The Spirit in Human Evolution - Waldorf Research Institute

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Fig 8.20 A bison from the Cave of Marsoulas, France (after Anati). Fig 8.21 Early perspective: A detail from the Chauvet Cave, Ardeche, France, showing a group of woolly rhinos both in movement and in perspective. This panel has been dated at around 32,000 years old (pastel drawing after photographs by Jean Chauvet). Fig 8.22 These images from the La Pileta Cave in Northern Spain, show a pictogram of a horse marked with ten repeated faint double lines in brown and red colors. Above the horse is what Emmanuel Anati calls a psychogram, a symbol expressing “an outbreak of energy and emotion, expressing perhaps perceptions such as light or dark, warmth or cold, life or death, love or death” (Anati, 1991, p162). Anati includes the frequently seen rows of dots and splashes in the category of psychograms. 280
The Gravettian/Pavlovian Phase (27,000 – 20,000 BP) The following phase of prehistoric art, known as the Gravettian or Pavlovian (for Central and Eastern Europe), saw a continuation of the main themes of the Aurignacian. Animals remained the main themes in parietal art. The Gravettian period is characterized by a wide range of figural sculptures and engravings on portable objects such as stone plates or bone. The people who created these works of art were primarily mammoth hunters living on the steppes which reached from France to the Ukraine and on to Siberia. Typical for the Gravettian are a wide ranging group of female figurines referred to as “Venus” figures, though “Gaia” (Earth Mother) may be a more appropriate term. Known from Siberia to the Pyrenees, these small carved figures appear to come from a “relatively narrow time horizon centered on c.25,000 to 23,000 BP,” 50 a period noted for its particularly unstable and unpredictable environmental conditions. These Gaia figures are generally small with an emphasis on the primary and secondary sexual organs. On the whole, facial features, clothing, arms and hands are minimal. They can be long and thin and almost abstract such as these from Dolni Vestonice, reduced to torso such as the example from Trasimeno in Italy, of noticeably realistic form with slender waist and broad hips (hourglass-form) such as the carved torso from Petrovice in the Czech Republic made out of hematite, or rotund and obese like the famous Venus from the Austrian open-air site of Willendorf. What they all have in common is their relatively small size and the emphasis on the organs of reproduction and fertility. The sexuality that has sometimes been ascribed to these figures, indeed to anthropomorphic art in prehistory in general, does not really bear examination. The majority of “Venuses” emphasize the buttocks, breasts and hips, very few draw attention to the vulva or even the pubic triangle. Indeed in the whole of prehistoric art, including the so-called “vulva-engravings” there are only very few objects where the sexual organs as such appear to be a focus of attention. These include the headless bas-reliefs of Angles-surl’Anglin (Fig.8.23). In the Venus or Gaia figures the emphasis appears to focus on fecundity, though Batin records that only 17% could be described as pregnant. 51 As Bahn put it, “‘Venus’ figurines do not, therefore, seem to glorify maternity or fertility; they appear instead to be about womanhood.” Discounting for the moment the rare cases in which the figurines may actually represent individuals, such as the head at Dolni Vestonice, these representations of “womanhood” clearly embody in very compact form very broad concepts. These must include aspects of the entire life-cycle of conception, gestation, birth and nurturing. The creative, life-giving and protective qualities inherent in the eternal feminine form are brought to expression in concentrated, though monumental form. It was Henry Moore who stated that a monumental quality can be ascribed to a figure as small as your thumb if it bears such latent potential within it. The Gravettian Venuses or Gaias in many cases qualify for this description by virtue of the vast concepts they may embody in a single unified form. Much modern research has begun to unravel the layers that have obscured what is perhaps one of the oldest mythological figures, that of the Earth Goddess or Mother, the most ancient creative force in cosmology. One of the earliest and still arguably the most profound examinations of this mythological phenomenon is Robert Graves’ book The White Goddess. An understanding of the breadth of meaning implicit in the Venus/ Gaia figurines must certainly include the subtleties of Graves’ “Goddess.” _________________________ 50 Mellars, P., The Upper Paleolithic Revolution, 1994, p64. 51 Bahn G. and J. Vertut, 1987, p164. 281
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The S pirit in Human Evolution M a
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Published by: The Association of Wa
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Foreword The Evolution of a Book A
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and education studies to university
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12 in evolution and creationism by
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not the case development could not
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to expression in the developing ind
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The distinction is important. For a
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Chapter 1 Self-Knowledge, Truth and
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distinction between knower and know
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have taken from our earliest beginn
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The biologists, anthropologists and
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Later still the young person will w
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science reveals such a universe. As
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Changing Views of Change How did th
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in the twentieth century, despite t
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Psychologists and therapists are fa
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human origins amply demonstrates. T
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careers being made from the discove
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to the human being and not only as
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in breaking a human cell down into
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I have to admit that reductionist t
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species, at some age, season or yea
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The classic (because extreme but by
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phylogenetic history of humankind,
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Mind Matters The reader will have n
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iology by Ernst Mayr to describe go
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Stories Despite the universal rejec
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follows: the evolutionary stream fr
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cultures … ought to produce creat
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66 animal, by stating what the one
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This is a harsh judgment, and I wou
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I have no judgment as to what exten
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The impotence of Darwinian theory i
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etheric forces, in contrast to the
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obviously has a deep evolutionary h
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This is the very heart of the probl
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complex phenomena and having a sens
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part of the organism itself. This c
