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With the end of the Middle Palaeolithic and the arrival of the Neanderthal man, there appear the first religious documentations about burial practices and the dead worship.
Only with the Upper Palaeolithic, a period marked by a close relationship between man and nature, there is an explosion of artistic representations within the caves, depicting burials and statuettes.
The first representations are about bison, horses, deer, either singly or in groups, and in some cases, figures appear to overlap with each other or side by side with human figures or triangular shapes, as in the case of the bison found in Font de Gaume in Dordogne.
Photo 1: Bison with triangular shapes from Font de Gaume (Dordogne), Facchini F., Gimbutas M., J. Kozlowski K., Vandermeesch B., 1991
Besides male figures, also female figures are represented but in small numbers. These are the so-called "Veneri of Palaeolithic" the Mother Goddesses, symbol of fertility, represented with breasts, hips and prominent buttocks.
During the Palaeolithic period (even before the discovery of agriculture), the woman represents the Universal Mother Goddess, the creator of men, animals and fruits of nature.
During the Neolithic period, on the one hand there develops a civilization of breeders and shepherds, governed by a patriarchal structure, on the other one there appears a civilization of farmers, characterized by matriarchy aspects.
As a reflection of this economic and social religious dualism, on the one hand the religion of the Heavenly Father prevails among the shepherds (since the rain that gives birth and makes grow the grass needed to pasture and to human life comes from heaven) and the Lord of Animals (indeed, wild animals’ capture and positive hunting findings depend on Him), and on the other hand, there prevails, among the farmers, the religion of Mother Earth.
During the Upper Palaeolithic we see also the birth of the first real forms of worship. The most worshipped deity is the Mother Goddess, who gives life to every creature from her womb. But as it generates life, it can also destroy it, turning into the Goddess of Death, who embodies the destructive forces of nature.
The highest expression of divinity is represented by its reproductive votive statuettes. On one side, the Mother Goddess , on the other, the Father God usually represented as phallic deities (such as Lecce’s idol made with stones and found in the tomb of Arnesano near Lecce) or with the heads of bulls (in the case of sanctuaries of Çatal Hűyűk in Turkey), or as an archer and / or warrior (like those of wall paintings found in the sites of Morella la Vella and Gola of Gassulla in Eastern Spain).
In some cases there are examples of double deities - the power of two - as the statuette of two-man with the body decorated with a rhomboid motif, found in Romania and dating back to the VII millennium.
Photo 2: Statuette of the Mother Goddess found in the Vicofertile site (Parma) from
www.archeobo.arti.beniculturali.it/Vicofertile/dea-madre.htm
Photo 3: The rock painting from Morella la Vella by Müller - H. Karpe, 1984
Photo 4: Two-man statuette from Rastu (Romania) from Dumitrescu V.1972
Photo 5: VII level Sanctuary from Çatal Hüyük (Turkey) from Gimbutas M., 1990
Photo 6: Idol made with stones from the tomb by Arnesano (Lecce - Puglia) from The Port F.G., 1972
A characteristic element of worship is sacrifice. Man, venerating the goddess, has the need to thank her for the gifts he has received and, being grateful to her, offers gifts.
The prehistoric man practices these cults in the caves which are considered by the modern man as real prehistoric sanctuaries. At the front of the places, the social and family life takes place, while in the internal areas rites are celebrated and sacrifices are made.
Among the offerings there have often been found sacrificial animals - all in one piece or parts of them - depicted on the walls next to real human sacrifices: fingerprints without a finger, as in the case of the Deer
Cave of Porto Badisco in Otranto (Puglia). Besides the "natural sanctuaries", there are important remains of worship buildings which are built by man, that are used as a housing construction and at the same time as family sanctuaries and other buildings probably used only as a place of worship.
As regards this, it is necessary to remember Nea Nikomadeia dwellings in Macedonia which date back to the VI century B. C. (characterized by a hearth at the centre of the room and female statuettes next to it), or those of Çatal Hűyűk, in the ancient Anatolia, which date back to 6500 B.C., and finally the recent discovery - made in Turkey in the site of Göbekli Tepe - a temple dating back to 9000 BC.
