Jean-Loïc Le Quellec

SHAMANS AND MARTIANS:THE SAME STRUGGLE!

When the famous "frescoes'' of the Tassili were presented to the public for thefirst time by Henri Lhote, they aroused great enthusiasm for these traces of a"new ancient civilisation". The technical mastery of the painters, whose workshad defied the millennia in the heart of the Sahara, was astonishing, and nobodycould doubt that artists who were so confident in their art had an importantmessage to transmit. But what was it? As with most of the world's rock art, thedisappearance of the painters and engravers, and the irreparable hiatus that existsbetween their world and ours, leave the hermeneutics at a loss... when they donot let their unbridled imagination take over.

MARTIANS AND ARCHAEOMANIACS

It all began in 1956, when Henri Lhote visited the site of Jabbaren, which hadbeen discovered during reconnaissance carried out in 1938 by Colonel Brenans,who had told him of it before his premature death. This term jabbaren means

"giants" (Lhote 1954: 70) in Tamâsheq (the Tuareg language), and is due to thepresence in this place of very big rock paintings, up to six metres high for onefigure which was nicknamed "the Great God". Lhote was very impressed by this

work, and made the following comment in his best-seller The Search for theTassili Frescoes, which first appeared in 1958: "The outline is simple, ratherunskilfully executed. The head is round and the only feature it presents is a

double oval in the middle of the face; in fact, the whole thing is very like thepictures we sometimes see of 'Martians'. 'Martians' — that would make a verygood heading for a sensational newspaper article, but it would have to tail off into

an anticlimax, since if 'Martians' ever set foot in the Sahara, it must have been avery, very long time ago, for these round-headed figures are, as far as we could

make out, among the oldest in the Tassili!" (Lhote 1958: 77-78; p. 69 in theEnglish edition).

This nickname of "Martians" was obviously no more than a joke, such asarchaeologists often make on sites where there are few enough chances to amuse

The Concept of Shamanism: Uses and Abuses. Edited by Henri-Paul Francfort and Roberte N. Hamayon.

Bibtiotheca Shamanistica vol. 10. Budapest: Akademiai Kiadó, 2001.

oneself Lhote's mentor, the abbé Breuil, who himself spoke of "Discoid-headedBovidian people" (Breuil 1954: 81), was familiar with this type of nicknames andamusing labels, which are unfortunately taken literally from time to time by somehasty reader or those with no sense of humour. For example, Breuil gave someTassili paintings titles such as "The Accusation" (Breuil 1954, fig. 83) or "PotMarket" (ibid., fig. 109/a), and even "Josephine sold by her sisters" (!) (ibid , fig.101), names which obviously should not be taken literally.

In any case, the vivid name of "Martians" was soon to become establishedthrough constant use to designate those paintings which are also known as

"Round-Heads". Hence, in Lhote's writings, there were to be many linesdeclaring that "'Martians' are common enough at Jabbaren", or evoking a

"Martian type" (Lhote 1958: 78-79). However, the famous explorer himselfwould most often merely use the expression "Round Heads" and, in his book onthe Hoggar, he would simply note, with regard to these works, that one canparticularize in the Tassili-n-Ajjer " a strange group of paintings (which) displayspeople characterized by a round head that often resembles the helmet of a diving

suit" (Lhote 1984: 86). And of course, nobody would dream of claiming that thereused to be "divers" in the Sahara, despite the recent notoriety achieved by the filmThe English Patient with its parietal paintings in the "Cave of the Swimmers".

As for the term of "Martians" itself, no rock art specialist has ever taken itliterally, especially Lhote who, in a final survey before his death, wrote the

followving: "The term of 'Round Heads' arose from the way that the different

members of the mission referred to them, although the term 'Martians' was oftenused", although he also expressed regret that the latter name allows people to "fallprey to a romantic fantasy" (Lhote 1984: 86).

Alas, many people fell victim to this fantasy and, even today, the rockpaintings of the Sahara are regularly called upon to support various woolly

theories developed by the "Archaeomaniacs", the nickname given to those whoseek some traces of Science-Fiction in the most distant past. I would like to showthat the authors who thus seek clues to an ancient extra-terrestrial presence inarchaeological remains are following a procedure that is highly comparable to theone which has the tendency to see shamans everywhere.

The first of these monomanias, which consists of claiming that the Round-Head paintings depict "real" Martians, can only be upheld at the cost of a doubleignorance:

- ignorance of the tens of thousands of Saharan rock images which in noway resemble "Martians", including among the Round Heads;

- ignorance of the ethnological, stylistic, anthropological, chronological andgeographical context of the paintings concerned.

More specifically, among the facts that are "forgotten" by the Archaeomaniacsthere are the following fundamental points:

a) several cultural traits that are peculiar to the Round Heads group

(zoomorphic masks, bows, loincloths or penis sheaths, jewellery, bodypainting and adornments) are, of course, also found in other contemporary

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or later rock art assemblages, through the effects of influences, evolutions,transmissions and survivals;

b) the depictive techniques that are used on them (light flatwash surroundedby a thick ochre outline) survived a very long time in the Bovidian

paintings;c) their style is also echoed graphically in the Saharan rock art of other

periods (notably the "skiing position" of people seen in profile, with legsjoined together and slightly bent) (Muzzolini 1986: 127);

d) among the engravings and paintings of the Sahara, there are other works

that are even more astonishing and "fantastic" than the supposed depictions

of "Ancient Astronauts", such as those giant anthropomorphs with a dog'shead who can pull a rhinoceros with one hand, and which arc obviouslyrepresentations of mythical beings; nobody would dream of claiming thatthey ever really existed (on these beings, see Le Quellec 1998: 336-378);

e) not to mention that the majority of these "Martians" are in fact made up of

females, since they have perfectly recognizable breasts.But the supporters of the "Martians in the Sahara" hypothesis — just like those

who support the shamanic hypothesis — ignore these facts (or could not care less

about them) and neglect the context of the depictions that they invoke. They puttogether artificial groups of figures of various ages and provenances, and usethem to deduce the existence of a "vanished race" (Kolosimo 1973: 153), a

"mysterious Saharan people" (Kolosimo 1973: 152) that is as unreal as thenotorious "megalithic people" to whom some people used to attribute thepaternity of the standing stones of the whole world. All the same, reading the

Tassili paintings with a "Martian" or "extra-terrestrial key" caused tremendousinterest in the rock depictions of several other parts of the world, which weresubsequently subjected to "readings" of the same type.

