Out-of-Place Cultural Elements in the Stone Age—The Evidence for Cro-Magnon Civilization, Part Two
Report Topics:
- Did Stone Age humanity come in contact with an advanced culture existing in the Upper Paleolithic period?
Full Report:
There are several examples found among Paleolithic remains which show that Cro-Magnon man not only communicated and traded with other Stone Age peoples at their same cultural level, but also at times came in direct contact with a far higher civilization, and attempted to express in their art their impressions of things witnessed that were beyond their complete understanding.
As we noted earlier, various symbols found among prehistoric paintings and engravings, called tectiforms and claviforms, appear to have been a simple form of Cro-Magnon pictograph writing. Yet at times there have also been found examples of inscriptions which are nothing less than a sophisticated alphabetic writing. Edouard Piette identified such writing a length of bone from the Magdalenian, unearthed at La Madeleine in the Dordogne. There are eight characters in all, and as G. G. MacCurdy of the Smithsonian observed, some of the letters bear a resemblance to certain early Phoenician, Greek and Cypriotic signs. But they had been engraved when the bone was fresh, meaning the characters were at least twelve thousand years older than any of those ancient civilizations. Several more examples of this alphabetic script have shown up, on bone tools from Rochebertier and Peche Laze in France—again, dating to the Magdalenian. What is significant is that we find no precedent for this advanced writing anywhere among other Paleolithic remains, no transitional development from the art tectiforms and clavicorns—it just suddenly appears, full-blown and mature. Clearly Cro-Magnon artists must have seen and copied examples of the writing of some other, more advanced civilization co-existing with Paleolithic Europe in the Stone Age.
Cro-Magnon artists also depicted many other strange things not a part of their culture, but which were certainly known and understood by another. A bullroarer from La Roche at Lalinde in the Dordogne is covered with well-defined geometric linear motifs unlike any other found in Paleolithic art, yet dates from the Magdalenian. An engraved ivory circlet with a very regular squared meander pattern was unearthed at Mezine in the Ukraine. It too is unique and quite “out-of-place” for its time period. Neither design has any precedents whatsoever, and had to have been copied from elsewhere. The question is, where had Cro-Magnons seen such patterns?
There are numerous images scattered among the various European caverns and on Paleolithic tablets which depict large structures that are beyond what we know the Cro-Magnons were capable of building themselves. One cavern scene from La Mouthe, Dordogne, shows various animals held in a high-walled stockade with multi-storied towers.
Tectiforms from Altamira portray multiple large buildings with steps and elaborate architectural designs. Other tectiforms from El Castillo picture large buildings, with dots in rows representing either a large population or well-traveled roads. Images of elaborate structural complexes are also found at Valcamonica, Italy, with well-defined walls and columns. Still other examples of Paleolithic art take the form of maps giving directions through rivers and forests to large geometric structures or enclosures with columned entrances. And then there are the Stone Age maps which show the way to one or more pyramidal structures.
In the cavern of La Pasiega in Spain is a wall engraving of what appears to be a two-story building, complete with a front porch, columns, and double archways, reminiscent of Roman aqueduct design. Though the Cro-Magnons, as we have seen, were aware of many architectural forms, we find no examples from Paleolithic Europe in which they constructed sophisticated two-level buildings with columns and arches. Someone, somewhere, had witnessed such a sight, and had made an attempt to record it in their art.
Had a Cro-Magnon artist from La Pasiega seen a building, perhaps in Spain itself, in an area colonized by a lost civilization? If so, perhaps the building itself may yet one day be found, sunken somewhere on the Spanish continental shelf, which during the Ice Age and Paleolithic times was the original coast.
An even more intriguing picture from the past was found on an antler bone form Lorthet, in the Haut-Pyrenees, once again dating to the Magdalenian. The bone surface is in part destroyed, but what remains still tells its story. Two reindeer are portrayed, crossing a stream, and beneath them are two fish, probably salmon. The reindeer are in full flight, and the fish appear agitated and in shock--one of them is almost turned completely upside down. The second reindeer, the face of which we see, has its head turned back as if looking at something pursuing it, its eyes wide and its mouth open in an expression of panic. The reindeer is staring directly at two strange diamond-shaped objects, which are depicted hovering directly over the reindeer, but which from the perspective, may actually be coming toward them from a distance.
