PREHISTORY (RELIGIOUS MANIFESTATIONS). – By "prehistory" (p.) we mean the most ancient phases of human civilization, for which written evidence is lacking and which can be partially reconstructed only on the basis of archaeological remains and, secondarily, by arguments derived by analogy from ethnological and sociological comparison with contemporary primitive peoples. The division of prehistory into cultural aspects is based on the nature of the tools left by prehistoric man, which are of rough stone (Paleolithic), polished stone (Neolithic), and metal (copper, bronze, iron). The discovery and use of metals gave a more vigorous impetus to the development of various peoples and hastened their entry into history.
Our knowledge of prehistory comes almost exclusively from excavations. From these have emerged abundant documents of religious manifestations among the most ancient Mediterranean and European peoples. The immense span of millennia covered by prehistory, which cannot be approximated with sufficient accuracy, dates back to the earliest known remains left by man, namely to the initial phases of the most ancient period of the Quaternary geological era, the Pleistocene.
This period is characterized by the enormous expansions of the glaciers of northern Europe, the Alpine, Pyrenean, and other glaciers. A grand and complex phenomenon: the phases of expansion were interspersed with interglacial phases, that is, periods when the glaciers retreated. Gradually, from the general Pleistocene environment, we passed to the present Holocene, that is, to the second period of our Quaternary era.
The term Paleolithic designates the industries and human civilizations developed during the Pleistocene: weapons and tools were almost exclusively made of stone. Pottery was still unknown. From these remotest times, prehistory descends to the first developments of protohistoric civilizations and cultural aspects, at the dawn of classical times. It is not easy to draw a precise boundary between prehistoric and protohistoric cultural aspects, also because peoples distant from the great centers of early cultural development (the countries of the eastern Mediterranean) lagged behind, often preserving archaic customs and traditions for a long time.
The life of Pleistocene man depended on a harsh environment; he would have succumbed had he not possessed, in addition to exceptional physical abilities, particular spiritual dispositions, which led him even at that early stage to a gradual improvement of his industry, to the first social developments, and to religious and artistic manifestations. For example, there is a probable document of a skull cult from the lower Paleolithic phases. In large natural cavities at Chou-kou-tien near Peking, alongside hearths and remains of a very rudimentary industry, lay skulls of an extremely primitive human being. These are thought to be first-fruit offerings to a deity, along with skulls of the cave bear, an extinct species, and selected long bones of the same beast, carefully placed in special stone caskets within the anthropic deposits of two caves at great heights in the heart of the alpine valleys of St. Gallen in Switzerland: the Wildermannisloch (1,628 m. above sea level) and the Drachenloch (2,445 m. above sea level). In these caves, daring hunters of the cave bear had temporary dwellings during the recent interglacial phase.
Evidence believed to indicate cannibalism has been thought to date back to the time of the last great glacial expansion.
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**PREHISTORY – Engraved rock from Val Meraviglie. Note the schematized bull, the small dagger, the axe, and the human figure – Monte Bego (Maritime Alps).**
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Evidence believed to indicate cannibalism has been thought to date back to the time of the last great glacial expansion, in one of the caves of Monte Circeo, the Guattari cave. At the bottom of it, within a sort of stone circle, lay an isolated skull, lacking the lower jaw, from which the rear part of the base had been removed in antiquity. It is known that modern primitive peoples used to extract the brain from the lower part of the skull for cannibalistic rites. However, it cannot be ruled out that this was a human sacrifice. The oldest known burials, uncovered in French deposits from the time of the last great glacial expansion, already attest to the widespread diffusion of the concept of a prolongation of earthly life in an invisible and mysterious world where the individual retains his personality. This concept, which became increasingly evident in the burials of subsequent prehistoric times, was amply attested in the written texts of historical Egypt (Book of the Dead, Book of Funerals, etc.). As we move from the Lower Paleolithic to the more recent prehistoric civilizations, we observe an ever-wider diffusion of funeral customs and rites. The graves of the Upper Paleolithic have been uncovered in much greater numbers than those mentioned from the Lower Paleolithic. From the more recent Neolithic, Copper Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age, in addition to a very large number of isolated graves, there are also numerous cemeteries consisting of hundreds of tombs. In general, there was a continuation of ancient funeral customs, though with many variations. The practice of cremation, instead of the primitive inhumation, began to spread only during the Bronze Age; but it never supplanted inhumation, which remained widely and dominantly practiced in many regions.
Food was offered to the deceased. The very grave goods (tools, weapons, pottery) attest to the intention of providing the deceased with the indispensable provisions for the afterlife. Many concepts already present in prehistoric times persisted into historical periods. The numerous and varied manifestations of spiritual and religious life among Upper Paleolithic peoples now attest to the existence of a higher degree of civilization.