This is exactly what is now happening with a second monomania that iscurrently outdoing its predecessor : the reading of enigmatic rock art with a"shamanic key".

MARTIANS AND SHAMANIACS

The idea that the Round Head paintings could be the result of "particular ecstaticstates associated with dancing or the consumption of hallucinogenic substances"appeared in 1980 from the pen of Umberto Sansoni (Sansoni 1980). Nine yearslater, Emmanuel Anati developed this view by claiming — but not

demonstrating — that the creators of this style of paintings corresponded to a"population living in a kind of Garden of Eden and using substances that altered

consciousness" (Anati 1989: 187). During these same years, Giorgio Samoriniundertook an investigation into the links between rock art, shamanism and alteredstates of consciousness (Samorini 1990), especially in the Sahara (1989), beforerecalling that on the banks of the River Pegtymel, in Siberia, rock engravings

have been interpreted as depictions of gathering Amanita muscarina, used by

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shamans, while fungiform motifs are found at other rock art sites in Eurasia andNorth America belonging to areas with shamanic cultures (1992: 69-71).Considering that the use of mushrooms and other hallucinogenic plantscorresponds to a "universal mental value", he then interpreted a Round Headpainting at Ti-n-Tazarift (fig. 1.) as the depiction of masked people brandishing

mushrooms in the course of a ritual dance that was supposed to lead to ecstasy(Samorini 1992: 73). Having launched this notion, the author found "fungiform

symbols" on other Round Head paintings in the Tassili, notably at Techekalawen,Ti-n-Aboteka, Jabbaren, I-n-Awanghct (fig. 6.), Ti-n-Teferiest (fig. 2.) andMatalen-Amazar (fig. 3.). In his view, all these images represented "the spirit ofthe mushroom", and he concluded that there was here "the presence of a veryancient cult of the hallucinogenic mushroom", even affirming that the RoundHead paintings were attributable to "the oldest culture discovered so far thatdepicted the ritual use of hallucinogenic mushrooms" (1992: 74). Then, basinghimself on highly questionable chronological data, he supposed that this Saharanevidence was proof of the palaeolithic age of the use of hallucinogens in a religious framework. For the moment I do not wish to discuss problems ofchronology: the important thing here is to note that Samorini's publicationsclearly set the Round Head rock art of the Sahara in a shamanic perspective.

It is therefore amusing to see that, for his part, and basing himself on the samepaintings (figs. 4-7), Ferdinando Fagnola (1995) also came to the conclusion that

hallucinogenic plants were used, but he identified them as Turbina corymbosaand Ipomaea purpurea. Hence it is striking to note that the same imagesrepresented mushrooms for Samorini and convolvulaceae for Fagnola. The latteradds that it was the absorption of the seeds of these plants which provoked thephosphenes and various alterations of consciousness that explain the look of the

Round Head paintings. Henceforth, the very enigmatic circular motifs called

"jellyfish" (fig. 8.) — which is merely a vivid but conventional name like that of

the "Martians" — would describe phosphenes or scotomas (1995: 4).But whatever one may think of this hypothesis, one can at least agree with its

author when he writes that "no scientific research has ever confirmed the theorythat the paintings of the Tassili-Acacus were produced by altered states ofconsciousness" (Fagnola 1995: 4). His personal contribution to this interpretationwas to propose a new botanical identification that developed the initialhypothesis — but it does not enable one to verify it, any more than did that ofSamorini. In fact, the attempt to correlate certain Saharan rock paintings withinterpretations directly inspired by the "shamanic" hypothesis developed byLewis-Williams (1981) for South Africa was an idea that was "blowing in the

wind" by the early 1990s. In 1993, Andrew B. Smith (1993: 471) based it on the

one hand on the presence, in both the Sahara and South Africa, of tectiforms,zigzag lines and creatures without hoofs or legs: and on the other hand, on the

existence of rituals of possession among the present-day Peul, supposedly relatedto the early Saharan painters.

In the preface of Umberto Sansoni's book of 1994, Emmanuel Anati affirmedthat the paintings of the "Round Head phase" were the work of "Negroid

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Fig.I. Round Head painting of Ti-n-Tazarift (Tassili-n-Ajjer) interpreted by G. Samorini(1992) as a ritual dance with hallucinogenic mushrooms, whereas F. Fagnola (1995) sees

peopleholding convolvulaeeae in their hands (After Samorini 1992).

.'

Fig.2. Round Head painting

from I-n-Awanghet(Tassili-n-Ajjer): person with

a body covered in mushroomsaccording to G. Samorini

(1992), or "man-tree" covered

in leaves according toF. Fagnola (1995).

(After Fagnola 1995).

Fig,3. Round Head painting at

Matalen-Amazar (Tassili-n-Ajjer), inwhich G. Samorini sees a person witha body entirely covered in mushrooms

(After Samorini 1992).

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Fig.4. Small person from Ti-n-Teferiest (Tassili-n-Ajjer).For G. Samorini (1992) this is a "person with a mushroom head". but for

F. Fagnola (1995) it has a 1eaf-shaped head (Aller Samorini 1992).

Fïg.5. Round Head painting from Sefar (Tassili-n-Ajjer), in which one can see five "jellyfish"

(conventional name) which, according to F. Fagnola, are none other than scotomas orphosphenes caused by trance… or shamanic drums according to F. Soleilhavoup

(Aller Sansoni 1994).

