In prehistoric times, becoming shaman was nothing like a pleasure. Viely rock paintings of 16,000 years old, discoveries at the heart of an impressive cave of the French Pyrenees, show well how our ancestors hunter-gatherers risked their lives to carry out their ritual activities, retraces the British online media Iflscience.
In a study published on July 27 in the journal Journal of Field Archaeology, we learn that Spanish researchers have reconstructed the various obstacles encountered to join the deepest sections of the Etxeberri cave, located in Camou-Cihigue, in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, where there are magnificent frescoes representing horses, bison and human figures. Incredibly narrow passages, descents along vertical walls, crossing a cornice overlooking a fall of 16 meters (even 60 in certain places) … The cave is considered the most difficult to explore by the humans of the Paleolithic ever discovered.
Our ancestors then acted as real prehistoric speleologists. They would have fun using torches made of coniferous wood, burned bone or animal fat, dug in the rock to widen close passages thanks to flint tools found by archaeologists, or even used vegetable fiber strings to cross steep passages. Each misstep could be mortal.
Chaman version Parcoursup
One question remains: why did these humans take so many risks to leave their mark on the walls of this dangerous cave? Scientists think they have the answer.
Archaeologists have discovered that all the paintings found in the cave, made with red ocher, black charcoal and brown clay, are not of equal quality. While the most accessible part of the cave is decorated with larger and refined works of art, those present in the deeper, therefore more inaccessible sections, are less successful.
What can we deduce? For researchers, a hypothesis emerges. The first rock paintings, in the accessible sections, were above all intended for the public and were probably produced by a shaman during collective rituals. The seconds, on the other hand, could be the work of apprentices, of adolescents intended to become shamans, who had to undertake a sort of rite of passage by taking the dangerous path to reach the remote cavities of the cave.
This theory, which is difficult to verify, would make the Etxberri cave a sort of place of training, where the aspiring shamans had to risk their lives to produce their work. And it would seem that they all have more or less successful: no human remains were indeed found at the bottom of the Pyrenean cave.
