Evidence of Ancient Cave Music by Early Humans

A darkened theater, a little church, a massive cathedral--these are some of the enclosed places that people commonly use to capture reverberating sounds and achieve an engulfing vibratory experience initiated by musical activity. Archaeological evidence shows that the yearning for such an experience goes back to Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) people, who performed music ceremonies in natural enclosures, caves.

In the famous cave of Les Trois-Frères, in Ariège, France, there is a rock painting, dated between 15,000 and 13,000 years ago, of a part-human, part-bison figure, variously described by scholars as a sorcerer, a magician, or a shaman, who appears to be performing music among wild animals. He seems to be singing, dancing, clapping his hands, and playing a musical instrument, usually described as a musical bow but also, because it is near the figure's mouth, as possibly a flute. If the instrument is a musical bow, it is similar to one still used by the southern African San (Bushmen). Some scholars interpret the figure as a man who is dressed in animal skins and horns and who is performing a music-based ritual that may be intended to have a magic effect on one or more of the animals, perhaps a mythic capture of an animal's spirit.

Other scholars, utilizing a neuropsychological approach, interpret such composite creatures as shamans partially transformed, during their music-induced trances, into animals. Shamanic hallucinations are hinted at in other types of Paleolithic rock art as well. For example, in many paintings and engravings, animals seem to float on the rock surface and to be independent of a real-world landscape. Often the animals exist without regard to true relative size, mammoths, for example, being smaller than horses. Animals also consort in unnatural groupings, horses and bison, for example, being placed together. Such illustrations do not portray real animals in a real landscape. They are more like visions of underworld spirits having supernatural powers that could benefit humans, especially the entranced shamans themselves.