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Fig.6. Round Head painting traced by H. Lhote in

an unspecified site of the Central Sahara, andwhich was compared by U. Sansoni to the South

African "Shaman" (?) in Fig.7.(After Sansoni 1994).

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Fig. 7. One of the

"therianthropes" of BurleyII (Drakensberg, South

Africa) which S. Lewis-Williams interprets as adepiction of "shaman"

in trance, and whichU. Sansoni compares to

the painting of the TassiliRound Heads in Fig.6(After Sansoni 1994).

Fig.S. Round Head painting of

I-n-Itinen (TassiIi-n-Ajjer) inwhich U. Sansoni recognisespeople in trance, because of a

detail interpretation as epistaxis(After Sansoni 1994).

populations" who made~ "ample use of hallucinogens"(L... (Sansoni 1994: 11). In the

book itself, Umberto Sansoniwas more prudent at first andconfincd himself to sayingthat "the ritual use ofhallucinogenic substancescannot be ruled out" (1994:157). But in the last chapter,he tried to explain a fewsimilaritics between theRound Head art and imagesfrom South Africa, notablycomparing an "anthropozoo-morphic figure" recorded byHenri Lhote in the CentralSahara (fig. 9.) with a"Medicine Man" of the

Drakensberg (fig. 10.), supposedly a shaman in trance (1994: 284). In a paintingat I-n-litinen, in the Central Sahara (fig. 11.), he thought he could rccognize thephenomenon of epistaxis which Lewis-Williams systematically associated withshamanism. Finally,evoking the "sometimesshamanic experience oftrance", the authorcontinued his compari-son, drawing together"levitating" people fromthe Sahara (fig. 12.) andTanzania (1994, fig.219-220). Askinghimself the question asto whether thesesimilarities could beevidence for similar

, phenomena in the twozones, he replied: "Thediffusion of the trancephenomenon or ofdances of possession inAfrica, the importanceamong the Round Headsof the accessoryelement, of dance, and

Fig.9. "Floating person of the Round Heads of

Ti-n-Tazarift, compared by U. Sansoni to certain rockpaintings in Tanzania. For F. Soleilhavoup,

this is a "shaman" travelling in search of a soul(After Sansoni 1994).

Fig.10. Rock engraving of Kori Taguei (Air, Niger).Giraffe on which the reticulated motif of its hide

seems to extend beyond its outline(After Soleilhavoup 1998a, 1998b).

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the concomitant presenec of fantastic figures (some of which, among theBushmen, are said to result from "hallucinated" visions during trance) make onelean towards a positive response" (1994: 286).

In 1995, Emmanuel Anati returned to one of the Round Head figures used bythe preceding authors in support of their interpretations (fig. 1.), and saw in it "apainting showing the effects of hallucinogenic mushrooms" (Anati 1995, fig.136). The author compared the Round Head art with that of several areas ofAmerica and South Africa; "We know that there have been similar periods andsituations in other parts of the world. Hence, in Texas, California and Mexicothere are collections of rock art produced by gatherers who knew drugs. A similarperiod is known in Tanzania, in the south of the African continent, and displaysnumerous points of similarity with the Saharan works" (ibid.: 181). The Americanarts that were compared with the Round Heads are interpreted with the "shamanickey" by some researchers, while South African art is read similarly by Lewis-Williams and Dowson. So this is an obvious allusion to the "shamanism" of theRound Heads. In 1996, Susan Searight produced an excellent summary of all theEuropean and South African data, and once again posed the question of theRound Head paintings of the Tassili, and finally tried to see whether Lewis-Williams' theory could be applied to a remarkable collection of rock art in theMoroccan Sahara — the site of Imaoun, which contains mostly zigzags, spirals,

Fig.11. Rock engraving of Kori Taguei (Air, Niger). Man and Giraffe whose legsresemble a ladder, a symbol of shamanism for F. Soleilhavoup

(After Soleilhavoup 1998a, I 998b).

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grids, curvilinear motifs and meanders. She wondered if one should accept "thehypothesis of the creation of these images at Imaoun by shamans or others whohad entered an altered state of consciousness" (Searight 1996: 54; 1999: 15).

One can see that the texts cited above demonstrate clearly that the idea of ashamanic reading of thc Round Heads has been in circulation for at least adecade, sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly, depending on the authorsconcerned. It is therefore astonishing to find that, in a recent article (published in1998), the claim has been made that "in Saharan rock art imagery, the idea that ashamanic system may have underlain certain ncolithic cultures has not yet beenput forward" (Soleilhavoup 1998a: 22). At the same time, but in a different

journal, the same author tells us: "It is lookingincreasingly probable that the early period ofpaintings in the Tassili zone, in the so-calledRound Head style, corresponded to neolithicgroups of hunter-gatherers structured in thesame way as shamanic ethnocultures"(Soleilhavoup 1998b: 71). It goes withoutsaying that for a theory to be "increasinglyprobable", it has to be have been around forsome time already. And this is indeed thecase — so much so that Alfred Muzzolini hadalready devoted some lines to it in 1988-1989... and rejected it: "Even if the theory were tobe proved convincing for South African art, weshould note that, where Saharan art isconcerned, we possess no texts and noethnographic depictions that would allow us toclaim that Saharan art was shamanistic... Onecan —as in all artistic ensembles— find in it afew elementary figures such as grids, chevronlines, concentric circles, etc. But to deduce thatthey represent the phosphenes of shamanswould demand more convincing evidence than acomparison with Bushman motifs" (Muzzolini1988-1989: 274). In 1995, Muzzolini developedhis objections even further, and reached the

following, very firm conclusion: "it is obviously out of the question thatinterpretations that may be valid for the San culture (...) should be transposable tothe cultures of the Tassili Neolithic, even if the figures in both these domainsoriginated from the same entoptic structures." (Muzzolini 1995: 182).

