WEBVTT 00:00:06.646 --> 00:00:08.423 We live in a world 00:00:08.423 --> 00:00:11.907 that is absolutely infused with religion and spirituality, 00:00:11.907 --> 00:00:15.018 sometimes even to the point where maybe we don't recognize it. 00:00:15.018 --> 00:00:18.696 It affects everything from something as simple as the holidays we celebrate, 00:00:18.696 --> 00:00:20.709 to the names that we give our children, 00:00:20.709 --> 00:00:24.000 to something much more really saddening and sort of disheartening, 00:00:24.017 --> 00:00:27.346 which is finding a conflict on the other side of the world somewhere. 00:00:27.346 --> 00:00:28.900 I mean, any given day, 00:00:28.900 --> 00:00:33.042 somewhere somebody is fighting about spirituality and religion. 00:00:34.118 --> 00:00:37.614 So, let's take a look at how this all plays out then on a global scale. 00:00:37.614 --> 00:00:41.230 Depending on whom you talk to, there's about 20 major world religions - 00:00:41.230 --> 00:00:45.672 so, these are ones that are in more than one country, more than one continent. 00:00:45.672 --> 00:00:47.744 Add to that hundreds of belief systems, 00:00:47.744 --> 00:00:52.733 and out of the 7 billion people who live on this planet at this point in time, 00:00:52.733 --> 00:00:57.313 just under 6 billion profess to follow some sort of faith. 00:00:57.313 --> 00:01:01.349 Now, I want you to try and imagine a world with no religion. 00:01:01.349 --> 00:01:02.587 What would it look like? 00:01:03.247 --> 00:01:05.119 Because that is the reality, 00:01:05.119 --> 00:01:08.899 is if we go far enough back into our own deep history, 00:01:08.899 --> 00:01:12.620 there was a time, maybe not with Homo sapiens, maybe further back, 00:01:12.620 --> 00:01:15.117 where we didn't have any religion. 00:01:15.117 --> 00:01:17.530 So, as you can see in the slide behind me, 00:01:17.530 --> 00:01:20.434 that's a very simplified evolutionary chart, 00:01:20.434 --> 00:01:23.457 but it's a question that people in my field, palaeoanthropology, 00:01:23.481 --> 00:01:26.521 have asked: How far back does the religious impulse go? 00:01:26.521 --> 00:01:29.775 And how would you get at that? It's incredibly subjective, right? 00:01:29.775 --> 00:01:32.630 So, obviously Homo sapiens at the top. 00:01:32.630 --> 00:01:35.661 We know that Homo sapiens have religion, that's us. 00:01:35.661 --> 00:01:38.834 But, what about heidelbergensis before us, and erectus, 00:01:38.834 --> 00:01:40.984 and all the way back to Homo hails. 00:01:40.984 --> 00:01:43.870 You know, Homo habilis 2.5 million years ago, 00:01:43.870 --> 00:01:47.780 they're considered to be a good candidate for the original toolmakers. 00:01:47.780 --> 00:01:51.953 And you might wonder - tools, religion, what do these potentially have in common? 00:01:51.953 --> 00:01:57.727 But, if you actually think about what a cognitive leap making tools is, 00:01:57.727 --> 00:01:59.605 there are some things in common. 00:01:59.605 --> 00:02:02.538 For instance, when you're actually making a tool - 00:02:02.538 --> 00:02:06.917 so you've got one piece of stone and you've got another to shape it - 00:02:06.917 --> 00:02:09.491 you have to hold a mental template in your head 00:02:09.491 --> 00:02:12.029 of what that finished product is going to look like. 00:02:12.029 --> 00:02:14.840 And also what we find with these early toolmakers, 00:02:14.840 --> 00:02:19.648 is that they actually were exhibiting forethought and pre-planning. 00:02:19.648 --> 00:02:22.513 They were potentially taking a nice piece of flint with them, 00:02:22.523 --> 00:02:25.411 along the landscape, so that when their current tool ran out, 00:02:25.414 --> 00:02:28.561 or got down to kind of a nub, they could make themselves a new one. 00:02:28.561 --> 00:02:31.756 So, there are some researchers in my field, 00:02:31.756 --> 00:02:34.065 especially a fellow by the name of Thomas Wynn, 00:02:34.065 --> 00:02:37.999 has teamed up with a neuropsychologist, by the name of Frederick Coolidge, 00:02:38.019 --> 00:02:41.470 and the two of them have talked about something called working memory. 