"Magic"

Berkay Dinçer

In Turkey anybody has not done a study about religion in prehistoric ages. I say "magic" instead of the word "religion" in this article because it was not a really religion at that prehistoric ages. But I am sure that as time passes the "magic" became our "holly" religions. When "magic" got rules, books and -of course- prophets and great gods, I name it religion. I mean all of our believes are coming from the believes of Middle and Upper Paleolithic Ages. While believing our "holly" religions, we should consider the evolution of human mind. Some people, whose beliefs are very strong, say that the god of Muslims has sent over 25 thousand of prophets and the cave art and other prehistoric belief evidences are the wrong versions of their "true" religions. Anyway we have not found the true version yet -I guess we will never be able to.

In the Middle Paleolithic we can see the evidence of burials and cannibalism. Neanderthals have shown that they have given a value to their death friends while burying them. The oldest Neanderthal burials are dated to the beginning of the Wurm glacial. In Neanderthal burials, men have burial gifts but women and children do not. In Shanidar (Iraq), some useful plants were found in a burying pit. This sample also shows how Neanderthals were using the nature. Neanderthals had also made cannibalism. We know this from some of sites like Krapina (Yugoslavia), Monte Circeo and Saccopastore (Italy). In Drahenloch Cave (Sweden) Neanderthals had put skull of seven bears in a stone sarcophagus orienting their faces to the entrance of the cave.

Upper Paleolithic is very famous for the wall relieves and paintings. These paintings and relieves are magical art objects. These kind of art and magic objects are concentrated in the north Spain and south France. Paintings are usually painted naturally dark places in the depth of the cave. This information means that the cave art was not made for seeing them. So they could be made just for magic.