The year 2020, not even half-completed, will go down in history’s annals as a suffering of 365 days, with massive death and human privation across the entire globe — the Anthropocene’s first true pandemic, our annus mirabilis. With more time during the lockdown for slow deliberation and cogitation, we can also face the enduring question about early humans and the origins of artistic expression.

During my first 30 years roaming around the Santa Barbara backcountry, I paid scant heed to the intriguing rock art, but by the mid-1990s, new information arose about Stone Age rock art (painted pictographs and incised petroglyphs). The 1994 discovery of Chauvet Cave in France and the astounding rock art there shook the field, and leading French archaeologist Jean Clottes has published the site extensively (see his “What is Paleolithic Art?” and 4.1.1. Books below).

Clottes has likely seen more rock art than anyone living, and his global travels attest to how widespread the painted pictographs are, appearing on most continents. Clottes believes spirituality long predates “religion” among humans, and contends that our species should be labeled homo spiritualis not homo Faber (as tech-worshipping tool-maker types contended) or homo sapiens (wise). At one time, we preferred to be termed homo sapiens sapiens, as if any other species cared about this conceit.

There are deep connections between the human species, spirituality and artistic expressions in music, movement, speech and art. Rock art may be limited in many ways, but some of it is quite durable. Since it is also nonportable, anthropologists have to go into the field for studies in situ.

Among the “anatomically modern” humans of the Stone Ages, there are in fact a few psychological “constants,” according to Clottes, that can explain the fascinating unity of design and form spread over all the continents by at least 40,000 years ago. Dreaming and death comprise the two universal constants experienced by all humans in their individual awareness, today in our pandemic as well as during the two Stone Ages (Clottes, p. 29). While research also shows that other mammals do dream, humans are the only ones who can recollect them, have second-order thoughts about the dream-experiences, and discuss them with other humans. Sigmund Freud wrote about “The Interpretation of Dreams” (1899), yet wise indigenous elders sitting around a campfire already knew that dreams were “the royal road into the unconscious.”

Death is always a constant for those aware enough to suffer, and even the Buddha in early historic times stressed that we have to face death every day (sober advice during a pandemic!). Clottes notes that early humans must have asked themselves “where do the dead go?” when the deceased body no longer responded (had no animation). In the Australian aborigine idea of the Dreamtime, there is no distinction between our 3-D “real world” and that elsewhere or “other world” where spirits live, and other supernatural beings flourish.

Each of these constants (universal themes) involves spirit worlds, or some “otherwhere,” and if you are a postmodern like me who loves science fiction, it’s not difficult to envision other worlds that truly exist. Acceptance of the reality of “other worlds” doesn’t require traditional “religion”; it happens with animism, too, and the animistic outlook long predates religion or modern psychology’s explanations. The sophisticated Stone Age humans routinely yawned at the several worlds in their outlook and accepted their reality, yet the ubiquitous presence of dreams and the death happening right in front of them triggered spiritual feelings and many rituals.

Thus, the second “bird” pictograph shown here in d-stretch is more than an “ornithomorph”; it’s a vivid local example of extremely sophisticated transmorphic rock art. Archaeologist David Robinson asserts that this “monochrome red bird figure has a celestial pinwheeling element replacing its head and beak,” and the body and talons symbolize other forms. Robinson continues, “The pinwheeling (head) element may be a double metaphor, evoking at the same time the power associated with a celestial body and that of the datura plant.”

We observe an insectoid creature below another “bird’s” talons (no d-stretch) and from the same rock shelter, and the gnarly bug may symbolize the nasty Lowest World nunasin scuttling about in Chumash mythology. The human-handed insect might transform into a haphap or other nasty being. The “insect” is fantastical and transmorphic, and intrigues the ancient and modern imaginations. The bird eats insects and straddles the Middle and Upper Worlds, thus is likely to have been a shaman’s ‘atishwin.

Clottes thinks these spiritual concerns — e.g., what happens to the spirit of one’s mother when her corpse clearly isn’t moving or breathing? — fostered creative artistic expressions including rock art.

Thus “art” arose spontaneously (and in Neanderthals, too) — look at the ochre (red) transmorphic “bird” in the second photo — and we realize it can also be founded on a detachment from the so-called real 3-D world since there is no bird like this. While I’m not bold enough to try to define “art” here in a 900-word column, I agree with Clottes that art can be viewed as a projection onto the world surrounding humans of a strong mental image, and that colors reality before taking shape and transfiguring or re-creating it.

In short, spirituality leads to art, and the earliest geometric designs and transmorphic figures surely came from interior mental images. The geometric designs often do not occur obviously in nature, so these are painted from an “inspired” inner awareness.

Following the prevalent shamanic theory, Clottes thinks the shaman would undergo the usual stress events or situations in order to enter “trance” and then on into those other realms. The stress conditions would include involuntary starvation, injury, rhythmic pounding and tapping (music), dance, or hallucinations from jimson weed or peyote. On the shaman’s return, s/he would “recollect” designs such as chevrons, parallel lines, concentric circles, transmorphic beings, and then paint or incise them on rock shelter walls. Bear shamans were considered very powerful by the Chumash, and the incised “bear paw” petroglyphs (and pictographs) occur regularly here in our backcountry.

There are countless pictographs and a few petroglyphs scattered all over the Santa Barbara backcountry. They're not limited to the coast, such as the Santa Barbara Painted Cave site.

While I don't give locations of these fascinating art treasures strewn about our arid backcountry, if you go to older publications and follow their many photographs and descriptions, you can figure out some spots for yourselves. Campbell Grant’s “Rock Paintings of the Chumash” is a famous example, and I’ve deduced the locations of some sites from his celebrated study (see 4.1.1. Books).

Shamans may have experienced hallucinations from naturally occurring migraine headaches, too, with their “classic” auras and entoptic designs. Some Stone Age people may have been starving or injured, while others may have been mentally ill. The “visions” would include geometric designs like the chevrons and circles, and later linear designs you can detect in the lead photograph from famous Pleito Cave. Are the two “bars” phallic symbols? Speculation is rampant, certainty elusive.

Head out into the local hills, enjoy rambling and perhaps see if you can locate cave art sites. If you do, treat them with respect, do not crowd into the rock shelter or touch the ancient paint, and realize there will be no definitive answers about their “meaning.” Enjoy these startling human creations, and refrain from telling others how to find them.

4.1.1.

Books: Jean Clottes, “What is Paleolithic Art?” (University of Chicago Press, 2016); David Robinson, “Transmorphic Being, Corresponding Affect: Ontology and Rock Art in South-Central California” in Archaeology After Interpretation (ed. B. Alberti et al., 2015, p. 67); Campbell Grant, “Rock Paintings of the Chumash” (UC Press, 1965); Dan McCaslin, “Autobiography in the Anthropocene” (Lulu.com, 2019), has the de-stretched “bird” in full-page photograph (p. 41), and there are nine rock art illustrations discussed in this book.

— Dan McCaslin is the author of Stone Anchors in Antiquity and has written extensively about the local backcountry. His latest book, Autobiography in the Anthropocene, is available at Lulu.com. He serves as an archaeological site steward for the U.S. Forest Service in the Los Padres National Forest. He welcomes reader ideas for future Noozhawk columns, and can be reached at cazmania3@gmail.com. Click here to read additional columns. The opinions expressed are his own.

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