00:02:41.470 --> 00:02:45.954 And so, it's not one spot in the brain 00:02:45.954 --> 00:02:48.991 so much as sort of several functions that kind of work together, 00:02:48.991 --> 00:02:52.827 that allow things like mental templates and allow things like pre-planning. 00:02:52.827 --> 00:02:55.920 Now, they've made the argument that even on a very basic level 00:02:55.920 --> 00:02:58.555 chimps probably do have some working memory as well. 00:02:58.577 --> 00:03:00.385 Of course, they can also use tools, 00:03:00.385 --> 00:03:02.037 they're just not very good at - 00:03:02.061 --> 00:03:04.520 Basically, they'll take their stick, 00:03:04.521 --> 00:03:07.870 they'll rip off the leaves, they'll use it to dip some termites out, 00:03:07.870 --> 00:03:09.355 but then they tend to dump it. 00:03:09.355 --> 00:03:11.852 That's pretty much it, they're done with that tool. 00:03:11.872 --> 00:03:15.388 So, there's not a lot of examples of chimps reusing tools 00:03:15.388 --> 00:03:18.261 or sort of behaving in exactly the same way 00:03:18.261 --> 00:03:20.608 as what we see with Homo habilis. 00:03:20.608 --> 00:03:24.166 But with that as sort of the base and that idea of working memory, 00:03:24.166 --> 00:03:26.294 they've then sort of extrapolated that 00:03:26.294 --> 00:03:30.413 and said, let's talk about something that they call enhanced working memory. 00:03:30.413 --> 00:03:32.941 And so enhanced working memory - 00:03:32.941 --> 00:03:34.962 basically there's several components to it. 00:03:34.962 --> 00:03:38.443 This is sort of taking that, and then basically putting it on steroids. 00:03:38.443 --> 00:03:41.942 So, not just that basic mental template and pre-planning, 00:03:41.942 --> 00:03:44.284 but now let's add to that the ability to envision 00:03:44.286 --> 00:03:45.989 and work with abstract concepts. 00:03:45.989 --> 00:03:48.062 Let's talk about mental time travel. 00:03:48.062 --> 00:03:50.445 Now, what I mean when I say mental time travel, 00:03:50.445 --> 00:03:53.027 is the ability to think about past and future. 00:03:53.027 --> 00:03:54.952 These are actually very unusual things. 00:03:54.952 --> 00:03:56.516 We take them for granted, 00:03:56.516 --> 00:04:00.329 but they're not something that necessarily other species can conceive of. 00:04:00.329 --> 00:04:03.571 I mean obviously your dog seems to remember about going to the vet, 00:04:03.571 --> 00:04:05.887 which is sort of an interesting thing, 00:04:05.887 --> 00:04:09.782 but you know he doesn't have a strong sense of clear episodic memories 00:04:09.782 --> 00:04:11.169 of having been to the vet 00:04:11.172 --> 00:04:14.036 so much as this is a bad thing when I go into this building, 00:04:14.053 --> 00:04:17.930 it smells a certain way - and, you know, this is danger basically flashing. 00:04:17.930 --> 00:04:21.652 So, the clear ability to also say, with mental time travel, 00:04:21.676 --> 00:04:24.301 "When I tried making a tool using this material before, 00:04:24.301 --> 00:04:25.615 this didn't work very well, 00:04:25.620 --> 00:04:27.766 so, I'm going to do it differently this time." 00:04:27.766 --> 00:04:31.376 Or, "I saw this person in the next hunter-gatherer group over do something. 00:04:31.376 --> 00:04:33.551 That worked really nicely, I want to do that." 00:04:33.566 --> 00:04:36.855 All those kinds of things, as well as being able to think forwards: 00:04:36.879 --> 00:04:39.102 so, pre-planning, but even at a greater degree. 00:04:39.102 --> 00:04:43.150 Imagination, because again the ability to sort of conceive of something, 00:04:43.150 --> 00:04:45.605 like a mental template when you're making a tool, 00:04:45.629 --> 00:04:47.887 relies on us being able to visualize something 00:04:47.887 --> 00:04:50.376 that doesn't actually exist at that moment in time - 00:04:50.377 --> 00:04:52.526 it's more, again, that we're looking forward. 00:04:52.526 --> 00:04:55.919 And then, of course, the capacity to understand and manipulate symbols. 