Fig. 12. Rock engraving of AnuMaqqaren (Air, Niger), on which

it is clear that the "ladder" of thelegs is merely a conventional way

of depicting the decoration on the

animal's hide (After Lhote 1972,No. 1024).

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THE VULGATE AND THE OBVIOUS

As is usual in the history of science, the upholders of a reading with a shamanickey have made no reply to the objections quoted above, and are simply content toproduce new examples that are supposed to illustrate their thesis. It is indeed the

accumulation of such "examples" that, gradually, replaces any kind ofdemonstration, and finally makes the shamanic thesis "obvious" for a certain kindof authors who are so undemanding that they take great care not to specify exactlywhat they mean by "shamanism".

Hence, in October 1998, several articles in the press announced the

"discovery", in the preceding November, of two engraved giraffes in northeastNiger, which were "estimated to be some seven to nine thousand years old". The

authors then specified that the giraffe and its companion each have a long lineemanating from their nose that terminates in the image of a small man. "We

believe that this has important significance, perhaps representing shamanicassociation or symbolism", said Coulson. "We simply do not know. What iscertain, however, is that the giraffe was of vital importance to early Africanpopulations, possibly being associated with the bringing of rain." (quoted byAngela M.H. Schuster, 19 Oct. 1998, the Archaeological Institute of America).

One can hardly overemphasise the extreme fragility of these claims. Quiteapart from the fact that these giraffes had been known for a long time, since they

had already been studied and published ten years before by Christian Dupuy(1988, pI. II: PG 9), they were in no way unique specimens: the Sahara has

dozens of depictions of giraffes, similarly endowed with " a long line emanatingfrom their nose that terminates in the image of a small man". Many authors havecommented on such images, which simply represent giraffes that have beencaptured and tethered, a practice that is perfectly well attested by Africanethnography (see discussion in Le Quellec 1993b: 428-429). Abandoning this" banal " reading in favour of the thesis of " shamanic symbolism " should haveinvolved, at the very least, some rudiments of an argument. As for implying thatthe creators of the Niger rock images associated the giraffe with some rituallinked to rain, any search to find the slightest piece of evidence supporting such atheory in the whole of the Sahara, and in Niger in particular, would prove utterlyfruitless. But as one might expect this is merely one of the constantly repeatedbanalities with regard to the " shamanism " detected by David Lewis-Williams in certain South African rock paintings, and this banality is here transposed to theSahara without any precaution ... as if "shamanism" and "rain ritual" were merelyone and the same thing.

In January 1998, after some pretty incongruous media hype (1), an expeditionsupported by the National Geographic Society and the Bradshaw Foundation ofGeneva was organised to carry out the casting of these giraffe engravings, and several publications have resulted from this expedition. In one, David Coulson(1999) writes that certain figures painted in the Tassili by the Round Heads "may

depict shamanistic out-of-body travel". In another, this same author (1998),evoking two life-size engraved elephants at Iwelen (Niger), specifies that one of

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them "appeared to be bleeding from the nose". It is astonishing that a rockengraving should be precise enough to depict an elephant bleeding from the nose,especially in the context of the rock images of Niger, and this alone would haveamply justified the presentation of this image, though it is remains unpublished as

far as I am aware. It is therefore very difficult to make any judgement. But whyon earth, at a site which, according to the author, also comprises "many largeengravings of warriors with heart-shaped heads and broad-tipped spears", does heonly mention the detail of the bleeding nose? Could it possibly be because,

according to Lewis-Williams, this is a constant sign of the trancc state, andwhenever it is present in a "therianthrope" or an animal, this means that it isreally a metamorphosed shaman?

We are faced here with one of those "obvious facts" that lead authors to dowithout any demonstration — or at least to put into practice an implicit doubleargument., which one can summarise as follows:

Firstly: a) South African "shamans" bleed from the nose when they are intrance; b) Hence, bleeding from the nose is a sign of shamanism ;

Secondly: a) Any mark engraved in front of a nose can only represent a flow

of blood (and not, for cxample, a leading-rein, as was the case for the giraffe); b)Hence, every animal whose muzzle is endowed with such a mark is not really ananimal, but actually a shaman.

The conclusion is therefore "obvious" : Saharan rock art is shamanic.

FLOATING REASONING AND TRUNCATED VISIONS

In accordance with a phenomenon that is, alas, all too frequent in the history ofreseareh into Saharan rock art, the vulgate of the "Saharan shamans" — like that,before it, of the "hunters" — continues to be expanded by authors. One sees thatgradually, through constant repetition, the idea of a "Martian shamanism" isstarting to be reified. So this is an apt moment to take a critical look at it. In order

to do this, it should be noted that the procedure adopted by the authors concernedregularly employs the same chain of ideas:

I. Shamanism and trance are declared to be universals ;2. one therefore expects to find them in Africa, and especially in the Sahara;3. trance is considered to be sufficient evidence for shamanism;4. it is first accompanied by simple geometric visions (zigzags, concentric

circles, grids, etc), and then by nosebleeds;5. and these same geometric figures and nosebleeds are indeed found among

Saharan rock markings.The acceptance of these five points is then extended as follows: at a particular

rock art site, one can find all or some of these graphisms (concentric circles, etc),or one can interpret a priori a depiction of a line or a few marks near the nose asflows of blood, and therefore one "deduces" that they rcpresent visions, and thusthat they attest to the local existence of trance, and hence of shamanism. Ifnecessary, the shamanic hypothesis is reinforced by the presence of people or

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animals "which seem to float in the air" (Soleilhavoup 1998c: 210) and are ipsofacto called in as evidence of a shamanic "voyage"... while forgetting that inreality all of the world's rock art figures "float" in this way, because thegroundline is almost never drawn, even on the most banal images depicting dailylife. It is now crucial to demonstrate the weaknesses that taint every point in thispseudo-reasoning.