In European Upper Paleolithic deposits (French, Austrian, etc.), female statuettes in the round, made of stone and ivory, have been found: idols or symbols of fertility. The woman is represented naked, almost always steatopygic. The female idol was later widely diffused, especially during the Copper Age and then during the Bronze Age, from the Indus Valley, from Mesopotamia to Egypt, Crete, the Cyclades, Asia Minor, Greece, the Balkan Peninsula, and all over Western Europe. It is not unlikely that to the primitive concept of fertility was added a more or less vague idea of Tellus Mater.
In the innermost parts of caves frequented by Upper Paleolithic man in the regions of southwestern France (Font de Gaume, Lascaux, etc.) and, in the Iberian Peninsula, in the Cantabrian Mountains (Altamira, etc.), animals that were hunted or of which memory was preserved were depicted with perfect style and naturalism: the mammoth, though rarely; more frequently the reindeer, the bison, the horse, etc. These works of art were connected with concepts, customs, and teriolatric, or, if one prefers, magical-religious rites. Indeed, there are various indications of practices that were likely believed to facilitate the capture of the animals depicted, which provided a significant part of the diet. It seems improbable that these were totemistic practices. Figurines of the animals themselves, carved in the round or incised on reindeer antler or stone slabs, have been found in Upper Paleolithic deposits in the caves of the same regions.
Throughout the Mediterranean versant of the Iberian Peninsula, from Málaga and Almería to Lleida and Tarragona (the so-called Spanish Levant), rock faces and rock shelters, evident seats of cult or cults related to the life of those peoples, are adorned with painted scenes, sometimes grand, of deer hunts, battles, and other scenes of daily life. The figures, both human and animal, still retain naturalistic traits and are attributed to the Upper Paleolithic. At the same time, a tendency toward increasingly schematic representations of humans and animals began to develop on the same rocks. Schematic representation replaced the more naturalistic style on the rocks during the Mesolithic period and persisted into the Eneolithic.
At the beginning of the Holocene, with the retreat of the glaciers, the natural environment (climate, fauna, flora, terrain configuration, etc.) slowly transformed into its present state. Similarly, human industries and Upper Paleolithic cultural aspects gradually evolved first into those of the Mesolithic and then into those of the Neolithic. Neolithic man in Eurasia and the Mediterranean Africa turned primarily to pastoralism and agriculture. The fertile zones of the Near East appear to have played a preponderant role, particularly in the emergence and spread of agriculture. At the height of the Neolithic, the introduction of the first copper weapons and tools occurred, the first metal to be used. Its metallurgy, practiced in the Near East as early as the 6th millennium, spread to Mediterranean and European countries during the 3rd millennium. Thus arose the civilization known as Eneolithic or Chalcolithic, which in the island of Crete, the Cyclades, and Asia Minor displayed luxuriant aspects. Burial customs and rites developed and, as mentioned, became established.
The influence exerted by the advanced cultural aspects of the Near East is also evident in the widespread diffusion of the female idol, to which reference has already been made. The female idol also appears, painted, alongside other depictions, on the aforementioned rocks of the Spanish Levant, which were seats of cult. At times, it is accompanied by the divine symbol of the axe: e.g., in the sepulchral hypogea of the Petit Morin valley (Seine-et-Marne). By the full Eneolithic period, a bull-formed deity was already being worshipped, which, for example, in Sardinia, appears schematically represented in the Neolithic. In a broadly Ligurian and Eneolithic context, in various French regions, in Lunigiana, and in Alto Adige, the so-called anthropomorphic stelae and statue-menhirs have come to light. The anthropomorphic stelae are large slabs whose front side bears a primitive and schematic human depiction. The statue-menhirs are true statues in the round. The French stelae generally have a funerary character. It is unknown whether the Lunigian stelae marked tombs or were related to the cult of an anthropomorphically expressed deity. Some have even suggested that they represent hyperanthropic figures.