00:04:55.919 --> 00:04:59.312 And, so, this is where we get to things like language and to art. 00:04:59.312 --> 00:05:02.751 So, you probably saw I said the "God spot," 00:05:02.751 --> 00:05:05.199 what we're talking about there is that, 00:05:05.199 --> 00:05:08.455 certainly starting in probably about, I think, in the 1990's, 00:05:08.455 --> 00:05:10.378 once we, especially neuropsychologists, 00:05:10.378 --> 00:05:12.923 once they had their fancy MRI's and other brain scans, 00:05:12.923 --> 00:05:14.879 they really started looking to see 00:05:14.879 --> 00:05:19.463 if there was one spot in the brain that could be associated with God. 00:05:19.463 --> 00:05:21.826 And they even actually did some study 00:05:21.827 --> 00:05:24.168 where they actually had the people in the MRI, 00:05:24.168 --> 00:05:26.878 and they were like, okay, we want you to think about 00:05:26.884 --> 00:05:29.932 your vision of God or faith or spirituality while you're in here, 00:05:29.956 --> 00:05:32.243 while we see if we can map the areas of the brain 00:05:32.243 --> 00:05:34.292 that light up while we're doing that. 00:05:34.311 --> 00:05:36.922 And they kept getting one spot that was lighting up, 00:05:36.936 --> 00:05:40.332 and so it was this huge, like, we did it, aha, we found the God spot. 00:05:40.332 --> 00:05:43.829 Turns out it's the spot that lights up when people are concentrating. 00:05:43.829 --> 00:05:46.489 (Laughter) 00:05:46.489 --> 00:05:48.634 So, we definitely know where they concentrate, 00:05:48.634 --> 00:05:51.677 but, of course, everybody concentrated on thinking about God, 00:05:51.694 --> 00:05:53.039 so, that was the problem. 00:05:53.039 --> 00:05:57.195 But I think really what neuropsychologists and what people working on evolution 00:05:57.195 --> 00:06:00.168 are working towards, is the idea there's probably not one spot. 00:06:00.190 --> 00:06:01.925 Similar to enhanced working memory, 00:06:01.925 --> 00:06:04.023 there's actually several parts of the brain 00:06:04.023 --> 00:06:06.206 that are all kind of working together 00:06:06.206 --> 00:06:09.507 to create that space and those types of abilities. 00:06:10.784 --> 00:06:12.585 So, is it all in the lobes? 00:06:12.585 --> 00:06:14.466 Behind me on the slide what you'll see 00:06:14.466 --> 00:06:18.092 is that on the left-hand side we have a Homo erectus, 00:06:18.092 --> 00:06:20.412 so that's 1.65 million years ago. 00:06:20.412 --> 00:06:23.255 And then on the right-hand side we have a Homo sapiens skull 00:06:23.271 --> 00:06:25.341 from about 20,000 years ago in Germany. 00:06:25.350 --> 00:06:28.589 20,000 years ago in Germany, their skulls were identical to ours - 00:06:28.601 --> 00:06:30.629 I just thought it might be cooler 00:06:30.641 --> 00:06:33.624 to use a sort of fossil skull for Homo sapiens. 00:06:33.624 --> 00:06:35.560 Now, what I want you to look at though, 00:06:35.560 --> 00:06:38.645 is that when you see the profile, 00:06:38.645 --> 00:06:42.214 erectus has that nice big brow ridge we think of, 00:06:42.214 --> 00:06:44.039 but you'll notice behind that, 00:06:44.039 --> 00:06:48.225 it actually slopes at quite a sharp angle backwards. 00:06:48.225 --> 00:06:50.888 Now look at that beautiful, big, old forehead 00:06:50.888 --> 00:06:53.591 on the Homo sapiens skull. 00:06:53.591 --> 00:06:55.693 Those are the frontal lobes. 00:06:57.742 --> 00:07:02.445 This is pretty much where all of our higher reasoning comes from, 00:07:02.445 --> 00:07:04.632 from those spots right there. 00:07:04.641 --> 00:07:07.318 You know, thinking about it, what's so interesting 00:07:07.325 --> 00:07:09.390 is that while we sit here, in this room, 00:07:09.390 --> 00:07:10.620 having this conversation, 00:07:10.620 --> 00:07:13.715 you're using those frontal parts of your lobes, aren't you? 00:07:13.715 --> 00:07:17.438 But the question that's come up is: 00:07:17.438 --> 00:07:21.173 It can physically be there, but is it maybe more about wiring? 00:07:21.173 --> 00:07:24.271 Not just about size, but then also about how is it wired, 00:07:24.271 --> 00:07:27.011 how are the neural pathways moving. 