SHAMANISM AND UNIVERSALS

As a premise, some people consider that shamanism is "universal in time andspace", since "everywhere in the world one can observe shamanic motifs"(Soleilhavoup 1998a: 23), and that "shamanic thought, which is residual today, isone of the universals of the human mind that is both original and permanent"(Soleilhavoup 1999b: 54). To make this claim is to forget a fundamental truth thatwas recently spelled out by Roberte Hamayon —i. e. that "phenomena of shamanictype" are in no way sufficient to prove the presence of shamanism, which is botha view of the world and a techniquc for managing uncertain phenomena, andwhich is constructed on " phenomena of shamanic type " but which cannot bereduced to these alone (Hamayon 1990).

If the reader accepts the (false) idea that "shamanism corresponds to one of theuniversals of the human mind" (Soleilhavoup 1998a: 32), then not only is it nosurprise to find it in Africa, but one might well expect to find it everywhere, andespecially in the Sahara. This is the case with Giorgio Samorini, who did nothesitate to reinforce one hypothesis with another: "since most rock artcorresponded to rites of initiation, or formed part of a religious practice and itscontext" (1 st hypothesis, unproven), "the idea that these works might beassociated with hallucinogenic plants" (2nd hypothesis, even less proven) "... isnot a surprise" (Samorini 1992: 69). This supposed presence of shamanism inAfrica then allows them to assume, as an extension of Lewis-Williams' theory,the existence of an "African shamanism, that has disappeared from North Africabut survives in South Africa" (Soleilhavoup 1998a: 32).

This is jumping the gun somewhat, because the question of "Africanshamanism" is still debatable (Hultkrantz 1993: 7). In 1913, Leo Frobenius hadalready spoken of an "African variety of shamanism" with regard to the Bori(Hawsa) and Zar (Ethiopia) cults (Frobenius 1913: 561). This notion was againput forward by Nadel who, in his studies of the Nuba, translated the term kujur as"shaman" (Nadel 1946). But by that time, and whatever one might understand by"shaman", the universality of shamanism had already been refuted: out ofeighteen Nuba groups studied by Nadel, only six practised what he called"shamanism". Subsequently, the term "shaman" was also used to translateconcepts noted among the Sukuma of Tanzania (Tanner 1955) and the Kuba ofCentral Africa (Vansina 1958), to which one could add the example of theEthiopian Zar (Leiris 1938, 1958; Haberland 1960, 1963). Soon, the notion ofshamanism was extended to the cults practised by numerous peoples: Ahur,

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Banyoro, Dinka, Fon, Lebu, Lugbara, Nago- Y aruba, Oromo, Segeju, Shona,Somali, Tonga, Wolof, Zaramo, Zincza, Zulu (Lewis 1989: 183).

But in all these cases, what the authors called shamanism is generally no morethan a passive possession: Nadel writes that the Nuba "shaman" "is a passivemedium when possessed" (Nadel 1946: 25). This definition was confirmed byloan Lewis in his most recent synthesis aimed at substantiating" African

shamanism": it is a situation of possession in which the spirits "mount" human"vehicles", called shamans by this author. But in reality it is the other way round:the shaman is not the instrument of the spirits, but their master. When he returnsfrom their world, where he is taker and not taken, tamer of spirits and not mountof the gods (Hamayon 1990, 1995), he is capable of narrating his travels, contraryto what occurs in the case of the possessed. The success of the excessivelymystical book devoted to shamanism by Mircea Eliade (1983) has played a greatrole in diffusing this notion among the general public, leading some to seeshamanism more or less everywhere, and preparing the ground for the current

"shamania", which improperly associates shamanism with ecstasy.As a response to these excesses, Luc de Heusch (1965) firmly contrasted cults

of possession with true shamanism, showing that they feature opposite directionsin the alliance between humans and spirits. This fundamental distinction, whichwas doubtless declared too rigidly at the start, was fortunately made more flexibleby its author (De Heusch 1971), and is followed and accepted by Gilbert Rouget

(1980) and Roberte Hamayon (1990: 32; 1995: 450). Even if it is true that various

intermediate situations exist, it seems highly probable that shamanism andpossession are located at the two extremes of a continuum whose poles differthrough an inversion of the "equestrian metaphor": at the shamanic pole, theanimal spirits become the shaman's mount, whereas at the other pole, that ofpossession, man is the spirit's mount. The existence of transitional forms makesno difference to this point. So Africa can be defined as the land of possession, andtrue shamanism is only conceivable there in the case of the Thonga and the San(De Heusch 1986: 131, 134; Rouget 1980; Hamayon 1982: 19).

Recently, Bertrand Hell has turned to this question, and has highlighted the

existence of a true shamanism in North Africa, illustrated most notably inMorocco by the example of the Brotherhood of the Gnâwa, similar to that of theSambâni of Libya and the Bilâli of Algeria; but this is a relatively recentexception which proves the rule, since it is ultimately the result of the medievalmeeting of Sufism and shamanism, in Iran and Central Asia (Hell 1999: 46-47).Besides, although he seeks to reunite shamanism and possession within an all-inclusive anthropological reading, Bertrand Hell nevertheless points out that,while possession cults are not associated with a specific cultural area, contrary toshamanism stricto sensu, it remains true that "black Africa appears to be averitable land of possession" (Hell 1999: 26).

To conclude: whether or not one accepts the opposition set out by Luc DeHeusch, it is impossible to accept unquestioningly the simplistic postulate of ashamanism that is "universal in time and space" which underlies the reasoningfollowed by the proponents of the theory of Round Head shamanism.

