Cave Art, The Shamanic Trance, and Ancestral Psychedelia

Conflicting and controversial reports of psychedelic representations in our earliest forms of art

Cave paintings, petroglyphs, and other remnants of our artistic past have always drawn a heavy amount of speculation. Since we cannot go and talk to our ancestors from tens of thousands of years ago, we have very little evidence surrounding their meaning.

As a result, conspiracies and far-fetched theories surround pre-historic artwork attempting to answer questions we cannot know.

Why did our ancestors create these artworks?

Why do they look similar across the globe and among civilizations that (as far as we know) never knew each other? Could it be psychedelics are the common denominator?

For that matter, how do we know (for example) that a ”mushroom-like object” doesn’t represent something else?

There are a few examples of cave art where psychedelics are prominent but, today, we’re focusing on the stuff worth debating:

Left: Rock art from Caso Valley in California, Right: San Khoekhoen rock art from Namibia in Southern Africa

“Hunting Magic” — Our First Religion?

The above examples show artwork from opposite regions of the globe with similar styles (though, with region-specific animals). It’s simple enough to see the reason for these types of similarities — when you’re a hunter-gatherer, animals will be important to you no matter where you are.

They both have creation dates of roughly the same time (~6-10k yrs. ago) and depict animals running among geometric patterns. Many archaeologists argue for this represents an archaic religion they call Hunting Magic.