00:07:27.011 --> 00:07:29.358 So, this is where the scholars I mentioned, 00:07:29.358 --> 00:07:31.223 Wynn and Coolidge working together, 00:07:31.223 --> 00:07:35.950 have made the argument that they believe that the truly modern thought, 00:07:35.950 --> 00:07:39.614 that ability [which includes] imagination, mental time travel, 00:07:39.614 --> 00:07:41.647 they believe it started with modern humans. 00:07:41.647 --> 00:07:44.575 So, what do I mean when I say modern humans? 00:07:44.575 --> 00:07:46.274 About 200,000 years ago, 00:07:46.285 --> 00:07:48.639 we've been able to find the earliest skeletons, 00:07:48.639 --> 00:07:51.854 that we currently have of what we would call fully modern humans. 00:07:51.854 --> 00:07:55.209 That means that their skeletons were identical to ours, 00:07:55.209 --> 00:07:57.897 and their brain size was exactly the same. 00:07:57.897 --> 00:07:59.773 Now, that doesn't mean though, 00:07:59.773 --> 00:08:02.597 that they were actually using all of the abilities we had, 00:08:02.597 --> 00:08:05.358 and this is something that is a particular area of mine 00:08:05.359 --> 00:08:08.371 that I find really fascinating, as well, trying to figure out: 00:08:08.371 --> 00:08:10.058 When did they become us? 00:08:10.058 --> 00:08:12.879 Because we're more than just the brain size and the body, 00:08:12.894 --> 00:08:15.151 it's also about how we use that brain. 00:08:15.151 --> 00:08:18.405 And what's so fascinating about the early humans in Africa, 00:08:18.405 --> 00:08:22.736 is that, for probably about the first 80,000 years or so, 00:08:22.736 --> 00:08:24.613 they're not really doing much different 00:08:24.613 --> 00:08:26.899 than the ancestor species that came before them. 00:08:26.899 --> 00:08:28.913 They're making really nice tools, 00:08:28.913 --> 00:08:31.713 surviving quite well, making good use of their landscape, 00:08:31.713 --> 00:08:33.926 all of those types of things are in place. 00:08:33.926 --> 00:08:38.876 But what we're not seeing is those kinds of behaviours that make us go: They're us. 00:08:38.876 --> 00:08:42.447 And then, suddenly, around 120,000 years ago, 00:08:42.447 --> 00:08:46.069 what starts happening is we suddenly start finding 00:08:46.069 --> 00:08:48.412 what we call symbolic behaviour. 00:08:48.412 --> 00:08:50.032 And what we mean when we say that 00:08:50.056 --> 00:08:52.777 are things that we would consider to be non-utilitarian. 00:08:52.801 --> 00:08:59.810 So, not something that's useful at a very 1:1 ratio level of survival, 00:08:59.834 --> 00:09:01.896 something to keep you warm at night, 00:09:01.896 --> 00:09:03.980 something to eat, something to shelter you. 00:09:04.391 --> 00:09:06.152 We start finding burials. 00:09:07.098 --> 00:09:10.536 120,000 years ago is the oldest burials we know of in the world, 00:09:10.536 --> 00:09:14.465 and not just burials but burials with grave goods in them. 00:09:14.465 --> 00:09:18.901 So, in this case, what we're talking about at the 120,000 mark - 00:09:18.901 --> 00:09:22.336 they were finding a few marine shells that have perforations, 00:09:22.336 --> 00:09:25.734 and some of the perforations look like they probably occurred naturally, 00:09:25.734 --> 00:09:27.903 some may have been made by tools, 00:09:27.903 --> 00:09:33.202 but the kicker is that those little holes in the shells have wear marks on them, 00:09:33.202 --> 00:09:36.011 which means that they were being worn in some fashion. 00:09:36.011 --> 00:09:39.232 Now, there's nothing about doing that that is remotely useful 00:09:39.232 --> 00:09:42.251 for again heat, shelter, food. 00:09:42.251 --> 00:09:44.962 So, what's going on? What's happened? What's changed? 00:09:44.962 --> 00:09:47.545 And this is kind of the story going forward, 00:09:47.545 --> 00:09:50.954 and this is again where Wynn and Coolidge have made this argument, 00:09:50.954 --> 00:09:52.516 and other scholars have as well, 00:09:52.516 --> 00:09:55.960 that modern humans is where that big change takes place. 