Published September 24, 2016

Aurignacian and Solutrean Cultures – Origins of the Neolithic
By Lucy M. Warner
September 24, 2016


In doing Internet Wikipedia research on the earliest tamed or domesticated horses, I found the statement in the Wikipedia article on the Aurignacian culture – which can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurignacian -- that those famous cave drawings of horses and other animals were not present in the early Eastern European sites with other classic Aurignacian style tools and figurines. Those early Aurignacian artifacts were found at the 43,000 BP mark in Eastern Europe, and didn’t emerge until 40 to 36,000 BP in Western Europe. The cave drawings were first found in France and Spain and dated to around 35,000 BP.

The writer of the Wiki Aurignacian article states that cave drawings first appeared “during the Solutrean,” which would put them in the 20,000 BP range, much later than those in France. That makes me think that either flat drawings were not conceptualized and produced at all until 36,000 BP, that the dating we have on the two areas is not reliable, or that the creative genius who came up with the idea of a flat depiction was a native of France. I say that because in one of my two Anthropology courses – one was about kinship and marriage customs and the other was about the physical and technological characteristics of distinctive tribes around the world -- we were told that in one newly contacted Native American tribe in South America, the people were unable to recognize the images in human photographs as being people, much less their own family members, which in that case they were.

They didn’t have the ability to interpret a flat representation as being the same as a three dimensional one. The fact that, once they were instructed on how to see the similarities they had no further problem, indicates to me that this is a cultural matter and not one of brain development as we in our conceited times tend to think. The earliest cultivation of grain, for instance, was found around the same time, some 13,000 BP in the Middle East, by archaeologists in several different parts of the Eurasian area, but once it popped up it began to appear all over the area, and at about the same time in North America, too. (Could there have been communication across the Beringea region at the time? The dugout canoe is an intuitive idea, it seems to me. Log floats, make hole to sit in.)

Of course, the human creature had been “hunters and gatherers” for a million or more years, and sooner or later someone – almost certainly a woman – would notice that where the grindstone was kept there tended to be new little grain plants growing up. It’s not that the concept is that hard to understand once it is NOTICED, but until that time nobody had thought of it. It’s not about IQ, but about paying attention and “thinking outside the box.” Most ideas are borrowed rather than originated. (In some societies where the people are behind the rest of the world, it is specifically because that kind of thinking will quickly get you punished. “Don’t talk back!!”) Unfortunately, that’s true in the classrooms also. Those kids who are constantly distracted and won’t sit still are very likely to do poorly, and so are those whose teachers are too doctrinaire or otherwise "strict."

Contact with outsiders is the key to most cultural progress, after all. These very “conservative” cultures tend to be groups which have been isolated and which discourage uppity behavior in the ranks. That includes our Appalachian Mountains of America, where the old ways of living and solving problems were continued into the 1930s and beyond. One of the more interesting things that was kept from "the old country" of Celtic Scotland and Ireland is snake handling, as a form of religious worship. There is a great series of books called “Foxfire” which relates oral traditions on how to do everything from making soap and hominy to music and the arts. Those “mountaineers” were almost totally self-sufficient. Go to: “https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxfire_(magazine)#Other_books.”

So, enough of all that. Around 35,000 BP, flat drawings appeared which were, in one part of South Western Europe at least, amazingly depictive, accurate and beautiful. I’ve never been there and I almost certainly won’t go now, but seeing those caves has been one of my greatest desires; and the development of people and cultures as we know them today is one of my strongest interests. The first known musical instrument, a flute with five finger holes made from a vulture bone, was found with Aurignacian artifacts in Southern Germany and dated at 40,000 BP. Doing studies like this one is to me an irresistible romantic quest, and a form of worship. This is the human spirit at work.

To see the paintings to which I am referring, go to http://www.vectorstock.com/royalty-free-vector/ancient-cave-drawings-vector-617747. The website http://www.aquilapre.com.au/History.html on Google is also excellent. For an article dedicated to the bone flutes, go to http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/06/090624-bone-flute-oldest-instrument.html.