock paintings by the Bushmen, known as San, who were the indigenous hunter-gatherer tribe of the region. These paintings, found in caves and overhangs, feature spectacular images of a variety of animals drawn in great detail. Some of the oldest rock art, dating from the Upper Paleolithic period, is found in Australia and Africa, and often had great spiritual significance. Some imagery was associated with magical beliefs of the indigenous peoples and was produced during rituals held within the cave sites. Many of these cultures were shamanic in nature and the common themes of bones; skeletal remains and skeletal decorative items spoke to the shamanic belief in death and revival. Other identifying marks on the rock art include different types and shapes of drums, a staple in shamanic rituals and journeying, or even initiation ceremonies.

  A recent discovery by a team of University of Colorado researchers, led by Larry Benson, turned up what might be the oldest known petroglyphs in North America. Using high-tech analysis on cuts made into several boulders in western Nevada, these enigmatic petroglyphs appear to date back as far as 10,500 years ago, and possibly even 14,800 years into our past. The vertical chain-like symbols are located in the Winnemucca Lake site, about 35 miles northeast of Reno, and consist of large, deeply carved grooves and dots that make complex designs on limestone boulders, and a number of small pits that may have been made with some type of hard rock scraper. The team published its findings in the June 2013 issue of the Journal of Archeological Science.

  Landscape Art

  Another form of rock art that occurs on a much bigger landscape is the Earth Figure, large designs, images, and symbols created in or on the actual ground itself. There are two kinds of Earth Figures:

  Intaglios

  Images that are created by removing rocks or landscape materials to reveal an image in the flat ground beneath.

  Geoglyphs

  Images created by placing or piling rocks or other materials on the surface of the ground to make a design or pattern.

  Scientists believe that the world-famous Nazca Lines found in the Nazca Desert of southern Peru were created sometime between 400 AD and 700 AD. These geoglyphs depict hundreds of images, from simple lines and geometric shapes, to more sophisticated animal and bird shapes, as well as human figures. These geoglyphs, the largest of which measure more than 660 feet across, were made by removing reddish desert pebbles to reveal a shallow trench of the lighter, grayish-toned ground beneath, and are best visible from either the sky or nearby hilltops that surround the area.

  Though most scholars agree on how the lines were created with possibly the use of simple stakes and tools and basic surveying techniques, the reason for the lines is still debated. The purpose of the lines has been alleged to be possible solstice and solar and lunar markers; tributes to the Sky Gods who c
ould see the images from the heavens; a sort of crude planetarium that depicted the cosmology of the Nazca people; religious symbols depicting the worship of mountain and water deities; and other, more incredible ideas such as extraterrestrial air strips or an ancient airfield that was used by aliens the natives mistook for Gods.

  Other such mysterious lines have been recently discovered in the Middle East, stretching from Syria to Saudi Arabia. Virtually unknown to the public, these geoglyphs, as described in the LiveScience article “Visible Only From Above, Mystifying Nazca Lines Discovered in Mideast” (September 2011) by Owen Jarus, are at least 2,000 years old and appear as wheels; stone structures in a variety of designs that have a common theme of a circle with spokes radiating inside. Many were created on lava fields and measure up to 230 feet across. The Jordan region alone contains more stone-built structures than the Nazca Lines, covering a far more extensive area, according to David Kennedy, professor of classics and ancient history at University of Western Australia.

  This new discovery was part of a long-term aerial reconnaissance project examining archeological sites across Jordan. Though Kennedy and his colleagues have found not only wheel-shaped stone structures, but stone landscapes including kites, used for funneling and killing animals; pendants, used in burial rites; and walls that go on for hundreds of feet but seem to have no purpose, they still have no clue what these structures meant to the builders thousands of years ago. The spokes within the wheel structures have not been found to align with any planetary or cosmic phenomena and don’t seem to have any larger sense or pattern, and might simply have served as places of reverence, ritual, and worship, as did other stone circles such as henge monuments in Great Britain (discussed in Chapter 7).