00:09:56.400 --> 00:10:00.407 They've made the argument potentially even that the change started here, 00:10:00.407 --> 00:10:03.323 but that some sort of genetic mutation or something else 00:10:03.347 --> 00:10:05.538 happened around 40-50,000 years ago, 00:10:05.538 --> 00:10:08.534 and that that was when truly modern behaviour, 00:10:08.534 --> 00:10:12.517 the full suite of behaviours that we associate with being modern, 00:10:12.517 --> 00:10:17.431 music and mathematics and the ability to envision things that aren't there, 00:10:17.431 --> 00:10:20.348 and all of these things which are very much about us, 00:10:20.372 --> 00:10:23.633 and, of course, full language, communication, all that kind of thing. 00:10:23.633 --> 00:10:26.588 They see it as happening around 40-50,00 years ago, 00:10:26.588 --> 00:10:29.490 which coincides with when modern humans left Africa. 00:10:29.490 --> 00:10:31.691 Maybe it might have been as early as 60,000, 00:10:31.701 --> 00:10:34.050 so somewhere in that 40-60,000 range, 00:10:34.050 --> 00:10:36.045 is when modern humans left Africa 00:10:36.065 --> 00:10:38.756 and basically went out and populated the Old World. 00:10:38.756 --> 00:10:42.780 Now, I'm personally going to talk to you tonight about the Ice Age in Europe, 00:10:42.784 --> 00:10:45.887 and it's not that there weren't interesting things being done 00:10:45.887 --> 00:10:48.649 by modern humans who went to other parts of the Old World. 00:10:48.673 --> 00:10:51.394 In Asia and Australia, there's lots of fascinating stuff, 00:10:51.407 --> 00:10:53.897 but I study the Ice Age, so it's what I know best. 00:10:53.897 --> 00:10:57.451 So, that's where we're going to stick with, looking at the Ice Age, today. 00:10:57.465 --> 00:11:00.231 When it comes to Europe, let's set the scene a little bit. 00:11:00.231 --> 00:11:02.364 Obviously, we've got an Ice Age going on, 00:11:02.388 --> 00:11:05.507 and an Ice Age is not static by any means. 00:11:05.518 --> 00:11:07.859 We certainly have movement of the glacier sheets, 00:11:07.859 --> 00:11:11.487 but overall definitely colder, an icy environment, 00:11:11.487 --> 00:11:13.729 but very rich in animals as well. 00:11:13.729 --> 00:11:15.262 Huge herds of bison and mammoth 00:11:15.271 --> 00:11:17.425 and all these other things on the landscape. 00:11:17.425 --> 00:11:20.220 So, lots of things to eat, which was kind of a pull factor 00:11:20.236 --> 00:11:22.165 that probably kept modern humans there. 00:11:22.165 --> 00:11:26.231 They show up in Europe somewhere around 40,000, even 45,000, in some spots, 00:11:26.231 --> 00:11:28.010 and they spread out around there, 00:11:28.010 --> 00:11:33.065 and this again coincides with what we call the creative explosion, sometimes. 00:11:33.089 --> 00:11:35.888 It's not that they weren't doing interesting things before, 00:11:35.912 --> 00:11:38.527 but this is when it starts getting really interesting. 00:11:38.532 --> 00:11:41.515 This is when we start finding a lot of symbolic materials, 00:11:41.515 --> 00:11:45.806 like portable art pieces and lots of jewellery and other interesting things, 00:11:45.806 --> 00:11:48.425 in the archaeological record alongside the stone tools. 00:11:49.279 --> 00:11:50.908 So, what would we look for? 00:11:50.910 --> 00:11:53.721 Let's go back to this idea of religion and spirituality, 00:11:53.743 --> 00:11:56.347 and how you get that in the archaeological record. 00:11:56.369 --> 00:11:58.423 Because, if you think about that far back, 00:11:58.445 --> 00:12:00.673 basically, we're working with stone tools. 00:12:00.673 --> 00:12:02.628 So, there's not really much to go at, 00:12:02.628 --> 00:12:05.768 and so how do we start trying to move beyond that, 00:12:05.768 --> 00:12:08.684 and actually look for these indirect clues? 00:12:08.684 --> 00:12:11.828 Well, there's three main things that people in my field tend to use 00:12:11.828 --> 00:12:13.168 looking at that. 00:12:13.168 --> 00:12:15.825 The first is burials with elaborate grave goods. 