Alba Regia. Annales Musei Stephani Regis. – Alba Regia. Az István Király Múzeum Évkönyve. 2.-3. 1961-1962 – Szent István Király Múzeum közleményei: C sorozat (1963)

Tanulmányok – Abhandlungen - Makkay János: An Important Proof to the Prehistory of Shamanism. II–III, 1961–62. p. 5–10.

named occupations. We aire supposing, however, that the shamanisltic customs existent in their world of beliefs are derived from an age when they still lived in the appropriate way, occupied with hunting, fishing and gathering for food. We are namely of the view that Shamanism is a characteristic of the beliefs of people living in the mentioned manner, both in the immediate past and in earlier periods. Our chances of comparison are twofold. On one hand we are able to explain the customs of Upper Palaeolithic man, especially those related to his religious life, and its objects preserved for us by the world of beliefs of peoples living in our day or in the recent past. On the other hand, we are enabled to look for the origin of Shamanism in the Upper Palaeorthic Age, deriving it from there It is not absolutely necessary to know mediate daJta in order to state that the masked portrait of Les Trois Frères is the picture of a dancing Palaeolithic shaman. We have a single proof for this view, decisive in itself, however: he wore a mask decorated with a stag-horn, similarly to the shamans of our day or the present past, and the naked human body or its skeleton (both are possible!) are marked with painted patches in a very lifelike manner on his costume, made of animel hide, covering his entire body, imitating the animal body mainly through the dense hair. There is no other solution as regards the meaning of the picture. Two facts may be established only: 1. the whole body is covered by an animal mask and a costume made of animal hides, 2. it performs a dancing movement. Dancing may be explained by thousand reasons; it does not help us in approaching the interpretation of the portrait. The animal mask covering the whole body with a design of the human body or the skeleton, emphasized by the use of a different colour, may only be compared to^and explained by the shaman costumes of to-day, being entirely identical in principle and essence, though different in detail. Nay we know Upper Palaeolithic masked human figures, wearing animal masks only. These are regarded by H. Findeisen as shaman costumes; in other words, this scholar derives the present shaman costumes represeting animals from Palaeolithic animal wear.

13 At present we must refrain from dealing with the problem, whether the existence of Shamanism, in its form observed almost in the recent pasit, might be supposed at the end of the Upper Palaeolithic Age already, in Magdalenian III. (The cave-painting of Les Trois Frères namely may be dated to this period.) This often arising question is given a decisive answer by the interpretation of the wellknown scene in the La se aux Cave: it may be supposed, nay proved! It is equally important, however, that we may regard the picture of the "sorcerer" of Les Trois Frères as the monument of the one-time dancing shaman, and we have every reason to do so. If our inference proves to be correct, it closes the series of innumerable speculative explanations uttered during a couple of decades. As a matter of fact, it is 13 H. FINDEISEN, op. cit. Schamanentum 85. 14 H. BREUIL, op. cit. 170—171. 15 p. GRAZIOSI, Die Kunst der Altsteinzeit. (Stuttgart 1956) 84. i« H. G. BANDI — H. BREUIL etc., Die Steinzeit. Vierzigtausend Jahre Felsbilder. Kunst der Welt, ihre gealmost impossible to survey all the supposed explanations for this cave-paintiing, a splendid work in itself; the guesses left, however the only chance of solving the problem unregarded. We intend to survey only the views of the most authentic students of the Old Stone Age and those of two authors, looking at the problem from its religious side. H. Breuil calls the figure „a sorcerer" but he regards it the god of Les Trois Fr

èr

es as a matter of fact.

14 According to P. Graziosi it is the portrait of a masked man, having a cultic significance probably, and being a sorcerer.^ The most recent interpretation of H. Breuil and H. G Bandi is the following: "War es der Grosse Geist, der Herr der Tiere

> der über Jagd und Fruchtbarkeit gebot?"

10 Naturally all these inferences are the resuitts of mere speculation, unheeding beside the fundamental characteristics of the painting one more fact, i. e. that ilt is a solitary monument so far. For the rest the dance does not behove the god, the superhuman spirit, but just the men who turn to the god or the great spirit for counsel or help, usually through the mediation of the sorcerer or the shaman. But there is no doubt that the painting represents a dancing human figure. In our view, research in the criticism of religion has approached the core of the subject nearer. As a matter of fact, J. Maringer has improved upon the idea of H. Breuil. He regarded the picture as representing the "great sorcerer". Not a certain sorcerer though, but the abstract 'Great Sorcerer", whose picture was painted by the artist after the appearance and costume of am actually living magician.

17 This view therefore supports our statement that a person of such costume, performing religious functions at any rate, was actually living at the very end of the Palaeolithic Age. On the other hand E. O. James is the first author who, though without any proof, holds that the portrait of Les Trois Frères is „the representation of the archsorcerer or shaman".

18 As to dettails there are innumerable possibilities left for the future. The significance of the present enthnological analogies, however, lies in the almost absolute certainty of the statement that the painting represents a shaman of the Old Stone Age. It is no wonder that students attempted the solution in various directions, since they disregarded the single characteristic, offering almost an attribute, in course of investigating the rock engraving consequently. In other words, neither the students of the Palaeolithic Age nor those of recent Shamanism, have recognized the character, making the comparison possible, up to our day, a mistake beyond our comprehension. Therefore all scholars, affirming that the rock engraving represented a sorcerer, have trodden the right path. In our judgement the sorcerer of the end of the upper Palaeolithic Age was the shaman himself. The picture of Les Trois Frères may possibly represent an abstract shaman. In this case we are faced by the inverted Genesis again: it was not the god who created man to his similitude but man created the god schichtlichen, soziologischen und religiösen Grundlagen. (Baden-Baden 1960) 40. " J. MARINGER, op. cit. 191. 18 E. O. JAMES, Prehistoric Religion. A Study in Prehistoric Archaelogy. (London 1957) 173. 8