The scene seems to show the approach of some form of aerial crafts which are creating noise or vibration so loud and frightening as to cause the animals to run, and even fish to become disoriented. The question is, what are these strange “flying craft” and who is operating them? Perhaps a Stone Age artist once observed the flying vehicles of a contemporary yet more advanced civilization, and portrayed how the sound and speed of their passing once surprised and disturbed the creatures of nature so familiar to them.
There are numerous other images among Cro-Magnon cavern art which show the outlines of what appear to be some form of flying craft. And associated with these are strange buildings with what look like aerials extending from them. Did the Atlanteans once establish a series of landing fields across Ice Age Europe, and the images portrayed in Cro-Magnon art is all that remains of them?
At times the evidence of contact between the lower and higher civilization in the Paleolithic period appears to have been on a very personal level. In 1969, A Russian expedition of researchers from the Universities of Leningrad and Ashkabad led by Professor Leonid Marmajarjan discovered thirty skeletons in a cave in central Asia. Dating techniques placed the age of the remains within the early Paleolithic. The skeletons were taken back to the University of Ashkabad, where an extensive scientific examination was conducted. In a report made to the Soviet Academy of Sciences in November, 1969, it was noted that a number of the central Asian skeletons showed signs of surgery having been performed, with several examples of successful operations on the skull.
The operations had had positive results. For bone growth was found over the incisions, showing that the prehistoric patients had survived the delicate surgery by several years. Equally astonishing to the Soviet scientists was that among the skeletons were also traces of surgery having been performed in the area of the heart. The ribs had been masterfully cut, and thee was also evidence that once an opening had been made, the remaining ribs were further spread apart by retraction. Every feature indicated by the remains corresponded with what today is called a cardiac window, enabling surgeons to perform open-heart surgery.
The periostemon or bone deposits on the cut ribs indicated that the patients survived three to five years after this extremely delicate operation had been made.
More recently, in 2006, Professor Roberto Macchiarelli of the University of Poitiers in France, along with several colleagues, discovered the remains of eleven human teeth at a dig site in northern Pakistan dated to over nine thousand years old which showed signs of sophisticated dental surgery.
Each tooth had had tiny conical, cylindrical or trapezoidal holes drilled into them through which decayed material was removed. Enamel growth indicated the individuals had survived the surgery by several years. The French anthropologists could only surmise that some unknown form of precision drill had been employed that rivaled anything we have today.
The success of these prehistoric examples of surgery to the head, heart and teeth testify to scientific and technological developments not only beyond the scope of the Paleolithic culture, but they are far beyond the developments of most of the ancient and even more recent civilizations. We have certainly found no evidence whatsoever of the development of these advanced medical practices in the Stone Age culture where the reported bone and teeth remains are found. The surgical knowledge must have been borrowed, or more likely performed in person, by peoples of a highly technical civilization that co-existed with the Cro-Magnons. This is not so implausible when we consider how our present civilization is living side-by-side with stone cultures such as the New Guineans and Indigenous Australians.
And just as modern medical missionaries of our civilization have saved the lives of thousands of Indigenous Peoples in Africa, South America and the Pacific through modern medical practices, so in the same way some advanced civilization using just as sophisticated medical techniques saved the lives of Stone Age peoples many millennia ago. But from what civilization had these prehistoric Albert Schweitzers come?
At times the contact between Stone Age humanity and an unknown higher culture was snot in the most friendly terms. The Museum of Natural History in London displays an early Paleolithic skull, dated at 38,000 years old, and excavated in 1921 in a cavern at Broken Hill, on the Zambezi River, in modern Zambia. On the left side of the skull is a perfect round hole 1.15 centimeters in diameter. Curiously, there are no radial split-lines around the hole or other marks that should have been left by a cold weapon, such as an arrow or spear. On the direct opposite side the skull from the hole, the cranium is shattered, and reconstruction of the fragments show that the skull was blown from the inside out—like a fatal rifle shot.
In fact, any slower projectile other than a bullet would not have produced either the neat hole or the shattering effect. Forensic experts in Germany, the United States and South Africa who have examined the Zambian skull, agree that the cranial damage could not have been caused by anything but a bullet, purposely fired at the prehistoric victim, with intent to kill.
If a high-powered weapon was indeed fired at the Broken Hill man, then one of two conclusions can be made: Either the specimen is not as old as it is claimed to be, and was shot by a European colonists or explorer within the last few centuries, or the primitive remains are as old as they are thought, and he was shot by some marksman belonging to a very ancient culture indeed. The second conclusion is by far the more plausible, especially in view of the fact that the Paleolithic skull was excavated from a depth of sixty feet, mostly of lead rock. Such a deposition of material on top of the skull was possible only over a period of several thousands of years--certainly not within the last three centuries. So the Broken Hill man, and the gunshot wound that killed him, must be dated at a very early period in prehistory. But who possessed gunpowder 38,000 years ago? Certainly not Stone Age man himself.