00:12:15.825 --> 00:12:18.973 So, the necklace itself at the 120,000 mark, 00:12:18.973 --> 00:12:20.898 very interesting, very cool, 00:12:20.898 --> 00:12:22.851 but we can take that a bit farther, 00:12:22.851 --> 00:12:27.908 and say: What about if they're putting lots of elaborate items into that burial? 00:12:27.908 --> 00:12:29.884 Impossible entities being depicted. 00:12:29.894 --> 00:12:32.162 So, when I use the term impossible entities, 00:12:32.162 --> 00:12:35.619 we're referring to things that do not appear anywhere in nature. 00:12:35.619 --> 00:12:39.960 So, we're not referring to anything in the real world. 00:12:39.960 --> 00:12:42.304 Something that's, say, half-animal, half-human, 00:12:42.304 --> 00:12:43.965 would be an impossible entity. 00:12:43.966 --> 00:12:47.189 And then, of course, trying to identify magic and spiritual themes 00:12:47.213 --> 00:12:48.632 in the art itself. 00:12:48.632 --> 00:12:50.860 And this is on portable pieces and, of course, 00:12:50.860 --> 00:12:53.044 my particular area of study, the cave walls. 00:12:54.137 --> 00:12:56.079 So, to quickly go over a couple of these 00:12:56.079 --> 00:12:58.729 and I'll give you some ideas of what we're seeing. 00:12:58.730 --> 00:13:01.589 For an elaborate burial, this one is a very famous burial 00:13:01.589 --> 00:13:03.687 and it's an absolutely fascinating one. 00:13:03.687 --> 00:13:06.180 This is actually one of three burials from this site. 00:13:06.180 --> 00:13:08.343 This particular one is the adult male, 00:13:08.343 --> 00:13:11.940 and it's about 28,000 years old, it's from Russia, 00:13:11.940 --> 00:13:16.212 and you notice there's little white things all over his skeleton there. 00:13:16.212 --> 00:13:17.751 Those are ivory beads. 00:13:18.747 --> 00:13:22.677 There are approximately 3,500 ivory beads in this burial. 00:13:22.677 --> 00:13:25.238 An archaeologist in our field, his name's Randy White, 00:13:25.238 --> 00:13:27.486 actually went to the effort of trying to do 00:13:27.510 --> 00:13:29.435 what we call experimental archaeology. 00:13:29.435 --> 00:13:32.222 And he actually took the mammoth ivory and practiced 00:13:32.222 --> 00:13:34.677 until he could get quite good at making the beads, 00:13:34.677 --> 00:13:37.646 and even when he was good at it, it took an hour per bead. 00:13:37.646 --> 00:13:39.388 Do the math on that. 00:13:39.388 --> 00:13:41.851 Then on top of that, we actually have the fact 00:13:41.851 --> 00:13:44.196 that the two other burials at that particular site 00:13:44.196 --> 00:13:45.814 are actually of two children. 00:13:46.511 --> 00:13:48.071 A little boy and a little girl, 00:13:48.071 --> 00:13:50.002 and they're buried in a double burial. 00:13:50.017 --> 00:13:51.890 The little boy has 4,500 beads, 00:13:51.914 --> 00:13:54.128 so 1,000 more than the adult male, 00:13:54.128 --> 00:13:56.403 and the little girl has over 5,000. 00:13:56.403 --> 00:13:59.465 So, what we're seeing here then is potentially the fact 00:13:59.465 --> 00:14:03.576 that they're seeing death as being a state that's different than life, 00:14:03.576 --> 00:14:06.499 and yet worth recognizing and worth paying attention to, 00:14:06.499 --> 00:14:08.620 and worth acknowledging, and, frankly, 00:14:08.620 --> 00:14:11.700 worth the sheer amount of effort of making all those beads 00:14:11.700 --> 00:14:14.036 only to bury them in the ground and cover them up. 00:14:14.036 --> 00:14:16.858 So, something is definitely going on in that sense. 00:14:18.779 --> 00:14:21.103 Then, of course, we come to impossible entities. 00:14:21.103 --> 00:14:23.512 And this one is a wonderful, classic example. 00:14:23.512 --> 00:14:27.292 This is an ivory carved figurine, it's probably about this tall. 00:14:27.292 --> 00:14:29.023 Head of a lion, body of a human. 00:14:29.047 --> 00:14:32.233 Again coming back to that, that doesn't exist anywhere in nature. 00:14:32.239 --> 00:14:34.736 So, what's going on? Why are they depicting this? 00:14:34.751 --> 00:14:36.454 This is not a self-representation. 