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TRANCE AND UNIVERSALS

In the theory being studied here, ecstasy and trance are regularly confused, andshamanism is systematically associated with them. A neuropsychological modelof trance is then invoked (the one popularized by Lewis-Williams—Dowson1988) according to which, during trance, there first appear six types ofphosphenes, or "psychograms" (dots, zigzags, grids, straight or undulatingparallel lines, honeycombs), which the mind tries to rationalize, beforeconstructing true hallucinations. The recognition of these graphisms in rock artthen supposedly suffices to attest shamanism.

At best, however, what is attested in this way is merely the action of enteringtrance, and in no way shamanism itself. The faculty of "shamanising", thecapacity for entering trance, are probably universals, but only in terms of thepotential of the human mind (Hamayon 1982: 27). Putting this potential intopractice is neither obligatory nor general, and its use as the basis of a socialinstrumentation even less so. Its realization in the framework of "shamanism",within a community for whose benefit it is used in order to regulate the uncertain,is only possible in accordance with collective imaginary representations thatimply a mythology and cosmogony. It is therefore impossible to study shamanismusefully by reducing it to individual neuropsychological phenomena.

PSYCHOGRAMS

But there is another difficulty: the recognition, in a collection of paintings orengravings, of dots, zigzags, grids, parallel lines and honeycombs, in no way

compels one to identify these graphisms as "psychograms" associated with trance.Beeause there is a simple rule that, the more complex an image, the less likely itis to exist by chance as several examples in different places. Conversely, thesimpler the image, the less its load of "bits" of information, and the greater the

chance of finding it with some frequeney. This is certainly the ease with thenotorious "psychograms" — their extreme simplicity suffices to explain their vastdistribution. But the simpler the images, the more probable their presence indifferent cultures, and the less chance they have of indicating any association.

As for deducing, from one of these drawings, that its author produced it in astate of trance, or in remembrance of that state, is an operation which, in theabsence of the artist's testimony, comes close to divination — or, to be less severe,let us say that it is the result of an arbitrary decision. For example, if the presenceof parallel undulating lines is evidence for trance and shamanism, then one has tobelieve that the decorators of Wavy Line pottery were shamans. If not, how canone decide that some authors of drawings of this type were shamans, and othersnot?

And if the "psychograms" were as intimately linked to trance and shamanismas the supporters of the "entoptic" theory would have us believe, then the veryshamans of Siberia themselves would lose the right to be called shamans, since

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the drawings they make on their drums or other objects do not correspond to thistype of graphism, and indeed their themes are direct illustrations of their practices(e.g. Hamayon 1990, fig. 21, 27, 31). ln short: the use of this criterion is claimed

to be able to demonstrate the presence of shamanism in places where it is by nomeans certain to exist, but it cannot be applied in Siberia, the shamanic zone parexcellence. ln these circumstances, it would be most reasonable to abandon it,especially as phosphenes can appear in many situations other than trance (extremefatigue, thirst or hunger, advanced age, pressure on the eyeballs...).

TRANCE AND SHAMANISM

As we have seen above, just because someone made drawings that evoke the

"entoptic" phosphenes that appear at the beginning of trance in no way means thatone can speak of "psychograms". And even if the latter were proven, they wouldnot necessarily be evidence of trance. But there is a third difficulty on top of thesetwo: the insistence on trying to link shamanism to trance gives a very partial viewof reality, and often distorts it. The jumps and cries of the Siberian shamans, thefact that they often stretch out suddenly, inert, and all the other bizarre featurcs oftheir behaviour can be explained differently, and more coherently, than byparticular states of consciousness. Some of these postures correspond to a ritualand theatrical animalization which the shaman is obliged to undergo, since hisspiritual wife is an animal and cannot, for her part, become human. RoberteHamayon has presented a masterly account of all the data which give meaning to

the shaman's behaviour; and when one takes this into account, it makes itpossible to understand that "there is no reason at all to call on the vocabulary oftrance, ecstasy or altered states of consciousness" (Hamayon 1995: 420). There is

no question of generalizing this view to the point where shamanism never hasanything to do with trance, but the crucial point here is that the attestation of

trance is not the most important factor in the recognition of shamanism.

THE SAHARAN "EXAMPLES"

And yet it is on such an incredibly fragile basis that some researchers lookthrough Saharan rock art for those traits which they think areliable to beexplained by the "shamanic model of interpretation of Saharan rock art"(Soleilhavoup 1998a: 25). Such traits are recognized in "shamanic landscapes" (?)supposedly favourable for seeking visions, but no criterion is given forrecognizing them. We are merely told that they are "numerous in open-air orruiniform karst landscapes" ... One can simply deduce from this that they aretherefore absent from Siberia, the land of shamanism par excellence!

However, let us accept that this argument is not fundamental, and let us ratherlinger on the one that takes into account the theme of the rock images, since"themes, scenes, subjects, objects, associations, even superimpositions" are

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supposedly only explicable "by reference to the shamanic system" (Soleilhavoup

1998a: 26).The examples presented in support of this affirmation are astonishingly rare,

and only concern fifteen recent engravings from Niger (out of about 7000published so far), perhaps twenty Round Head paintings (out of about 2500known), and a series of dots in a rock-shelter in the region of Aramat in the south-

west Fezzan (Soleilhavoup 1999a: 46-47), where tens of thousands of paintingsand engravings are known... that is, a handful of documents located in two greatzones (Niger, Central Sahara) that have no direct cultural or chronologicalrelationship. The fact that, with no regard for context, these works are all linkedto the so-called "shamanic system" shows that the system of interpretation used

here is contemptuous of chrono-cultural specifics, and thus constitutes a placelessand timeless reading of Eliadian type... that is, a type that is enormously open tocriticism, and absolutely useless to the prehistorian (for a detailed argument, seeLe Quellec 1998: 311-314).

