here and when did spirituality among humans have its beginning? Was there a Big Bang moment for the metaphysical as well as the physical world? There is insufficient data as yet to determine such a hypothesis, but Professor Colin Renfrew describes the upsurge in cave art in France and Spain in the Paleolithic period as a “sort of creative explosion.”
Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn is Emeritus Disney Professor of Archaeology at University of Cambridge and director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research there. Jointly with Templeton Research Fellow Dr. Iain Morley, he is leading the investigation under the Foundation’s program “Roots of Spirituality.” The work being done was already envisioned when a Templeton Humble Approach symposium, held in 2004 at Les Eyzies, “the capital of prehistory” in the Dordogne in France, on the topic of “Innovations in Material and Spiritual Cultures,” acted as the catalyst.
“That particular meeting came about as the result of a proposal from within Templeton,” recalls Renfrew, “rather than my applying externally for support and it was Mary Ann Meyers who put forward the suggestion.” From this emerged the more ambitious “Roots of Spirituality” project which concludes this year. Its objective was to examine the early emergence of the spiritual on a worldwide and comparative basis, using the available archaeological evidence.
The project has two strands. The first, categorized as “Anthropomorphism: the body” is concerned with early representation of the human body, especially in three-dimensional form (figurines). The program convened an international conference to discuss this topic: “Image and Imagination: Material Beginnings—The Global Prehistory of Figurative Representation” in September 2005.
“We were able to look at every part of the world,” says Renfrew, “and see how very often the first of these figurines for instance, if we’re talking about human representations, emerge at the same time as the first settled life, when people were living in villages for the first time, which often correlates with the first practice of agriculture.”
But is it possible to look at a prehistoric figurine and confidently ascribe a religious significance to it? “It’s not easy,” he says, “but it is possible in one or two cases. A very good example would be the so-called ‘Mistress of the Animals’ motif. This is a small figurine where a woman is seated on a chair, which can reasonably be called a throne, and the throne is supported by two leopards—that’s why it’s called the ‘Mistress of the Animals’ motif. Certainly, if one was talking about later art, one would unhesitatingly regard this person as a goddess. That is one of the earliest representations where it could be said this must be a goddess figure.”
The other strand to the program is categorized as “Measuring the World.” It too was the subject of an international conference, convened in September 2006, “Measuring the World and Beyond—The Archaeology of Early Quantification and Cosmology.” “It really is fascinating,” observes Renfrew, “that in some cultures in particular there is a preoccupation with units of measure, both spatially in the layout of settlements and temporally in a preoccupation with a precise calendar, and these things seem to be imbued with cosmic significance.”
He cites the Maya as an example of this calendar preoccupation and, in terms of spatial measurement with cosmic significance, the great city of Teotihuacán in early Mexico “where there are enormous numbers of sacrifices of human beings and animals buried in locations that are on precise alignments on the main axis of the city.”
Both conferences produced books. The first, with the same title as the event, Image and Imagination, comprised the written contributions of the nearly 30 participants and was published in November 2007. The contributions to “Measuring the World” are likewise being published in book form, having been accepted by Cambridge University Press. CUP will also publish a third volume, entitled Becoming Human: Innovation in Material and Spiritual Cultures, based on the earlier meeting at Les Eyzies, which focuses on the first homo sapiens and the “creative explosion” in the Upper Paleolithic in France and Spain.
Considering that the work being done under “Roots of Spirituality” is interdisciplinary and is drawing metaphysical conclusions from physical artifacts, does it represent an extension of the frontiers of archaeology? “I think we can say that it does,” responds Renfrew. He is insistent, however, that researchers must not project backwards their knowledge of religions in literate societies and then impose that interpretation on earlier ages. “The keynote of our work has been to be critical of claims that a particular finding represents some sort of spirituality.”
Taking all the evidence into account, is it possible we have underestimated the metaphysical side of our remote ancestors? “I think it is very possible.”