Ruminations

Bewildering Absent Digits

"By cutting off a piece of your finger, everyone around you can see that you've done something to this severity that shows how committed you are to the god or to the group."
"It's just costly enough without being an infringement to your survival."
"You're in a dark cave, where images are said to appear suddenly out of the darkness. Individuals have argued that people might be using mind-altering substances."
"We thought that within the context of this ritualized environment, sacrifice would make the most sense out of all of these different [reasons to amputate a finger]."
"Previously, if a skeleton was missing their finger bones, we wouldn't really think too much of it, because the archaeological record is so patchy and small finger bones can deteriorate quite easily."
"But now, if we're finding a lot of skeletons that are missing fingers, it might mean something different."
Brea McCauley, researcher, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, B.C.

Hand stencils are seen in the Grotte de Gargas. Wikimedia Commons

Researchers began to notice in the 1950s, that images appeared at Grotte de Gargas, Cosquer Cave and other prehistoric caves sites discovered in various parts of France and Spain, the images drawn on the interior walls often depicted incomplete complements of digits on drawn hands. Those images of hands with severed digits gave birth to a number of competing theories respecting their origins and possible meaning.

Recently, Australian archaeologist Ian Gilligan informed New Scientist, a British magazine, that many of those hands appear to be faithful replications of frostbite since the thumbs appear intact while middle, ring and pinky fingers are abbreviated. Out of Britain's Durham University in 2012 came convincing arguments by researchers there that Paleolithic societies were capable of producing mittens and their considered opinion was that the images likelier are proof of the existence of a sign language where hand gestures were used for interaction.

And now the latest research out of Simon Fraser University indicates that researchers there are confident in theorizing that the disfigured human hands can be attributed to amputated fingers linked to sacrifice to a deity. The studied artwork dating from the Upper Palaeolithic era (22,000 to 27,000 years ago) found in France and Spain appear to reflect sound guesswork on the part of archaeologists, but the research team of Brea McCauley, David Maxwell and Mark Collard see a bonding exercise, not frostbite or sign language as the cause.

The B.C. researchers concluded their hypothesis through studying an online ethnographic database labelled the Human Relations Area Files and there they discovered that cultures world-wide have engaged in systematic finger amputation. No fewer than 121 societies undertook this sacrificial practice throughout history, ostensibly for one of ten possible reasons including mourning the death of a relative, punishment for crimes, and ritualizing a group's distinct identity.

In the end, sacrifice appeared the most likely and common motivation in their sample, supporting the researchers' initial view. The hands of several dozen people, among them adults, adolescents and infants were the subjects of images at Grotte de Gargas and it is Ms. McCauley's studied opinion that it is entirely conceivable that a finger or up to three would be cut away in a ritual of "negatively arousing" religious experiences.

Other evidence, they feel, negates possibilities that steer away from amputation; were the images those of frostbitten hands it would seem more likely they would be seen across a much larger area wherever icy temperatures were common during the Palaeolithic age, but they are distributed erratically within a small group of caves in varying regions of France and Spain, leading her to doubt they represent an ancient sign language since no discernible pattern of bent thumbs exist, though they are the easiest finger to contort.