Prehistoric cave paintings across the continents have similar
geometric patterns not because early humans were learning to draw like
Paleolithic pre-schoolers, but because they were high on drugs, and
their brains—like ours—have a biological predisposition to "see" certain
patterns, especially during consciousness altering states.
This thesis—that humanity’s earliest artists were not just reeling
due to mind-altering activities, but deliberately sought those elevated
states and gave greater meaning to those common visions—is the
contention of a new paper by an international research team. Researchers Tom Froese, Alexander Woodward and Takashi Ikegami from Tokyo recently
published a comprehensive study of over 40,000 years worth of cave paintings and found some pretty
telling patterns. The spiral-like and labyrinthine designs that pop up
in paintings from locations that are thousands of miles away from each
other didn't just pop up by coincidence. Since these patterns are
consistent with those that many humans see after taking hallucinogenic
drugs, the scientists think that ancient cavemen had more in common than
previously thought.
Specifically
known as "Turing instabilities," these hallucinations are common after
ingesting a number of different plants with psychoactive properties. The
patterns resemble "neural patterns" that mimic the structural makeup of
the brain and are as meaningful as those that initially experienced
them perceived them to be. "'When these visual patterns are seen during
altered states of consciousness they are directly experienced as highly
charged with significance," the researchers suggest. "In other words,
the patterns are directly perceived as somehow meaningful and thereby
offer themselves as salient motifs for use in rituals."
The Froese et. al. thesis intriguingly explores the “biologically embodied mind,”
which they contend gave rise to similarities in Paleolithic art across
the continents dating back 40,000 years, and can also be seen in the
body painting patterns dating back even further, according to recent archeological discoveries.
At its core, this theory challenges the long-held notion that the
earliest art and artists were merely trying to draw the external world.
Instead, it sees cave art as a deliberate mix of rituals inducing
altered states for participants, coupled with brain chemistry that
elicits certain visual patterns for humanity’s early chroniclers.
“The prevalence of certain geometric patterns in the symbolic
material culture of many prehistoric cultures, starting shortly after
the emergence of our biological species and continuing in some
indigenous cultures until today, is explained in terms of the
characteristic contents of biologically determined hallucinatory
experience,” the researchers hypothesize.
Of course, you can’t just posit that cave painters were doing
prehistoric drugs without raising a few questions, such as why they
gravitated—and kept gravitating—to the same kinds of shapes? The
scientists start by citing decades-old research exploring drug use in
indigenous cultures that suggest some hallucinations are induced by the
brain seeing “neural” patterns—literally the cellular structure of
brains.
“Researchers also generally claim that the geometric hallucinations
experienced by the subject are mental representations of these neural
patterns,” they write. “However, while these neural models are capable
of reproducing some of the geometric patterns that are found in
prehistoric art and non-ordinary visual experiences, their range remains
severely limited.”
So brain biology plays a role, but it’s not enough to account for
ancient pop art taste and trends! The brain might be generating the same
kinds of patterns, but the early artist-shamans went further. Like many
consciousness-exploring humans today, apparently they not only liked
what they saw and created rituals to inspire their art, but they also
believed that what they saw was more special than than the grind of
their daily lives.
“We speculate that the self-sustaining dynamics may account for why
these geometric hallucinations were experienced as more significant than
other phenomena, and that at the same time their underlying neural
dynamics may have served to mediate and facilitate a form of imaginary
sense-making that is not bound to immediate surroundings,” the
scientists say.
Translated, that knotty sentence comes down to this: The cave
painters had rituals that involved taking drugs (undoubtedly plants)
that they consumed in a frenzy to get to this creative state. This
behavior and the same results were noted by 1960s-era academics studying
the effects of peyote, a hallucinogenic cactus found in North
America.
“The non-ordinary visual experiences were often characterized by
similar kinds of abstract geometric patterns, which he classified into
four categories of form constants: (1) gratings, lattices, fretworks,
filigrees, honeycombs, and checkerboards; (2) cobwebs; (3) tunnels and
funnels, alleys, cones, vessels; and (4) spirals,” they write, citing
peyote research. “Intriguingly, these form constants turned out to
resemble many of the abstract motifs that are often associated with
prehistoric art from around the world, including Paleolithic cave art in
Europe."
This isn't
the first time we've heard that hallucinogenic drugs may have played a
role in early cave paintings—though it's the most scientifically
rigorous evidence yet. A couple of years ago, a 6,000-year-old cave
painting in Spain
ignited a small buzz
after scientist identified what appeared to be images of psychedelic
mushrooms in one of the murals. This finding was consistent with
earlier hypotheses drawn from similar paintings
that suggested cavemen knew about the special powers some plants
possessed and possibly used those plants to inspire some of the earliest
works of art known to man.
But again,
the scientific rigor of this latest study is what's crucial here. Not
only did they connect known patterns from ancient cave paintings to
modern day research on hallucinations, but they also mapped the
projected hallucinations to particular regions of the brain that
would've been active after taking such drugs. The study is based on
the founding notions of neurophenomenology,
which is the study of the relationship between brain functioning and
human experience. While we can't exactly do a brain scan of what's
inside these 10,000 year old heads, we can find a common link
between the images that came out of those heads 10,000 years ago and
images that we still see in art produced under the influence of
hallucinogenic drugs. Those paintings teach us a lot about humanity
through the ages. They teach us not only that we've always loved art,
but that we've always loved drugs, too. [
Adaptive Behavior via
Daily Mail]
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