Men and women might have had their fingers deliberately chopped off during religious rituals in prehistoric times, according to a new interpretation of palaeolithic cave art.
In a paper presented at a recent meeting of the European Society for Human Evolution, researchers point to 25,000-year-old paintings in France and Spain that depict silhouettes of hands. On more than 200 of these prints, the hands lack at least one digit. In some cases, only a single upper segment is missing; in others, several fingers are gone.
In the past, this absence of digits was attributed to artistic licence by the cave-painting creators or to ancient people’s real-life medical problems, including frostbite.
But scientists led by archaeologist Prof Mark Collard of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver say the truth may be far more gruesome. “There is compelling evidence that these people may have had their fingers amputated deliberately in rituals intended to elicit help from supernatural entities,” said Collard.
To be fair when it comes to this kind of research comparison with modern hunter gatherer societies is the closest thing you can find to evidence, some things never enter the archaeological record.
Perhaps we’ll never find conclusive evidence pointing to any one of the theories on these missing-finger handprints.
Right. With no written documentation or known modern descendants of the culture, it’s all speculation. I don’t know why they’d leap to conclude it was intentional religious sacrifice vs. accidents or amputations following injury.