One engraving which has been mentioned several times in support of thisreading with a "shamanic key" of the Saharan rock images is a giraffe, on which

the reticulated motif of its hide seems to extend beyond its outline, whichsupposedly corresponds to an entoptic vision that inspired the drawing of the

giraffe itself This explanation may be acceptable to anyone who adopts theshamanic "mental system" uncritically, but we must note that no argument is putforward to support it, except for the fact that it has already been proposed byThomas Dowson (1992) — likewise with no supporting arguments. But contrary toFrançois Soleilhavoup's claim, absolutely nothing in such an image in any wayevokes a "shamanic system for running a society" (Soleilhavoup 1998a: 27-28).

The second supposedly "shamanic" engraving is another giraffe whose legsresemble a ladder… a symbol of ascension, and thus of shamanism, according tothe interpretative "system" in question. If this reading were to be accepted, itwould be pertinent to wonder about the material prescnce of the ladder (which isno way universal) in the technological repertoire of the culture involved. But thisis not necessary, because tills alleged "ladder" is obviously just a conventionalway of depicting the decoration of the animal's hide, as one can check by asimple glance at innumerable giraffes of this type. In this kind of image, the

decoration of the hide is regularly extended in the form of horizontal lines on thelegs; only, in the example presented, the drawing is extremely crude.

The third image seems to represent a person with an ovoid body (which couldalso be a stylized ostrich… many of this type are known in the Sahara). Since theendo-perigraphic surface of this drawing was decorated with meanders, an authorin search of clues to shamanism will inevitably see in it the illustration of a

"shamanic relationship between man and animal" (Soleilhavoup 1998a: 28). Butthis reading is no more compelling than the previous ones.

In support of the shamanism theory, other enigmatic engravings from KoriTamakon, also in Niger, have also been invoked, especially this or that

"SUPPOSED representation derived from anthropomorphs"… my emphasis onthe word "supposed", because one cannot prove a hypothesis by a supposition.

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But that's not all. In the Tassili-n-Ajjer and in the Akâkûs, "many paintingsmust be understood as depictions of shamans", because one can recognize in them

"the shaman's clothing, his accessories, his ornaments, together with his animaldisguises, his headgear and hairstyles, his masks or facial paintings, etc."(Soleilhavoup 1998a: 29) This claim is said to be part of a "re-examination of

various scenes or motifs… in a rigorous methodological framework, that is to say,without any excessive imagination" (Soleilhavoup 1998a: 30). So one isexpecting a convincing collection of unequivocal documents. But what are wepresented with? The famous "jellyfish" of the Round Head paintings — butabsolutely nobody knows what they are. But as these figures are circular, the

shamanic hypothesis makes them drums, even though none of them is shownbeing used, or in a musical context.

It is somewhat comical to note that another "supporter" of the shamanic theoryhad already recognized these jellyfish as "phosphenes" provoked by the ingestionof mushrooms (Fagnola 1995: 4 and fig. I): which shows that neither of theseinterpretations is the result of a demonstration, but both are wrongly used aspseudo-proof of the shamanic theory.

With the same fervour, the enigmatic objects held in the hand by peoplebecome "musical rattles analogous to those used by Amerindian shamans"(Soleilhavoup 1998a: 33). Of course: since shamanism is claimed to be universal,

a basic rule here in the interpretation of rock art figures seems to be that oneshould never be discouraged. Once the circular drawvings have been interpreted asdrums from Siberian data, then if other figures "resist" the reading, one simplyneeds to look for clues among the Amerindians. And yet, musical rattles areattested in Africa, notably among the Dogon, but in a context which is in no wayshamanic.

It had been hoped that this sterile way of making comparisons had finally beenabandoned, since the method can be summarized as follows: "If it doesn't workwith the Siberians, go try among the Amerindians!".

As a result of these contortions, a fresco at Ta-n-Zumaïtak assumes an

"obvious" shamanic meaning (! !). As we have seen, the procedure is quite simple:once the shamanic reading is accepted as "obvious", everything else becomesreally obvious too. A recumbent person seems to float in the air (fig. 12.)? It isinevitably in the process of levitating, and this levitation "obviously" represents

the voyage of a shaman who has gone off to save a soul. A fresco of the RoundHeads of Séfar is likewise said to "group together some elements of shamanicPractice; drums, dance of possession" (Soleilhavoup 1996: 56), as well ashandstencils in the same site are an opportunity to declare that "in a shamaniccontext, placing the hand on the rock is one of the symbolic means of passingfrom this world to the other, behind the wall" (ibid: 57); the only problem is thatsuch images of hands appear in a great number of non-shamanic cultures.

In a rock-shelter of the Wadi Aramat there are series of red dots arranged inlines, and which nobody is capable of interpreting? Never mind that, let's call on

the shamanic hypothesis: "there does not seem to be any doubt that this shelter

had a sacred function, in the broadest sense, and probably shamanic". But why,

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Well, it's obvious: because "the cave-womb, the vulvar cleft, could… be theconceptual support of its decoration with the red dots" (Soleilhavoup 1998a: 33-34). Perhaps; but there's nothing strictly shamanic about this. And to add that "the

little open cavity in tbe wall of this shelter" should be considered as a "doorway"permitting one to come and go in the spirit world merely sets up one morehypothesis, which has no corroboration at all.

IS IT AN EXPLANATION THAT EXPLAINS NOTHING OF ANY USE?