Another human skull, this one from Florisbad, South Africa and dated at 130,000 years old, has both an entrance hole and an exit hole that are clean and well-defined—again, like a bullet wound.
All we can conclude is that another race of man must have existed, one far more advanced and civilized, yet who was contemporary with the Stone Age. The tantalizing question is, where was that unknown rifle-toting marksman’s home?
The National Paleontological Museum in Moscow contains the skull of an auroch, a form of extinct bison, discovered west of the Lena River and its age dates it well into the Paleolithic period. What arrested the attention of Professor Constantin Flerov, curator of the Museum, is that the forehead of the auroch was pierced by a small round hole. Like that of the Broken Hill human skull, the auroch hole has an almost polished appearance, without radial cracks. There is no doubt that the auroch was alive when its skull was shot, because calcification around the aperture is evidence of that. The animal apparently survived the shot, and died years later from natural causes. But its bones lasted through the ages, and with them evidence of the destructive ability of an unknown developed people.
One of the most controversial images found in Paleolithic art comes from the site of La Marche, recorded by French paleontologist Stephane Lwoff, and dated to 14,000 B.C.E. Among over 1,500 stone engravings is one of a mysterious figure dressed with helmet, several amulet-like necklaces, tunic and boots who is holding what looks like a rifle in one hand. The rifle is clearly shown with a long barrel, bracing bands, sight-piece, clip, cartridges and butt. Other images appear to be of shorter barreled pistols, also shown with cartridges. In 1901, a stone carving was excavated from Les Trois Freres cavern from a depth of 21 feet and dated circa 13,000 B.C.E. It has every appearance of being a model of a pistol form of weapon, complete with short barrel, bracing bands, scope, sighting-piece and hand-held butt. What had the Cro-Magnon artist seen and was trying to faithfully copy?
By far the most well-known aspect of Paleolithic civilization was its artwork, which has come down to us in a variety of forms—from stone and clay sculpture, to engravings and paintings. As a fascinating interlink with our previous studies on Atlantis, it is interesting to observe the subject matter chosen as primary models by Paleolithic artists, in light of what Plato told us were the important symbols of the Atlanteans. According to Plato’s sources, bulls and horses were sacred to Atlantean worshippers, as the animals dedicated to their patron-god Poseidon. In Cro-Magnon art, the figures which overwhelmingly predominated both in the sculpture and the cavern murals are bulls and horses.
Some examples of these have been found in caves accompanied with offerings and evidence of rites having been practiced in their presence, indicating the reverence given to these two animal figures. It was once thought that perhaps the horse and bull were associated with the hunt—their representations were made and worshipped in order to magically induce nature to produce the creatures as desired game. But Paleolithic refuse containing the bones of animals Cro-Magnons used for food show that 95% of his meat source was reindeer, with bull and horse skeletons are a rare occurrence. These two animals thus had a special meaning attached to them, far above economic or survival considerations. There appears to have been a strong desire to express in the subjects a quest for the ideal. In 1961, Robert Arambouru unearthed at Duruthy the largest portable or free sculptured object of Paleolithic art ever found—a horse with its head and shoulders thrust forward, and its expression and body full of power and vitality. As Arambouru commented: “One cannot be struck by the entirely heratical character of this horse, which owes much to the posture given to the animal as to the manner in which it was executed. With a realism which nevertheless suggests the particular rather than the general, the sculptor has, it would seem, figured not a horse but the horse.”
Other images frequently found in Stone Age sculpture are called “Venus” figurines, small statuettes which usually portray a female with enlarged breasts and buttocks, wide hips and swollen abdomen—the emphasized signs of maternity and fertility.
The most famous example of these is the Venus of Willendorf, which dates between 30,000 and 25,000 B.C.E. Interestingly, these female figurines, which strongly suggest the existence of some form of mother goddess cult, have been found mostly in eastern Europe and the Ukraine. We are reminded that Plato described the prehistoric Athenians, who predominated in the eastern Mediterranean, as having regarded the goddess Athena as one of their founders, and that a temple to her worship stood upon the prehistoric Acropolis, in a central position. There is archaeological evidence that, originally, Athena—who among the later classical Greeks was transformed into an Amazonian warrior character—had once been directly associated with fertility and birth.