In this period, prehistoric man expresses his religious sense, even in forms of cosmic religiosity. He is stunned at to the phenomena of nature and tries to represent them.
Among the examples, we have the so-called "comet" decorative motif on ceramic fragments - which have been found on the island of Malta - and the depiction of the "Venus of Gavà" eyes (Barcelona).
The solar feature can also be found on the walls of Magura caves in the Balkans and it is similar to the findings in Porto Badisco (Puglia). It also appears on the ceramics decoration of Cave Pacelli, located in Puglia too.
In an Anatolia village in Çatal Hűyűk, the wall decoration of a house is naturalistic as an eruption of the Mount Hasan Dag volcano is represented on it.
By studying the prehistoric man’s behaviour, we can realize that we are facing a homo religiosus and, at the same time, a homo symbolicus.
His religiosus feature, which has been developed during the Upper Palaeolithic, continues also during the Neolithic. The religiosity of the prehistoric man is more evident in its relationship with the death. The deceased is not seen as dead at all, but as plunged into a deep sleep and from which he will awake.
When he returns to life, he needs to feed and to have those things which were dear to him in the previous life. The dead, during the upper Palaeolithic, are sprayed with ochre, a pigment naturally considered as a symbol of life: indeed, the red colour reminds to the colour of blood.
As regards Italy, we need to remember the burial cave discovered in Liguria, the site of Arenas Candide (approx 20,000 BC), and in Puglia, in the province of Foggia, the site of Cave Pagliacci in Rignano Garganico (approx. 24,000 BC).
During the Neolithic, besides the complete burials, skulls detached from the body have been found. One example is - in the site of Jericho in Jordan, during the pre-ceramics era - the discovery of skulls covered by a mask made of clay on which they were reproduced the face features of the deceased having shells instead of eyes.
Photo 7: Israeli Skull, cast in plaster, Jericho. Dating back to VIII-VII millennium BC, from
www.thanatos.it/tematiche/storia/maschera.htm
This custom is explained by the fact that all the living forces of the human body are concentrated in the head. With the final Neolithic, then, besides the rite the inhumation site, we have the incineration one.
This latter is to be linked to the belief of "body and soul" dualism, being the soul divine and immortal, after the body death and the purification of the body through the incineration rite, survives and rejoins in the divine a heavenly sphere or reincarnation in a new body.
In this context the function that plays fire is important: a divine gift that allows the purification and a return of the body to the deity who had generated.
In Gorzsa Hungary there were found the partially burned remains of a child, which is contained in an anthropomorphic vase dating back to 5400 BC.
As regards the religious sphere, the findings of pans, trays, gutters, passing holes, niches, are important: they have been found on slabs of coverage and on the stone of monuments dolmenici or boulders placed in the immediate vicinity of the monuments.
Coppelle, tanks and gutters are all elements referring to the libation rites that are near the tombs; passing holes, however, seem to correspond to the so-called "soul holes": openings through which the spirits of the dead need to communicate with the living.
Photo 8: Pintadera from the cave of Gradina Leme, from Budja M., 1992
In the end, we need to remember the terracotta moulded pintadere, used by the symbolicus man primarily to decorate the different skin with graphic features and with bright colours, or to embellish texture, bread, the surfaces of vases, statuettes, or to brand the animals to order to highlight their membership to a precise ghenos.
From essentially the rectangular or elliptical trunk-based form, pintaderas are made of brick and rarely with other materials (stone, bone, wooden, metal); they present on a surface, rarely on both, decorations essentially characterized by geometric lines, meanders, mazes and grids.
Discovered throughout the world, stretching from Eurasia to Africa and America, pintaderas may be of three types according to their function: a) cylindrical type: where the decorative motif is achieved by rotating the tool to pressure on the surface to decorate; b) residue type: when the decoration is achieved by a slight pressure; c) discoid type: when the two previous models seem to be associated in a single copy.
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