The Bronze Age civilization, which arose from the Eneolithic, developed in the second millennium B.C. The manifestations of religious concepts and cults attributable to this civilization, particularly numerous, provide evidence of broad, sometimes intense, cultural contacts between Mediterranean and European peoples. They responded to concepts that deeply permeated spiritual life, from the place of worship to the tomb: concepts that varied more or less from region to region and played a significant role in the formation of prehistoric and historical ethnic groups. Such concepts indeed possessed the continuity inherent in matters pertaining to religion. The Bronze Age civilization in Crete and in Egypt, itself a continuation and development of the Eneolithic, appears as a luxuriant protostory. In Crete, in the properly Minoan period and in the immediately subsequent one, places of worship included mountain peaks, caves, and shrines within the great palaces (Knossos, Phaistos). One of the most frequent symbols of the deity was the double axe, often depicted superimposed on the so-called "horns of consecration," i.e., the schematic representation of the bull’s head. At other times, the head of the bull, the animal par excellence sacred to Crete, is reproduced in full. Another symbol of the deity was the defensive weapon, the typical figure-eight shield. A martial cult was also practiced, that is, a cult rendered to sacred stones or betyls. The aforementioned symbols appeared in sacred or funerary-religious scenes, in which the sacred tree is also seen. Probable religious symbols were also the pillar and the column, which in representations are often associated with animals clearly sacred: the lion, the dove, etc. Some scenes depict the female deity dominating the forces of nature and generation. Most of her attributes passed into Greek mythology as those of Rhea, Cybele, etc. Fantastic monsters, such as the griffin and the sphinx, were repeatedly depicted. In the Mycenaean world of the second half of the 3rd millennium, representations of the bull’s head with the double axe, the naked goddess with doves, and other symbols reappeared. The cultural influence of this civilization spread widely to the shores of the Ionian Sea, Sicily, and Sardinia.
The manifold religious manifestations of the Bronze Age civilizations now known in considerable numbers in our country and in Western, Central, and Northern Europe suggest a variety of conceptions of the deity, which not infrequently appear akin or analogous to those of Cretan-Mycenaean culture. Various deities had their seat or were personified in mountains, rivers, and springs. Man, as a shepherd and farmer, no longer offered worship to the animals he hunted but to those most useful to him, the bovine. Consider a sacred mountain, Monte Bego (2,873 m) in the Maritime Alps: in the varied engravings on its polished rocks, situated at about 2,005 meters above sea level, the figure of the bovine predominates. The soul is represented mostly with extreme schematism; sometimes even yoked to the plow. In Sardinia, the cult of a bull-formed deity, already documented in the mentioned hypogeal tombs at Anghelu-Ruju from the full Eneolithic period, continued into the Nuragic times; the bull protome adorned the megalithic structure covering, in the temple of S. Anastasia at Sàrdara, the spring of healing water. The bull-formed deity, protector of the tomb, thus appears connected also with the cult of healing waters. The cult of weapons is repeated; examples include the same engraved rocks of Monte Bego, where alongside the bovine, the dagger, the sword, and the battle-axe are frequently represented. In the Nuragic temple of S. Vittoria at Serri (Cagliari), the true Cretan bronze double-axe was raised on a slender pillar. The farmer regarded the Sun as the giver of light, the star that makes the seed germinate. The solar cult was widely diffused among Mediterranean and European peoples. Thus, on the engraved rocks of southern Scandinavia, the wheel cross—a symbol of the solar chariot—is depicted as lifted by a human figure or carried on a boat. Exceptionally, the wheel cross also appears on the engraved rocks of Monte Bego, here closely linked with the bovine. The solar cult in Egypt formed the foundation of that religion, evidenced by colossal temples, grand monumental inscriptions, and numerous papyri. Another solar symbol in Central and Northern Europe was the swan.
The already mentioned cult of healing waters must also be recalled; noteworthy examples include the caves of Pertosa and Latronico in the mountains of the Salernitano region. Great monuments of cult from the Paleolithic to the dawn of historical times were the rock engravings. They are found in many parts of the world, even among modern primitive peoples. The varied rock art of Spanish Levant, lasting until the Eneolithic, has already been mentioned. The engravings at Monte Bego began, with distinctive character, in the period preceding the Bronze Age and continued, in the forms described above, at least until the beginning of the Iron Age. It is likely that the rocks on which figures were engraved, or less frequently painted, were generally considered seats of divinity. In Scandinavia, near watercourses or waterfalls, Neolithic peoples still engaged in hunting carved figures of elk and other animals that constituted their sustenance. During the Bronze Age, the agricultural peoples of Scandinavia engraved the solar wheel, the plow, and other associated figures. In North Africa, from the final Paleolithic until, one might say, historical times, various animals were depicted on rocks near springs, some of which later migrated and disappeared. From the earliest times, many other figures accompanied or followed these representations.
It may be considered that the various religious concepts, embryonic in Neolithic times, developed and gradually took shape during the Eneolithic and Bronze Age civilizations, did not vanish but were gradually transformed during the Iron Age, with greater or lesser delay in regions more or less distant from the great Mediterranean centers of civilization. The engravings of Monte Bego, for instance, continued for several centuries into the Iron Age. A strong Mediterranean substratum is also recognizable in the classical religions, Greek and Latin.
— See pl. CXXXI.
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