00:14:36.454 --> 00:14:39.451 And there's people in my field who have made the proposal 00:14:39.451 --> 00:14:41.880 that, maybe, this could be some sort of mythology, 00:14:41.898 --> 00:14:44.998 something to do with origin stories and things like that. 00:14:44.998 --> 00:14:47.007 So, there's these interesting examples 00:14:47.029 --> 00:14:49.410 that exist throughout the archaeological record. 00:14:49.434 --> 00:14:51.884 That particular one is about 32,000 years old. 00:14:53.515 --> 00:14:55.077 What about hunting magic? 00:14:55.077 --> 00:14:57.156 When I say hunting magic, I mean this, 00:14:57.156 --> 00:14:59.325 this is from the cave called Niaux, in France, 00:14:59.325 --> 00:15:02.569 and you've got a bison that's painted on a cave wall, 00:15:02.569 --> 00:15:05.707 and if you notice it looks like there's almost some sort of spear 00:15:05.731 --> 00:15:07.093 sticking out of its side. 00:15:07.093 --> 00:15:09.733 So, in this case what people have proposed 00:15:09.733 --> 00:15:14.488 is that what we could be seeing is them almost trying to kill the animal 00:15:14.488 --> 00:15:16.283 ritually in the cave first, 00:15:16.307 --> 00:15:19.372 in order to ensure success when they go out on the real hunt. 00:15:19.373 --> 00:15:22.789 And we do have some examples where there's not just the spears, 00:15:22.789 --> 00:15:26.104 but there's also punctuation marks, 00:15:26.109 --> 00:15:29.837 which almost looks like maybe somebody was banging a real spear or something 00:15:29.837 --> 00:15:31.801 at the image on the wall. 00:15:31.801 --> 00:15:34.724 So, again, that suggests some sort of harnessing 00:15:34.724 --> 00:15:38.068 of some unseen world - there's something going on. 00:15:38.068 --> 00:15:41.512 And then this is another great example here of an impossible entity 00:15:41.512 --> 00:15:45.013 which has also been potentially identified as being a shaman. 00:15:45.013 --> 00:15:47.888 Now, the reason why they say that is the idea that: 00:15:47.888 --> 00:15:49.606 What if they were wearing a mask? 00:15:49.630 --> 00:15:52.342 What if this, rather than being an impossible entity, 00:15:52.355 --> 00:15:56.021 is an actual depiction of a human partially dressed up like an animal? 00:15:56.021 --> 00:15:58.284 You see the legs have a much more human look, 00:15:58.284 --> 00:16:01.518 they're not very bison-like, yet the head has that very bison look, 00:16:01.518 --> 00:16:03.155 and the arms are also very human. 00:16:03.155 --> 00:16:07.928 So, this is where they started to talk about the idea of shamanistic practices, 00:16:07.928 --> 00:16:10.322 because shamans, of course - 00:16:10.322 --> 00:16:12.654 the term itself comes from Russia, 00:16:12.654 --> 00:16:16.298 but it's applied a lot to basically spiritual practices 00:16:16.298 --> 00:16:19.035 where there are specific members of your tribe 00:16:19.035 --> 00:16:21.738 who intercede on your behalf with an unseen world. 00:16:21.738 --> 00:16:24.815 Whether it's to influence weather, to influence the hunt, 00:16:24.815 --> 00:16:26.386 or to do with health, 00:16:26.386 --> 00:16:29.500 and with people being sick and trying to make them better again, 00:16:29.500 --> 00:16:31.206 there's these people that do that. 00:16:31.206 --> 00:16:35.238 And what's so interesting about some modern examples, for instance, 00:16:35.238 --> 00:16:39.453 is that there is a fellow by the name of David Lewis-Williams, 00:16:39.453 --> 00:16:43.025 who is a researcher in rock art who works in South Africa, 00:16:43.025 --> 00:16:47.247 and he had the wonderful opportunity to actually speak with the San people, 00:16:47.271 --> 00:16:50.494 who are a hunter-gatherer group living in northern Southern Africa. 00:16:50.494 --> 00:16:52.090 They live out in the desert, 00:16:52.095 --> 00:16:54.517 and still practice the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. 00:16:54.517 --> 00:16:56.755 And guess what? They still do rock art. 00:16:56.755 --> 00:17:00.405 So, here had the opportunity to ask them, "So, why do you guys do the art?" 00:17:00.405 --> 00:17:02.436 Now, it doesn't explain all the art, 00:17:02.436 --> 00:17:05.502 but certainly shamanistic practices played a large role in it. 00:17:05.502 --> 00:17:07.233 Things like handprints. 