Scribd
Upload
40 views1 page

Paleolithic Views on Hunting and Animals

The document discusses humanity's origins in the Paleolithic era. It describes how Paleolithic people viewed animals not as distinct from humans but as equals. Hunters saw animals as having skills that humans lacked and possessing souls and language. The death of an animal depended on its consent, so hunters worked to establish good relations with the animals they hunted. Paleolithic people recognized an intimate connection between humans and animals.

Uploaded by

jan muller
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
40 views1 page

Paleolithic Views on Hunting and Animals

The document discusses humanity's origins in the Paleolithic era. It describes how Paleolithic people viewed animals not as distinct from humans but as equals. Hunters saw animals as having skills that humans lacked and possessing souls and language. The death of an animal depended on its consent, so hunters worked to establish good relations with the animals they hunted. Paleolithic people recognized an intimate connection between humans and animals.

Uploaded by

jan muller
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

THE CRADLE OF HUMANITY

professionalism even in matters of ultimate concern.56 On the


subject of the slaughterhouse, to take only this example, Bataille
observed: "In our times ...the slaughterhouse is cursed and quar­
antined like a plague-ridden ship. Now, the victims of this curse
are neither butchers nor beasts, but those same good folk who
countenance, by now, only their own unseemliness, an unseemli­
ness commensurate with an unhealthy need of cleanliness, with
irascible meanness, and boredom:'57 Nothing could be further
from the Paleolithic imagination.
The Paleolithic imagination recognizes no such distinction
between animals and men, save perhaps that animals possess skills
and abilities, strengths, that human beings, in their fragility, their
weakness, lack. Bataille repeatedly quotes the following passage
from Les Rites de chasse chez Jes peuples siberiens by Eveline Lot­
Falck, in which his vision of the rapport between hunter and
hunted stands in clarified relief:

Among hunting peoples, as among Siberians, man feels the most


intimately linked to animals. Between the human species and the
animal species, domination would have been unfathomable: they
were essentially indistinguishable from each other. The hunter sees
the animal, at the very minimum, as his equal. He sees it hunt, like
him, for nourishment .... Like man, the beast possesses one or sev­
eral souls and one language.... The bear could speak if he wanted,
but he prefers not to, and the Yukaghir see this silence as proof of the
bear's superiority over man .... "Wild game is like man, only more
godlike," say the Navajo, and the phrase would not be out of place on
a Siberian's lips.. .. The death of the animal depends, at least in part,
on the animal itself. To be killed, he must have given his consent
beforehand, which in a way makes him an accomplice to his own
murder. The hunter therefore takes great care when dealing with the
animal ...anxious to establish the best possible relations with him. 58

You might also like