Paleolithic Cosmovisions: The Rock Panel in the Shaft of the Lascaux Grotto, France

Michael A. Rappenglueck

Independent Scholar

The cave of Lascaux seems to be an important expression of the cosmovisions of Palaeolithic shamans. A panel of rock pictures, in the so-called "shaft," reveals a cosmography, which according to archaeological and astronomical dating methods, is ca. 16,500 years old. The panel may be a map of the cosmos, containing different viewpoints of ancient man on the physical and psychical universe.

To "read" such a panel of rock pictures, a special and new kind of methodology is needed, namely, the so-called "integral methodology." Although not wrong in themselves, previous interpretations (such as a hunting scene, a funeral monument, a cult of the dead, as well as a depiction of hallucinations, a magic scene, a sexual topic, a divination, a sacrificial rite, and a shamanistic-totemistic scene) are misleading because they fail to consider the pictures in combination and to obtain a consistent view of the whole. The very complexity of early cultures makes the approach of integral methodology desirable. The methodology employs phenomenology, single detailed views, relations between different perspectives, synopsis. The presented research work draws on results and methods from a wide range of disciplines, including astronomy, archaeology, cartography, ethnology, mathematics, mythology, scientific study of religions, semiotics. As a result we can see the ideas of an archaic cosmology, cosmogony, biology, psychology and religion combined in the worldview of Paleolithic man.