Display of the Ancient Religious Bone Cults in the Late Acheulean–Mousterian Art
Authors: Bondarchuk Yaroslava 
Published: June 2021

The relevance of research. One of the most important unsolved problems of cultural studies, religious studies, art history, and history is to determine the time of the origin of religious ideas: that of the beginning of the spiritual evolution of the mankind, which at a certain stage of development begins to master not only the material world but also tries to comprehend the supernatural transcendent reality. The views of scholars regarding the time of the birth of religious beliefs is divided into two opposing points of view. According to one of them, expressed in the works of R. Marett, F. Ratzel, V. Kabo, A. Zubov, religious representations were inherent in the primitive man since the beginning of existence. A serious argument against this version is the fact that art the site of Olduvai culture no object was found that did not have a utilitarian purpose and that could be interpreted as a cult object. However, this fact can be explained by the fact that the rational awareness of the highest supernatural power was preceded by its subconscious (intuitive) sensation, which did not require objectivation in cult objects. Religious ideas were primitive so that they did not need any cult objects. According to other scholars, one can speak of the emergence of religious ideas only from the moment when the cult artefacts appeared; the pre-religious period had lasted until the end of the Mousterian era. However, the discovery of a number of archaeological sites in the second half of the 20th century at the beginning of the 21st century makes it possible to move the beginning of the appearance of Religious beliefs back until the period of the late Acheulean–beginning of Mousterian era.The purpose of the article: to establish the time of the origin and evolution of the earliest religious beliefs associated with the cult of bones, based on the analysis of the most ancient artefacts currently known, which testify to the ritual activities of the primitive man. The considered artefacts lead to the conclusion that the most ancient evidence of the cults of bones belongs to the era of the late Acheulean and Mousterian. Animal bones were among the first objects that the primitive man singled out from the environment as sacred, and endowed with a supernatural ability to revive the lives of animals and humans. Symbolic compositions of bones and signs carved in them became sacred attributes used for magical rites. The first acts of the ritual symbolization marked the emergence of sacred art and magic, which, radically different from the directly useful work, passed into a special plane of connection of men with the supernatural force. The earliest monuments (Torralba, Ambrona, Azykh), which testify to magical actions with bones, date back to about 400–200 thousand years BC. Thus, more than 2 million years passed from the appearance of man (ca. 2.7 million years ago) to the emergence of religious ideas, which required objectification in cult items and the performance of certain rituals. Although it cannot be denied that the intuitive subconscious sense of the supernatural power has been inherent in man since the beginning of his existence, purposefully by cultic magical actions that called on higher powers for help, he began to practice from the period of the late Acheulean. In the Mousterian era, in addition to the cult of bones, the cult of the skull arose as a container of special energy capable of renewing human life. Despite the fact that there are only a few examples of skull burials in the Mousterian period, apart from Mount Circeo, in Zhoukoudian (1929), Ngandonga (1931–1933) and Steingheim (1933), it can be assumed that about 70–50 thousand years ago, along with burials, an undissected body could be another rite of separation of the skull, which as a container of a special vital energy of man was buried in some parts of the caves on piles of bones and stones, just as at about the same time separately buried the skulls of bears in stone boxes and niches in caves of Regurdu, Azykh, Drachenloh, Wildenmannlisloch, and others. Later, with the development of ideas about the soul, the cult of skulls is further developed, based on the realization of the power of the extracorporeal spiritual essence of the revered dead (= ancestors), the concentration of which requires a magical container.