Beyond the sculpture, however, the most awe-inspiring form of Paleolithic art is the polychrome paintings found in the caverns of Lascaux, Altamira and many other caves in southern France and northern Spain. The majority of these paintings were the accomplishment of the Magdalenian period, which must truly be called a Renaissance, for it is within this period that art bursts forth in a wide range of styles and mediums of art not to be matched by any civilization until our own.
The first step in the execution of a cave painting was to sketch the animal or whatever the subject matter was in the outline. This was done either in charcoal or by engraving with a flint stone. Next came the application of color, which was accomplished in a variety of ways: by finger; by brushes of fur, feathers or mottled twigs; by pads of moss; or by being blown through a hollow reed or bone tube; or by rubbing, the colors having been mixed with animal fat into crayons. A number of these crayons were found at Altamira.
Cro-Magnon’s colors were somewhat limited. He did not use blues or greens, but utilized in their place a violet-black pigment made from manganese oxides. The other colors used were yellow (from ochre), red and orange (from iron oxides and bison’s blood), and brown and black (from heated animal fat and charcoal).
Significantly, the three colors which were predominantly used the most in the paintings were red, black and white--what Plato mentioned in his writings were the three major colors used by the Atlanteans.
The Magdalenian artists achieved a remarkable three-dimensional effect by utilizing the contours of natural rock on the cavern walls and ceilings. Small holes became the glaring eyes of a bison, cracks became the wounds of a stricken deer, the odd-shaped bulges were incorporated as the back-hump of a woolly rhino or mammoth. Even today, as one gazes upon the cavern figures, these contrasts between light and dark shadow creates by the natural rock contours gives one the impression that the painted animals are alive and breathing, a technique and effect unique in the history of art.
The cave paintings, when closely analyzed, show that the sketching and application of color was done in bold, sure strokes, with few mistakes or corrections apparent. There is a suggestion here that those who executed the art were true masters, whose confidence and exactness could only have been acquired after years of training and experimentation. At Limeuil in southwest France, 137 stone slabs were found with sketches on them dating from the Paleolithic, most of which are poorly drawn. But in the midst of each sketch were details redrawn and corrected, by someone more artistically mature. These drawings show all the signs of a teacher’s hand having been applied to a student’s work--a master training the eye of the novice in artistic perception. Limeuil, it has been suggested, was a school for artists, not only for sketchers but painters as well: In another grotto close by, a bone tube still filled with paint ready to be blown against the cavern wall was unearthed, as was a stone palette thick with ochre waiting to be applied with a small brush.
Art was not only taught, but artistic ideas were conveyed from one place to another, sometimes over a considerable distance. In 1903, a wall painting of a stately old bison drawn with great individuality was found in the cavern of Font-de-Gaume in the Dordogne. Twenty-three years later, a stone slate was uncovered in another cave 188 miles away, bearing a sketch of the old bison.
Someone had admired the Font-de-Gaume painting, copied it on stone, and had taken it home to keep as a memento, or perhaps to use as a model himself.
Likewise, the prancing horse of Le Portel in the Pyrenees has almost the same details and shading marks as the horse of Ekain, over 330 miles away in the Basque country.
A wolf and deer combination was also a favorite motif that enjoyed a widespread popularity among Cro-Magnon artists in southern France and northern Spain, copied again and again over a distance of several thousand square miles.
Many of the Magdalenian paintings are far more than simply representational—they show a remarkable degree of naturalism and even impressionism. Such a development was never accomplished by any of the succeeding ancient and classical civilizations. Lewis Spence commented:
“What truly artistic mind cannot applaud the horse’s head from Les Espelunges, the clay bisons on the night-bound walls of the Tuc d’Adoubert, or the charging bulls of Altamira? Compare these for action, for motion, with the wooden immobility of ancient Egyptian painting or the crudity of the early Italian Old Masters, and you behold an art brimming with life and obviously proceeding from minds attuned to a veritable realism which at the same time is conscious of the value of inspiration, which has sized upon and pictured up the real in the spirit of the ideal.”
Prehistorian Robert Silverberg describes the sophistication of Paleolithic art in similar words, and suggests what that sophistication implies in terms of the level of cultural development:
“The cave paintings are upsetting to those who prefer to think of Ice Age man as little more than an ape. Not only do they indicate great craftsmanship, but they point to a whole constellation of conclusions: That prehistoric man had an organized society with continuity and shape, religion and art.
