4 from ritual to theater and back: the efficacy ... - AAAARG.ORG

drama, script, theater, and performance 67
This cave is not the only one to make difficult, if not altogether
inaccessible, its performance space. These earliest theaters – or shall I
call them temples? – are hidden in the earth, lit by torch, and the
ceremonies enacted therein apparently concerned hunting–fertility. It
is clear why the two are associated: Even today, among the hunters of
the Kalahari Desert, for example, when large game is taken a brief
ceremony entreats the gods for replenishment of “so large a life” converted
into meat by the thrusting of spears. 2 Hunters do not breed
cattle – they depend on what game is available; the more prolific the
species hunted the better the hunting.
But it was not only animal fertility that Stone Age humans celebrated.
Figures, carvings, paintings, and symbols depict human fertility
as well. The most ancient are of enlarged vulvas and/or huge thighs
and buttocks (not unlike what females of some non-human primates
display during estrus), or of pendant, milkful breasts. Then come the
ubiquitous phallic symbols, many of them exaggerated replications of
the original, others more far-fetched. Associated with these human
fertility figures are dances, some of them persisting into historical
times. One has to think only of the erotic sculptings at Konarak (Orissa,
Plate 3.1 A Paleolithic cave performance space at Lascaux. (Photograph by
C. Pécha. Courtesy of Commissariat Général au Tourisme)