Predicting the Past, Recounting the Future: Human Ecology and a Prehistory of Consciousness

Over 20,000 years ago, Palaeolithic peoples ventured into the cool darkness of limestone caves and left graphic `signatures ' of their visits. Discovery of these ancient anthropic markings has broadened our understanding of how Pleistocene humans interacted with the environment. These non-iconic finger markings — from Australia and Western Europe — provide enigmatic clues which can help to unveil relationships between nature and the human mind in the Pleistocene. The markings (also called finger flutings) consist of meandering digital patterns modeled into deposits of a limestone precipitate. The human-made markings are so well integrated into the geography of the caves that until they are acutely inspected they appear to be of geological or non-human animal origin. They are part of the cave, and thus relate the makers to the environment in a ritualized and highly permanent way. The markings metaphorically linked the given with the created, and transformed opposition into connection. This paper is concerned with the organic derivation and primary meaning of Pleistocene finger flutings; I propose that in order to gain insight into the significance of the flutings