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interaction between groups of neura
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When human beings are only beginnin
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world, during which the “new cont
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external reality of the senses, but
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of such ancestors as seemed best fi
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Chapter 4 First Steps Over a period
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Fig 4.1 Time chart showing the curr
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Planet of the Apes Ten million year
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apes and thus ideal conditions for
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“lake.” It is highly likely tha
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Fig 4.5 Lucy: a reconstruction of t
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genetic processes. The organism may
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evolved rapid digestion of high pro
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other mammals who were originally t
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Therefore the possibility of one fo
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evolution? Is not this not spiritua
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to experience the separation of sub
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Chapter 5 Lucy, Flatface and Friend
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Small, Clever, and Alert If we assu
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than in the elephant expresses the
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Fig 5.1 Comparison of what several
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Fig 5.2 Comparison of australopithe
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is, the smaller animal would make m
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Bifacial Chopper Hammer Stone Disco
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Fig 5.6b Examples of pebble tools A
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Fig 5.7 Diagram showing an example
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early Homo. Australopithecines arou
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anches of trees out of sight of the
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Now it is true that, at the level o
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How did this increase come about? W
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expansion of brain size, especially
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That is exactly what the spirit doe
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to such environmental pressures, th
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Apes have the least birthing proble
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Space does not permit fuller discus
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Eternal Embryo It was that widely r
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Though infant fossils from earlier
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The degree of juvenilization seems
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Fig 5.12 A schematic representation
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that animals pass through the equiv
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What we know of human life historie
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The Nature of Imitation The actual
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Chapter 6 Working Man Making fossil
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Fig 6.1 The Trinil thighbone (right
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Fig 6.3 These fossils skulls have a
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New Dates for Out of Africa In 1989
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Whatever the dates or the route, th
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for niches. Then later in drier cyc
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As mentioned above, in apes birthin
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With the onset of the wet season, d
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Making or Just Using Fire? A “mid
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mental pictures and all the concept
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The studies show an almost perfect
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ather than the core which was disca
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individuals who made them, or rathe
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Language: a Formative Principle The
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Fig 6.10 A drawing showing a compar
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will be needed to produce the same
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More Complex Animal Communications
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extremely simple, others highly com
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overtly stated in full language, fo
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Most of these processes involve rep
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Charles Darwin was the first to poi
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Language and Culture As we have see
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Chapter 7 The Ancients: an Overview
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Not only have the remains of some 3
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Fig 7.3 A range of fossil skulls in
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The Levallois Technique A quite dif
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immediate environment. We experienc
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Darwinian psychology or socio-biolo
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The Archaics: refers to hominids in
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Paleolithic cultures. At High Lodge
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Page 233 and 234: The Impact of the Ancients on Their
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Page 239 and 240: Chapter 8 The Moderns Over the last
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Page 257 and 258: might have meant, it is useful to t
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Page 263 and 264: paintings in the Chauvet Cave in th
Page 265 and 266: Fig 8.11 The “portrait” carving
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Page 269 and 270: The Fall But this emancipation was
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Page 273 and 274: Fig 8.13 A collection of handprints
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Page 277 and 278: Fig 8.16 A detail from the Panel of
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Page 283 and 284: A C B D Fig 8.25 Venus or Gaia figu
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Page 287 and 288: Fig 8.30 The shaft scene from Lasca
Page 289 and 290: B C A D Fig 8.33 A collection of ca
Page 291 and 292: A B C D Fig 8.34 A selection of eng
Page 293 and 294: Is Not Art a Construct of the Moder
Page 295 and 296: We have absolutely no way of knowin
Page 297 and 298: however they were distinguishing th
Page 299 and 300: Fig 8.38 Map showing the areas of S
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Page 303 and 304: species, as I have shown in the exa
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Page 307 and 308: too did hominids. The higher, or mo
Page 309 and 310: Chapter 9 Postscript Day by day imp
Page 311 and 312: Glossary Abbreviations: BP = before
Page 313 and 314: flora: the plant life in a given ec
Page 315 and 316: Moderns: informal term referring to
Page 317 and 318: Bibliography Further Reading The li
Page 319 and 320: Edelman, G.M., 1992, Bright Air, Br
Page 321 and 322: www.modernhumanorigins.com a very u
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