00:17:07.233 --> 00:17:09.435 They talked about the idea that caves 00:17:09.435 --> 00:17:13.558 were almost like a transitional place between worlds. 00:17:13.558 --> 00:17:15.303 That once you go into a cave - 00:17:15.327 --> 00:17:17.441 we go in with headlamps and lots of light, 00:17:17.441 --> 00:17:19.473 and we know what a cave is, geologically. 00:17:19.488 --> 00:17:21.079 But imagine if you didn't know. 00:17:21.096 --> 00:17:24.297 It almost has a feel of maybe being a portal to another reality. 00:17:24.297 --> 00:17:27.169 And they've talked about the idea of those cave walls 00:17:27.169 --> 00:17:30.169 as almost being maybe membranes that they could touch, 00:17:30.169 --> 00:17:33.199 and through those membranes touch the unseen. 00:17:33.199 --> 00:17:35.166 So, now, we get specifically 00:17:35.166 --> 00:17:37.444 to a research project that I've been working on, 00:17:37.444 --> 00:17:39.650 where I said, okay, well, let's try with this, 00:17:39.650 --> 00:17:43.476 because, of course, modern people in Africa doing this - 00:17:43.476 --> 00:17:46.862 minimum of 10,000 years' difference between what's happening in Europe, 00:17:46.881 --> 00:17:49.032 could we get at that? Is it possible? 00:17:49.032 --> 00:17:53.716 Are we seeing on the walls, potentially, some of the trance-like imagery 00:17:53.740 --> 00:17:56.321 which they have said that that's why they're doing it. 00:17:56.321 --> 00:18:00.617 Because you see, the actual human mind - 00:18:00.641 --> 00:18:04.202 Obviously, trance is when we go into an altered state of consciousness. 00:18:04.202 --> 00:18:07.740 There's many things that will be culturally specific to where you live, 00:18:07.740 --> 00:18:09.838 like the animals you see in the imagery, 00:18:09.862 --> 00:18:13.350 but geometric imagery actually happens to be almost universal. 00:18:13.350 --> 00:18:14.700 And the reason for that 00:18:14.724 --> 00:18:19.416 is our eyes are only hard-wired to be able to produce certain shapes 00:18:19.440 --> 00:18:21.219 when we're in a state of trance. 00:18:21.219 --> 00:18:23.545 And so this is where, what I've looked at is, 00:18:23.545 --> 00:18:26.316 can we find those in the caves in Europe. 00:18:26.316 --> 00:18:27.839 And the study is still ongoing, 00:18:27.839 --> 00:18:30.357 but I thought I'd share a little with you today, 00:18:30.357 --> 00:18:32.917 which was that with dots, with lines, with grids, 00:18:32.917 --> 00:18:35.191 yes, absolutely, we're finding those. 00:18:35.191 --> 00:18:37.672 But, some of the other ones, not so much. 00:18:37.672 --> 00:18:41.763 Zigzags, there's only about 15 examples over 300 sites 00:18:41.763 --> 00:18:43.569 that have zigzags in them. 00:18:43.569 --> 00:18:48.092 So, they're not totally behaving the way that the people in, say, South Africa are. 00:18:48.092 --> 00:18:50.773 When it comes to spirals, there's only two. 00:18:50.773 --> 00:18:53.838 So, in that sense spirals are even more uncommon, 00:18:53.853 --> 00:18:57.466 and not something that we're seeing throughout the archaeological record. 00:18:57.466 --> 00:18:59.166 So, what does that mean? 00:18:59.166 --> 00:19:01.110 Basically, what it suggests to me - 00:19:01.110 --> 00:19:03.110 I can't give you a definitive answer, 00:19:03.110 --> 00:19:07.772 and say, "Yes, absolutely, there were spiritual people living back then." 00:19:07.772 --> 00:19:10.098 But, the signs are definitely there to suggest 00:19:10.098 --> 00:19:12.094 this was something that was developing, 00:19:12.118 --> 00:19:13.505 something that existed. 00:19:13.505 --> 00:19:16.049 And I'll leave you with the thought that they're us. 00:19:16.073 --> 00:19:17.547 In every sense of the word, 00:19:17.547 --> 00:19:21.384 those people who lived between 10,000 and 40,000 years ago were modern humans. 00:19:21.398 --> 00:19:24.070 So, if we're capable of it, why wouldn't they have been? 00:19:24.070 --> 00:19:25.376 Thank you. 00:19:25.376 --> 00:19:29.857 (Applause)