Yes, we moderns are ever so much superior to these rubes, who putatively were incapable of drawing the connection between sex and the rather regular arrival of children, nine moons later. Like these brutes couldn't even count, for God's sake.
Notwithstanding these rubes created some world-class art that continues to speak to us today, from perhaps as much as 27 millennia ago. Go figure.
If you doubt my claim, just go Google on "Lascaux" and fire up the first link. Then you can take it from there.
Who has interpreted the Dead Man of Lascaux as "the shaman with a bird mask in a trance" such that I need credit him? Any why — what theory does he expound? And why should I find that intrinsically valuable?
Sorry for venting. I'm just getting sick and tired of the arrogance of the modern-day intelligentsia. [May God help you if you are in that party.]
LoL....
Heavens to Betsy, BB, it was an honest question.
Here's The Straight Dope discussing it.
[Is the Lascaux figure a shaman?]
Discussion by Leakey of shaman interpretations
Last sentence:
The place is imbued with meaning, but we can't decipher what is being said. The potency is palpable, but we are culturally blind to its content. In seeking to understand our origins, we come away from a place like Lascaux with a deep conviction of connectedness, and a humility at the power of the human mind....
Google Lascaux and shaman for more.
You really think counting is "built in" and isn't a fairly recent invention? How about reading and writing?
In "Clan of the Cave Bear" (which I **don't** recommend!) the Cro-Magnon heroine is "pleasured" by a Neanderthal and gives birth to a half-breed. Then she puts two and two together...
and goes on to discover agriculture, tame horses, whatever. (It's a real soap opera)