DM - Did cavemen take DRUGS? New study claims early paintings show prehistoric man...

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edgarshade

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Did cavemen take DRUGS? New study claims early paintings show prehistoric man was 'high' on psychedelic plants
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By Victoria Woollaston
PUBLISHED: 11:56, 15 July 2013

With reader comments

  • Researchers believe cavemen ate hallucinogenic plants during rituals
  • These drugs would have caused them to 'see' swirling patterns
  • These patterns can be seen in cave paintings across the world

Cave paintings made by prehistoric man, which were previously thought to accurately represent the world around them, may have been hallucinations drawn while the painters were on drugs. Researchers from Tokyo studied pictures of cave markings from around the world and concluded that the patterns made by the early artists resemble those created during tests of modern-day humans when they were under the influence of drugs. Plants that the cavemen would have eaten during spiritual rituals could have contained these hallucinogens that caused this mind-altering state.

Researchers Tom Froese, Alexander Woodward and Takashi Ikegami, also claim that the cavemen would have actively sought out these drugs to give greater meaning to their visions and the world around them. According to the paper, published in Adaptive Behavior, human brains have a tendency to see certain patterns and shapes when they are in a state of altered consciousness. Cave paintings from across the continents, dating back 40,000 years, all show similar patterns or designs regardless of where in the world they were made, or what the surrounding environment was. These patterns resemble those created by other humans, in more recent tests, made during mind-altering states.

This led the researchers to conclude that cave art was inspired by a mixture of rituals, coupled with changes in the brain bought on by chemical reactions.
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More...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...-prehistoric-man-high-psychedelic-plants.html
 
Yes, yes, yes.
Drugs play a vital role in the history of human consciousness.

Researchers Tom Froese, Alexander Woodward and Takashi Ikegami, also claim that the cavemen would have actively sought out these drugs to give greater meaning to their visions and the world around them.
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What does this mean, exactly? "give greater meaning to the world"?? As if the world were lacking in meaning.
But, interestingly, it should apply just as much today as it did 40,000 years ago.
 
The world is completely lacking in meaning. There is no such thing as metaphor in nature. Meaning is an artifact of language.

Perhaps psychedelics were instrumental to the development of language though.
 
^ I actually agree with you that there is no external meaning in the world, but that it is created in people's minds (not, however, though language, as you said, but I see language as a way to try to communicate meaning, not a way to create meaning - the reason that we have metaphor in language is because we have metaphor in thought).

What I said above was careless, so it was impossible to know that. What I should have said was "As if there were ever insufficient meaning", maybe.
In any case, drugs don't give more meaning to the world, as I think you will agree.
 
slimvictor said:
the reason that we have metaphor in language is because we have metaphor in thought
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But which came first, thought or language?

You're a linguist, right? Is it possible to have thought without language? If I was stolen at birth and given to a family of orangutans, and grew up in the absence of other humans, would there be thoughts in my head?
 
I think so. Languages take different forms. Posture, for instance. There are many languages. Some semi universal.
 
I have always had the idea that psychedelic substances had something to do with the evolution of language in pre-historic man....and that these pre-hist. men sought out plants that gave them psychedelic effects.

Hell, to this day tigers seek out a plant that make's them trip out...i wish i could find the video...
 
The researchers might be jumping to conclusions: drugs are not needed to produce psychedelic-looking artwork. When developing an artistic skill, it is common to go through a phase in which you advance your understanding of visual form by creating abstract designs.
 
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23536 said:
But which came first, thought or language?

You're a linguist, right? Is it possible to have thought without language? If I was stolen at birth and given to a family of orangutans, and grew up in the absence of other humans, would there be thoughts in my head?
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Definitely thought.
This is not a chicken-and-egg question in any way.
Language is our attempt to encode thoughts for the purpose of communication. But it is always necessarily imperfect.
Because we had complex thoughts, we could create language to encode them.

If you were raised by apes, you would have thoughts, just as apes presumably do (but more complex, I would say).
If you were raised by silent robots, you would have thoughts, as well, I would say.
But without the influence of language and society, they would not be very developed.

Remember that language is inseparable from culture/society in many ways, so that if you are denied one, such as in your scenario, you are denied the other, with certain exceptions imaginable such as deaf, mute people who cannot communicate in language but do have a family.

So, without thought, we could not have language, but we can - and do - have non-linguistic thought.
In fact, we don't think in language, but in something far more complex, both more abstract and concrete, called by psychologists "mentalese".

However, despite this, language can be used as a tool - and other times, we are essentially forced to use it - to refine and develop thought.
It can influence thought in many ways, from the simple to the complex.
For example, English speakers have to constantly encode sex (or gender) in their 3rd person pronouns (he/she). This forces them to pay extra attention to such details when experiencing and reviewing events in their minds, since one primary focus of humans is communication - we want to tell the story to someone.
Turkish speakers have to pay careful attention to their source of knowledge, since it is grammatically encoded in their language (hearsay, or visual evidence, or actual direct experience). Each language forces/encourages its speakers to focus on different aspects of life. It makes it easy to think in those terms.

(However one can say anything in any language, I would say...it's just that some languages give you a pre-packaged version, easy to think of and say, and others don't, so you have to think of a long string of words to express a similar concept.)

