Why Did Stone Age People Cut Off Their Fingers?

Conny Waters – AncientPages.com - Scientists are investigating a strange phenomenon and may have come up with an explanation that is truly gruesome. Several Stone Age cave paintings in France depict hands with fingers missing. At one particular site, there are 231 hand images and as many as 114 of them clearly have at least one finger segment missing. Did Stone Age people deliberately cut off their fingers or could there be another explanation?

Hand stencils are seen in the Grotte de Gargas. Credit: Wikipedia

Researchers have long been aware of rock art depicting hands with missing fingers. Such ancient images have, to date, only been treated as an enigmatic feature of rock art, and no one has bothered to investigate further. However, Mark Collard, an archaeology professor at Canada’s Simon Fraser University, decided to unravel the ancient mystery of the missing digits that appear so often on cave walls across Europe.

Together with his colleagues, he examined hundreds of cave paintings, all made by Upper Paleolithic people living in Western Europe tens of thousands of years ago.

According to the previous hypothesis, the missing fingers have been explained as using sign language or a counting system. Some researchers maintained there are no missing fingers at all. The ancient drawings were simply made in different positions making it appear as if one or fingers have been lost.

However, Professor Collard is of a different opinion. He suggests that Stone Age people practiced finger amputation for the purposes of religious sacrifice.

In his study, published in the Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology, professor Collard and his team write that “sacrifice fits well with one of the major hypotheses concerning the nature of Upper Paleolithic rock art—namely, that they are remnants of religious rituals. A number of scholars have posited that the caves with UP rock art represent sanctuaries, shrines, or even churches. The religion of the people who produced the art has been argued to have been animistic and to have involved shamans. Sacrifice is ritualistic in nature and carried out to appeal to a supernatural power for assistance.”

As Newsweek reports, “the team argues that if sacrifice was the reason for finger amputation, then this could relate to “dysphoric rituals”—ones that “arouse intensive negative emotions through practices like collective possession, homicide, cannibalism, and the use of mind-altering substances.” These rituals have previously been found to create strong bonds among participants and can lead to a phenomenon called “identity fusion,” where members identify with one another as if they are kin.”

Still, in an interview with New Scientist, Professor Collard says also that he and his team are not convinced Stone Age people did cut off their fingers, but it would explain the ancient cave paintings.

Finger amputation was a reasonably common behavior in many regions in the recent past," he said. "The available data seem to fit reasonably well with the hypothesis that some Upper Palaeolithic people engaged in finger amputation for the purposes of religious sacrifice. The idea that the hand images reflect sacrifice is consistent with how cave art has been interpreted by many researchers over the years.

The results of Professor Collard's study are unsettling but certainly not surprising, given that sometimes even modern people do unusual things in the name of traditions and religion.

Written by Conny Waters – AncientPages.com Staff Writer