Startling Discovery: The First Human Ritual

[frigidmagi]

LiveScience.com

[quote]A startling discovery of 70,000-year-old artifacts and a python's head carved of stone appears to represent the first known human rituals.

Scientists had thought human intelligence had not evolved the capacity to perform group rituals until perhaps 40,000 years ago.

But inside a cave in remote hills in Kalahari Desert of Botswana, archeologists found the stone snake [image] that was carved long ago. It is as tall as a man and 20 feet long.

"You could see the mouth and eyes of the snake. It looked like a real python," said Sheila Coulson of the University of Oslo. "The play of sunlight over the indentations gave them the appearance of snake skin. At night, the firelight gave one the feeling that the snake was actually moving."

The bigger surprise

More significant, when Coulson and her colleagues dug a test pit near they stone figure, they found spearheads made of stone that had to have been brought to the cave from hundreds of miles away [image]. The spearheads were burned in what only could be described as some sort of ritual, the scientists conclude.

"Stone age people took these colorful spearheads, brought them to the cave, and finished carving them there," Coulson said today. "Only the red spearheads were burned. It was a ritual destruction of artifacts. There was no sign of normal habitation. No ordinary tools were found at the site."

The discovery was made in a remote region of Botswana called Tsodilo Hills, the only uplifted area for miles around. It is known to modern Sanpeople as the "Mountains of the Gods" and the "Rock that Whispers." Their legend has it that mankind descended from the python, and the ancient, arid streambeds around the hills are said to have been created by the python as it circled the hills in its ceaseless search for water.

That legend made the discovery of the stone python all the more amazing.

"Our find means that humans were more organized and had the capacity for abstract thinking at a much earlier point in history than we have previously assumed," Coulson said. "All of the indications suggest that Tsodilo has been known to mankind for almost 100,000 years as a very special place in the pre-historic landscape."

Yet another surprise

The scientists found a secret chamber behind the python carving. Worn areas indicate it's been used over the years.

"The shaman, who is still a very important person in San culture, could have kept himself hidden in that secret chamber," Coulson explained. "He would have had a good view of the inside of the cave while remaining hidden himself. When he spoke from his hiding place, it could have seemed as if the voice came from the snake itself. The shaman would have been able to control everything. It was perfect.â€

[Mayabird]

Awesome.

This would be placed very soon after the Toba supervolcano eruption, which occured about 73,000 years ago. In case you're not familiar with the Toba bottleneck theory it states that the impact of the eruption of Mount Toba (which casued a six year volcanic winter, a thousand-ish year Little Ice Age, and deforested southeast Asia) reduced human populations down to a few bands of survivors, less than 10,000 and maybe as few as 1000. It would account for our very low genetic diversity and the sudden rise of symbolic thought and trade afterwards. Before Toba, people seemed to use mostly local materials and there are few examples of art. Afterwards, there's suddenly art, materials being carried hundreds of miles from their origins, and this.

[Comrade Tortoise]

*just sits back and looks smug*

[The Duchess of Zeon]

It also shows the incredible staying power of human myth, I'd add. Think of the requirements for forming a cultural continuity over 70,000 years in duration, between this people and the modern San people (or bushmen, if you know them by that time). This has influence in other areas, for instance, Jungian theory of the collective unconscious. They had the same sacred animals as a modern human group which is been in that area up to the present.

It's also interesting since Pythons feature quite heavily in most pre-Aryan religions in Europe. When one reaches back for the most extreme and oldest roots of human religion there is often a snake there.

[Comrade Tortoise]

Well, they are important in many ecosystems, and thus would have been very important in the lives of a lot of cultures the world over. It only makes sense that they would be common in human myth

[Josh]

Highly prevalent as Ben says, non-mammalian, and occasionally dangerous. It's the latter part that I think makes them compelling to the primitive mythmaker, along with their ability to penetrate any sort of primitive dwelling.

[Comrade Tortoise]

Highly prevalent as Ben says, non-mammalian, and occasionally dangerous. It's the latter part that I think makes them compelling to the primitive mythmaker, along with their ability to penetrate any sort of primitive dwelling.

Oh certainly. What is interesting is the different roles snakes take in various mythologies. In south america, africa, as well as australia, snakes are associated with life, water(thus life) and birth. This probably has to do with shedding and how a post-shedding snake is seemingly reborn.

In india, cobras are thought of as reincarnations of important people.

It isnt always bad. Really it is only judeo-christianity as far as I can tell which views snakes in an especially negative light.