These kinds of questions are very interesting to me. I have to run now, but if what I wrote here isn't clear, or if you don't agree, please let me know, because I would love to discuss it further.
 
Dm loves allcaps

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...-prehistoric-man-high-psychedelic-plants.html[/QUOTE]

DM does like their ALL CAPS just to make sure you got the point of the article, not like the target demographic is being given subtle guidance of any kind. I'm more more concerned with Moses smoking DMT, next thing we'll have crazy hippies telling us the Tibetan book of the dead makes more sense when you're on acid.
 
slimvictor said:
However, despite this, language can be used as a tool - and other times, we are essentially forced to use it - to refine and develop thought.
It can influence thought in many ways, from the simple to the complex.
For example, English speakers have to constantly encode sex (or gender) in their 3rd person pronouns (he/she). This forces them to pay extra attention to such details when experiencing and reviewing events in their minds, since one primary focus of humans is communication - we want to tell the story to someone.
Turkish speakers have to pay careful attention to their source of knowledge, since it is grammatically encoded in their language (hearsay, or visual evidence, or actual direct experience). Each language forces/encourages its speakers to focus on different aspects of life. It makes it easy to think in those terms.
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This seems like further evidence that language creates thought.

What I'm getting at, I guess, is that every time I take psychedelics, I become aware of things that I have no way of describing. Because I can't describe them, I can't really experience them in an intelligent way. I just experience them as rushes of geometry and emotion. I believe that once our language evolves to accommodate these things, I'll be able to explain them very specifically, and maybe even incorporate them into human technology.

But I cannot know them if I can't describe them with exactitude.

I had for some time been inventing a more versatile language--a language that merges emotions and mathematics. I put off this task for a while, but maybe I'll pick it up again.

This stuff consumes me. I need to take psychedelics again, so that I can see them again and maybe come closer to describing them, for to describe them is to know them.
 
im pretty sure cavemen took whatever didnt poison or kill them

if they happened to stumble upon a plant that gave them good vibes, obviously they would take it again
 
23536 said:
This seems like further evidence that language creates thought.

What I'm getting at, I guess, is that every time I take psychedelics, I become aware of things that I have no way of describing. Because I can't describe them, I can't really experience them in an intelligent way. I just experience them as rushes of geometry and emotion. I believe that once our language evolves to accommodate these things, I'll be able to explain them very specifically, and maybe even incorporate them into human technology.

But I cannot know them if I can't describe them with exactitude.

I had for some time been inventing a more versatile language--a language that merges emotions and mathematics. I put off this task for a while, but maybe I'll pick it up again.

This stuff consumes me. I need to take psychedelics again, so that I can see them again and maybe come closer to describing them, for to describe them is to know them.
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Very interesting, but I would stop at the claim that language influences thought, and not go so far as to say that it creates thought.
When you experience things that you can't describe, you say that you can't experience them "in an intelligent way".
But this depends on your definition of intelligence - you seem to be defining it as something linguistic. No wonder you think language creates thought!
There is a level of experience that is more primal than thought or language, and we tend to lose track of this basic phenomenon due to our obsession with the mind. This is something that psychedelics can highlight, and remind us of.
Experience, after all, is direct, whereas thought and language are less so.
You feel that you can't "know" your psychedelic experiences if you can't describe them, and I can completely relate to this.
But that is just one kind of "knowing" - a very cerebral, intellectual one. Essentially, a linguistic one.
There is another kind of knowing, based on actual direct experience.
I would say that you are tied into one specific definition of thought, but that said definition is too narrow, as it is based on language.
If you fall in love with someone, you don't have to think "I love her/him" in order for it to be true.
Before putting it in language, you know that you feel something special.
You know when you feel good or bad, or proud or embarrassed, without having to say it.
 
slimvictor said:
I would say that you are tied into one specific definition of thought, but that said definition is too narrow, as it is based on language.
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OK, I think that's true. But that's the only type of thought I was referring to. The kind that we're talking about when we say, "A sentence is a complete thought." The type of thought that can be codified by symbolic logic, and symbolized by metaphor.

The pre-conscious, visceral stuff comes standard with being a primate, but the development of language is something else entirely. And I believe we needed language to engage in the more conscious strata of thought. And again, I suspect that psychedelics had something to do with that development.

I should point out that I'm a little influenced by Terence Mckenna, who paid close attention to some of the same phenomena:

And what they meant was use your voice to make an object. And as I understood, I felt a bubble kind of grow inside of me. And I watched these little elf tykes jumping in and out of my chest; they like to do that to reassure you. And they said, "Do it." And I felt language rise up in me that was unhooked from english, and I began to speak...
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Isn't this theory exactly as postulated by Graham Hancock in his book Supernatural from around 6 or 7 years ago..?

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http://www.amazon.com/Supernatural-Meetings-Ancient-Teachers-Mankind/dp/1932857842
 
What, you expect DM (or any large media company for that matter) to think of a unique idea, research it and then publish it without bias?
 
Yes, Hancock explored the link between pschoactive plants, vision and human development pretty thoroughly in 'Supernatural' - which was a great deal more rigorous in its method and approach than his critics admit. The theory has also found its way into a recent novel, 'W. B. Yeats and the Secret Masters of the World'. It seems to fall into the class of ideas which, because they contradict or undermine consensus or tradition, are 'discovered' every few decades and then forgotten again.
 
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