Diluting the motivations of rock art into a universal and timeless shamanism

cannot be of any use to prehistorians who, on the contrary, seek to shed light onthe reasons why a particular culture occurred in a specific place, a specific time. Itis certainly not impossible a priori that certain rock images in the Sahara mayhave been inspired by phenomena of shamanic type, but at present nothingpermits us to be certain about this. Moreover, even if one managed to demonstrateit, it would explain nothing: these phenomena are very probably universal,

contrary to shamanism itself, and, as Roberte Hamayon put it : "it is shamanismthat makes the shaman, not the other way round" (Hamayon 1995: 418). Becausethese phenomena only become meaningful within a set of depictions andpractices, the communal nature of which cannot be reduced to the properties or

potential of the individual psyche. Since shamanism is a symbolic system whichcannot be boiled down to the actions of shamans — even if they were prehistoricpainters or engravers — it is quite obviously impossible to recognize it simply onthe basis of Saharan rock art. What's more, neither trance nor altered states ofconsciousness can constitute a touchstone of shamanism, which only existsthrough the shaman's adherence to a set of representations shared by the group heserves. It is this system, underlying the shaman's activity, that one would have torecognize in rock art. But in order to get beyond the stage of an unprovablehypothesis, one would still have to demonstrate that shamanism as a system

existed in the Sahara at the time when the painters and engravers were active.In the absence of any evidence pointing to this, one runs up against an

absolute impossibility, unlike the situation in China, for example, where rock artdocuments can be illuminated through ancient texts and ethnography. According

to the most recent champion of Saharan prehistoric shamanism, "one couldmultiply the examples of the shamanic interpretation" (Soleilhavoup 1998b: 71). I

don't doubt it, but I can't see any point: by adding up examples in this way, one iscertainly illustrating a theory, but never demonstrating it.

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TWO SIMILAR (MYTHO)MANIAS

Based essentially on the habitual use of a vocabulary, the precise technicalmeaning of which the authors concerned do not know (or pretend not to know?),the concocted hypotheses of the "Martians in the Sahara" and of the "Saharanshamans" have met with great success, the analysis of which is interesting for thehistorian of science. Indeed, these authors follow a procedure that is greatly to bemistrusted; its instructions for use are as follows:

a) select from a great mass of documents a few items which, when extracted

from their context, appear enigmatic, and thus "invent" a problem;b) amalgamate these decontextualized documents so as to constitute an

artificial assemblage, and then attribute to it an unverifiable commonmotivation that is inverifiable, or that one explains through theconstruction of an untestable hypothesis;

c) "defuse" all criticisms in advance by denouncing them as resulting from adhoc hypotheses put forward by specialists whose blinkered vision — causedby the practice of "official" science — prevents them having a broad enough

view of problems;d) ... and thus discourage any return to the field or any study of

contextualized primary documents, by contenting oneself with armchairhair-splitting.

It would be too easy to attribute this circular practice only to "cranks" orresearchers who are dishonest or in search of an easy notoriety, or even ofprofitable print-runs. There have certainly been clear cases of malpractice (and,where the Martians arc concerned, the case of von Däniken is well known), but Ifeel that even the best intentioned researchers are not a priori safe from sucherring ways, and that only an extreme methodological vigilance enables one to

take precautions against them.It is even more important to point out that this procedure involves an

extremely regrettable ethnocentrism. On the one hand, the supporters of thehypothesis of real Martians in the Sahara are not content with refusing to take the

trouble to inform themselves about the peoples and civilisations whose worksthey believe they can study whereas they haughtily ignore their whole cultural

context (and one can thus see how, when they find those odds and ends that they

don't understand, they consider them to be "enigmatic", "fantastic" or"illogical"), and hence these Archaeomaniacs deny these same peoples thecapacity to develop the cultural products that are likely to motivate them.Believing that they can rceognize the evidencc for a cultural gap between, on theone hand, art objects and artefacts that they only know from museums or asuperficial bibliography and, on the other hand, the culture of peoples who theyconsider a priori to be primitive and incapable of producing them, they can onlyexplain these objects through an exterior intervention, which they ascribe to asuperior race (Martians or extra-terrestrials), to which they ingenuously attribute

features and techniques borrowed from their own eivilisation.

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On the other hand, the supporters of the shamanic interpretation of asupposedly unitary "Saharan rock art" mostly base themselves on the same rockfigures as the Martian-enthusiasts, and project onto them not an interpretationborn of the current state of research into shamanism, but the extremelyreductionist view they themselves have of it; nor do they seem to have informedthemselves about the work of Africanists. The fact that this interpretation ispresented as a "broadened re-reading, with no excessive or rigid Cartesianism",that it is accompanied by a denunciation of the "Cartesian yoke" (Soleilhavoup1988c: 222), and of "excessively narrow or restricting scientific rationality"(Soleilhavoup 1999a: 42), that it is based on the regret that the "shamanicphenomenon" is "challenged" by "a certain Western rationality" (Soleilhavoup1999a: 47), that it condemns "purely intellectual constructions", and that it isironical about "the perverted use of a semiology gone astray" (Soleilhavoup1998b: 75), while pointing out that the Round Head paintings are to be found in"strange landscapes" (Soleilhavoup 1998b: 71) — all goes to show very clearly thelines of thought along which it has developed.

On the one hand, the "Martians" of the Sahara, who were born of a simplepleasantry by explorers and ended up by passing into the specialized scientificvocabulary of the prehistorians, were able to benefit from the fertile flying-saucercompost of the 1960s to arouse a whole literature about "Ufoid" rock art. On theother hand, equally imaginary "shamans" who were born of ignorance of the datafrom both Siberia and Africa, and who were fed by the desire to find somemeaning at any price and by the belief in the possibility of an immediate"reading" of the works, are currently benefiting from a "neo-shamanic" compostthat is likewise relayed by the ever-obliging media.

Saharan "Martians" and "Shamans" produce a fabulous interpretation ofPrehistory, by authors who have revived an extremely naive ethnocentrism byclaiming to decipher "on sight" an art that will always be hermetic; in doing so,they are feeding a modern mythology which decidedly persists in turning back theclock.

...

(1). — The most noteworthy result of this unexpected publicity has been that the World Momumentfund has classed the site among the 100 most threatened, according to a press release publishedby the Daily Telegraph of 28 September 1999: "Until 1997 two lifesized giraffes dating from

the 6th millennium BC on a rocky outcrop overlooking the Sahara were known only to theindigenous Tuareg people and a handful of European travellers. Widespread publicity sincethen means that the site is already threatenedby uncontrolled visiting, despite its remoteness,"

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