In the Paleolithic caves of the Franco-Cantabric region we find thousands of fragmented images of high artistic quality, dating from the Aurignacian period (ca. 40,000 BCE), and leading up to findings in caves from the Magdalenian and Azilian (ca. 10,000 BCE). These by far tend to depict animals (cows, mammoths, wooly rhinos, horses, etc.) and abstract symbols, whereas human figures are seldom seen. The images in the caves are not simply distributed at random, as already described by Leroi-Gourhan 1). In one of our own investigations (Bongartz & Marin 2)), in which we consider the distribution of pictures from over 100 caves in south France and northern Spain, we find that images of humans are generally found far back in the cave, and that animal or symbol figures are not in the same dimensions.

The “Magician of Gabillou” is located at the very end of the Cave of Gabillou (Dordogne/France).

It is especially striking, that the supposedly “magical pictures (e.g. mixed-creatures, half-human, half-animal – or “injured humans”) are only found in hard-to-reach nooks or at the end of a cave – places that can only be reached with torches or oil lamps and sometimes ladders.

Sources:

1) Leroi-Gourhan, A. (1971). Préhistoire de l'art occidental. Paris : Mazenod.

2) Bongartz, W. & Marin, F. (in Vorbereitung). The structure of art in paleolithic caves: A statistical reconstruction.

3) Anati, E. (1989). Felsbilder. Zürich: Bär

The famous scene from the “shaft” of the cave of Lascaux shows the “birdman” (with bird head and talons in place of hands), the bird-scepter, and the injured bison. It dates from the Magdalenian (ca. 15,000 BCE). The depiction could only have been reached by people using a 5-meter rope to drop into the deep “shaft” of the cave. The inaccessibility of this location reveals the importance of this painting, which has received numerous different interpretations (a magical hunting ritual, an offering rite, a totemic depiction, constellation diagram, a creation myth, etc.). Frequently it is associated with shamanistic trance practices: modern shamans tell that during trance they take on the form of a bird to “fly” through the spiritual “overworld,” and also are escorted by helping spirits in the form of birds (represented by a staff with animal head) 1).

Sources:

1) Rappenglück, M. (1999). Eine Himmelskarte aus der Eiszeit? Ein Beitrag zur Urgeschichte
der Himmelskunde und zur paläoastronomischen Methode. Frankfurt: Lang.

The oldest stone-age images made by man depict mixed-form creatures – half-human, half-animal. For instance, at the end of the Chauvet cave (30,000 BCE) we find a bison-man-being 1). In the “Vogelherdhoehle” cave (Baden-Wurttemberg/Germany), a 30,000 year-old statuette made from mammoth tusk was found, depicting a lion-man 2). In general mixed-form creatures stand upright like men, with the upper-body in the form of an animal and the lower half depicted as that of a man.
This suggests a connection with the use of masks as observed in modern traditional cultures, where the wearer gains access, through trance, to the power and strength of the animal embodied in the mask. The trance in this case enables the agent to discard an orientation to immediate reality, and so facilitates connection with another frame of experience, one characterized by the feeling of power and confidence.

        
Bison-Man-Being at the terminus of the Chauvet cave (Ardeche/France; Aurignacian)

Sources:

1) Chauvet, J.-M., Deschamps, E.B. & Hillaire, C. (1995). Grotte Chauvet bei Vallon-Pont-d’Arc.
Altsteinzeitliche Höhlenkunst im Tal der Ardèche. Sigmaringen: Thorbecke.

2) Reinhardt, B. (Hrsg.; 1994). Der Löwenmensch. Tier und Mensch in der Kunst der Eiszeit. Sigmaringen: Thorbecke (Ulmer Museum)

One of the leading explorers of Paleolithic caves, Jean Clottes, together with South African ethnologist David Lewis-Williams, has proposed the theory that Paleolithic cave paintings (symbols, animals, mixed-form creatures) represent trance experiences of stone-age shamans. That is, these images served to assist trance-induced visions 1).
The authors assume there were three different stages of a trance experience. The first, according to common interpretation, is characterized by the contemplation or perception of geometric figures (geometric forms, grids, zig-zag patterns, etc.). In the second phase the geometric image is given a meaning and made to correspond with an emotional condition (e.g., fear might make the zig-zag lines a slithering snake). In the last phase there is a transformation of identity (where the agent could experientially transform himself into another man or also an animal).

These conceptions of the trance experience would correspond to the images painted in stone-age caves. The cave walls could have been experienced as a transmissible membrane between mundane experience and a spiritual world - the “magical” being from the spirit world stepping out and rendering a trance vision unto the shaman. Hence the frequent observation of animals stepping or reaching out from an unseen world.
We will likely never know what function the stone-age cave paintings served (for critique of Clottes and Lewis-Williams’ interpretation, see Bosinski 1999 2)). Nevertheless, comparisons between stone-age cultures and modern hunter-gatherer peoples suggest a very plausible relationship between the use of trance, and rituals performed in stone-age picture-caves.

Sources:

1) Clottes, J. & Lewis-Williams, D. (1997). Schamanen: Trance und Magie in der
Höhlenkunst der Steinzeit. Sigmaringen: Thorbecke.

2) Bosinski, G. (1999). Die Bilderhöhlen des Urals und in Südwesteuropa - Einige
Vergleiche. In: Scelinskij, V.E. & Sirokov, V.N. ( 1999). Höhlenmalerei im Ural.
Sigmaringen: Thorbecke.