“It was also dismaying to learn that the earliest inhabitants of Western Europe had scaled heights of artistic achievement that would not be reached again until late in the Christian era. This explodes the theory of man’s rise from barbarism had been steadily and always upward.”
William F. Albright summed up modern research into Paleolithic art in this way:
“Though the number of motifs, techniques and media available to him now is, of course, immeasurably greater, it is very doubtful whether man’s artistic abilities are actually any higher today than they were in late prehistoric times.”
The question is, how much of Paleolithic art was a product of the Cro-Magnons themselves, and how much did they adopt from a more advanced civilization—a civilization which supplied them with a cultural influx in most other areas of living during the entire Paleolithic period?
It is believed by many prehistorians that the Stone Age cave paintings were more than for art’s sake, that they had a meaning and a purpose behind their production. One researcher who has perhaps done more than anyone else in the area is Andre Leroi-Gourhan. Beginning in 1947, Leroi-Gourhan decided to take a purely statistical approach to prehistoric cave paintings and began a systematic investigation of 72 groups of pictures in 66 caverns representing practically the whole of European Paleolithic cave art. After years of recording and classifying, the Frenchman had collected 2,188 animals figures, distributed in order of frequency in this manner: 610 horses, 510 bisons, 205 mammoths, 175 rhinos, 9 nondescript monsters, 8 large-horned deer, 8 fish, 6 birds, 3 nondescript beasts of prey, 2 wild boars, and 2 chamoix.
Next, Leroi-Gourhan sought to find if there were any correlations between the types of animals, and their positions in the cave. What he found was significant: 91% of the bison, 92% of the bovidae, and 86% of the horses are pictured in the central positions—in pictures in the central chambers of the caves.
Only 8% of the hinds, 9% of the deer, 20% of the reindeer, 4% of the ibexes, 8% of the bears and 11% of the felines are located in the central chambers—the rest were found in the remotest portions.
Leroi-Gourhan also analyzed many of the abstract symbols that appear in cavern art, and the majority of these he found to be male and female signs. Again, he determined where these signs are located--and again he discovered a pattern: Over 80% of the female signs are in the center chambers, while only 34% of the male signs are found there.
After several more years of careful study, Leroi-Gourhan uncovered many additional correlations, all of which pointed to a curious division of the animal kingdom into a vast sexual zoogamy: Only certain animal types were coupled with either the male or female signs, and found in specific locations in the caves. Eventually, Leroi-Gourhan discovered that there were altogether six distinct zones to the prehistoric cavern-temple: the entrance, ambulatory, central chamber, passages, side chambers, and end chamber—each with their own distinct animal types and sex signs, grouped in a complex system of order and arrangement.
The Paleolithic cave-temple was thus analogous to the Catholic cathedral, with its twelve columns representing the Twelve Apostles, and its Stations of the Cross always in the same order in respect to the altar and entrance. We do not know, however, the true significance of the arrangement of the Paleolithic cave. But what we do know is that the complexity of the art testifies to a religious or philosophical view of the world of a very sophisticated nature--perhaps beyond our present comprehension.
Prehistorian Philip Stern commented:
“The men who lived nearer the beginning of time were still close to the natural world. Their reaction to it was more direct, and they were surely better than we in dealing with it. Just as a dog has a keener sense of smell than we have, the pigeon a better sense of direction, and the bat a far better sense of locating things, so may those ancient men have possessed powers that we do not know exist.
“Since those posers are hopelessly beyond our ken it is idle to try to guess what they might be. It is enough to admit to ourselves that the painters who worked in the dark caves may have known more than we do about now forgotten things that were as real to them as radio and sonar are to us.”
Looking at the enigma of the cavern-temple and its mystic artistic arrangement, Louis Pauwels is more optimistic about unraveling the mystery and its implications:
“Let us admit the paucity of our knowledge and accept the fact that these prehistoric men have left us the undecipherable writing of a subtle and complicated idea, whose deeper meaning we can only guess at. But the very fact of discovering that it is writing, which to some extent is comparable with the writing contained in the art of the cathedrals, leads us to hope that we shall be able to decipher it one day. Then we shall lose the ’primitive’ man and find our brothers in the abysses of time.”
One of the most important discoveries that came to light was made, once again, by Alexander Marshack. He found after seven years of intensive investigation that the image of the wavy line and zigzag line, very often seen repeated in bone carvings and in cavern art, represents the mystic properties of water, and that these images are directly associated with the female or mother figure. Marshack also found that there is an important link between a site where cavern art is portrayed and the local water source—river, fountain, spring, etc. As Marshack noted: “Every archaeologist automatically makes the assumption that near a river is where a site will be. But no one assumed that the river and water would also be important in the thoughts, symbolism, and rituals of the way of life of the hunter. It as only when the cumulative system was uncovered that the images began to make sense.”
But rather than just water, what Cro-Magnon may have been portraying are the earth energy patterns usually associated with water: Wavy, serpentine lines, as used in many later ancient and modern cultures the world over, is a universal symbol for earth energies. This is further confirmed by the association of the wavy line motif with the Venus female fertility figurines, which are of the Earth Mother herself. That her worship and respect was a key element in Cro-Magnon’s belief structure can be seen in the large number and the wide area over which the figurines are found—several hundred stretching over 1,100 miles from western France to the Ural and Carpathian mountains—and the great length of time over which the figurines persisted—beginning 29,000 years ago down to 10,000 B.C.E., or for a period of nearly 17,000 years. The standardization of the design of these Venus figurines shows a strong conservative and all-pervading consciousness regarding the Earth Mother, and her appearance along with the wavy line or serpentine motif indicates the exercise of her power through that symbol by her union with it. Thus to respect her was to respect her powers, the earth energies, by living in accordance and balance with them.
On a piece of mammoth tusk from the Russian site of Mizherich are found two wavy lines, a row of X’s, branched marks and four ovals, which experts believe represent the local prehistoric topography, including four oval-shaped dwellings excavated at the site. What is actually depicted are the ley-energy centers and water lines for the area, with the dwellings placed in the landscape in harmony with them, much in the same manner as in the Chinese practice of feng-shui.
Not only dwelling places, but Paleolithic caverns, regarded as the womb of the Earth Mother, were also selected by the presence of ley-line systems and energy centers contained within. It was for this reason, which has been a puzzle for archaeologists, why only certain caves were chosen over others as temples for the magic art, and why in only specific locations within these caves does the art appear. Long before the builders of the Megalithic Age, in a Golden Age far earlier, Cro-Magnon used the sacred power centers of the Earth Mother to find attunement with himself, with all others of his kind and with the planet.
It is also very likely that many of the so-called batons and other bone rods found within Paleolithic remains are examples of early dowsing instruments, with which Cro-Magnon pinpointed the earth vortexes and underground streams of power.
In one cave, located at El Juyo on the northern coast of Spain, prehistoric men went so far as to construct a stone monument over a sacred power center, anticipating their Megalithic descendants by many millennia. Near the entranceway to the cave, in 1979 Dr. Leslie Freeman of the University of Chicago and Dr. J. Gonzalez Echegary of the Altamira Museum and Research Center, unearthed the remains of a 14,000 year old dolmen—a series of flat stones set upright supporting a huge stalagmite slab six feet by four feet by half a foot, weighing nearly a ton, which had somehow been moved from its natural position 35 feet away. Beneath the structure were broken spear points covered with red ochre.
Farther down, the experts were amazed to find a four-inch layer made of columns of compacted earth arranged in a rosette, with one column circled by six others, the empty spaces filled with white clay and the tops of the columns covered with different colors of clay. Directly beneath this rosette was a thin stratum of bunt animal bones, followed by another rosette. Altogether, there were four alternating layers of rosettes and bone in a total of three feet thickness. Curiously, each rosette has its own unique coloring system—one has a red center with the outer six alternating in yellow and green, another has a black center with red surrounding it and with rays of black clay interconnecting them.
A few feet in front of the structure, Freeman and Echegary discovered a standing stone fourteen feet high, thirteen inches wide and eight inches thick which has the face carved into it of a half-human half-feline being. As one enters the cave, the observer sees only the human side, but in darkness and from the reverse direction, with the light of a lamp, the feline features appear.
In terms of earth energies, the standing stone is on a major ley-line entering the cave, the stone amplifying the current, and projecting it to the dolmen and rosette construction, which is placed precisely over the point where the energies spiral into an energy center. Somehow the configuration of stone, colored clay and burnt bone amplifies the power potential of the energy center. But its purpose was far more than this, for the half-human, half-feline face indicates that here was a place where Cro-Magnon sought to find a balance between his many Inner Selves. The cavern temple of the prehistoric era was thus not only recognized as being an earth energy point, but was also a place of spiritual Transformation—the Mystery Schools of Initiation for Upper Paleolithic humankind.
[Copyright 2009. Joseph Robert Jochmans. All Rights Reserved.]
