My research into prehistoric subjects ranges from the development of new perspectives on human evolution to the discovery and interpretation of prehistoric art – and covers decades in the field in Africa and Europe. Some recent peer-reviewed publications include:

 

- “The Identification of the First Palaeolithic Animal Sculpture in the Ile-de-France: The Ségognole 3 Bison and its Ramifications.” This paper uses the discovery of the first Paleolithic bas-relief of an animal in the Ile-de-France to open an investigation into the un-noticed complexity of several famous examples of Paleolithic art, including ones from such sites as Font-de-Gaume, Laugerie-Basse and Isturitz. It unveils:

• the first known use of decomposed, interactive, "cubist" conventions, over 15,000 years ago (pp. 32-37 / CD 440-446),

1. • the intentional hiding of secondary readings within more blatant images (pp. 38-42 / CD 446-450), and even
   

2. • some of the oldest known figure-ground illusions, which play upon similarities between the contours of bison and mammoths (pp. 26-27 / CD 435-438)
   

3. -all of which show how complex art has been for tens of thousands of years.
   

Andrew Howley of National Geographic reported on the paper’s revelation of one of the world’s oldest known intentional optical illusions - a sculpture from Canecaude that has eyes on either side of a crescent: an upper one which turns the crescent into a mammoth’s tusk, and a lower one that turns it into a bison’s horn.

The article was accepted by Dr. Jean Clottes on behalf of the International Federation of Rock Art Organisations (IFRAO) for presentation at the organization’s World Congress, which took place in the Prehistory Park of the Ariège in September 2010, and was published in the Acts of the congress in June 2012 (Préhistoire, Arts et Sociétés : L’Art Pléistocène dans le Monde / Pleistocene Art of the World / Arte Pleistoceno en el Mundo. ISBN 987-2-9531148-3-6). It can also be downloaded by clicking on an icon below.

- “Are Neanderthal Portraits Wrong? Neanderthal adaptations to cold and their impact on Palaeolithic populations” (Rock Art Research, 2008, Vol. 25, No. 1: 101-116). This paper turned out to be the only peer-reviewed hypothesis to have predicted that modern lineages from outside sub-Saharan Africa would have a small admixture of Neanderthal genes (up to 4%, as it turns out, from the latest analysis of the Neanderthal genome) from contact with gracile Levantine Neanderthals, but would have almost none from more robust cold-weather Neanderthals to the north. The discovery that non-African lineages have some Neanderthal genes is not nearly as surprising, given the existence of fossils that show some hybridization, as the fact that all those lineages apparently have about the same amount of Neanderthal genes! This proves that the genes entered modern genomes after the root population of anatomically modern humans (AMHs) had left Africa around 70,000 years ago but before it had split into separate Eurasiatic and Australian branches, during the brief period when AMHs were still limited to the relatively warm Middle East.

What’s even more surprising is that the descendants of branches that expanded northwards after the initial contact with Neanderthals did not continue to accumulate their genes, since some of those branches continued to have contact with our archaic cousins tens of thousands of years after AMH populations, which stayed around the Indian Ocean. That should have been plenty of time for Caucasians, for example, to acquire an extra dose of Neanderthal genes. But Europeans have no more Neanderthal in them than do Polynesians, Australian Aborigines, or American Indians. What could have prevented northern Moderns from adding to their Neanderthal inheritance once they began encountering cold-weather Neanderthals rather than warm-weather ones? 

The answer probably lies in the difference between the bones of Levantine Neanderthals, which are gracile, and their cold-weather cousins, which are much more robust. They are so different that the two Neanderthal populations should probably be divided into two races or even sub-species: a Middle-Eastern one adapted to temperate conditions and the other to "hyper-arctic" conditions involving severe wind chill factors. 

If the osteological and other analyses detailed in this paper are correct, then the northern Neanderthal population must have had more extreme thermo-regulatory adaptations than the southern one, which would have been adapted to almost the same range of temperatures as the even more gracile AMHs coming out of Africa. Just as the similarity between the thermo-regulatory controls of southern Neanderthals and AMHs could explain why they could occasionally hybridize, the different biological approaches to temperature of AMHs and northern Neanderthals could explain why there is so little evidence that they ever cross-bred. 

Back in 2008, I hypothesized that the only way for AMHs and cold-weather Neanderthals to maintain such different thermo-regulatory adaptations would have been for each population to have its own conservative sexual preferences. AMH preferences would have maintained whole-body cooling systems based on sweat and bald bodies, which could only be insulated against glacial conditions with seamed clothing, while northern Neanderthal preferences ensured that each new generation was equipped with bodies that grew winter insulation in the form of sub-cutaneous fat and fur, which would have required the addition of nothing more than draped clothing. The fact that AMHs and northern Neanderthals were so invested in such contrasting thermo-regulatory solutions would have locked them into preferences that prevented much hybridization.

But the corresponding fact that neither AMHs nor the Levantine Neanderthals they encountered before 60,000 years ago were invested in biological adaptations to extreme cold - with their incompatible sets of sexual cues - would have opened the path to limited cross-breeding in the Middle East, just as the latest genetic results have demonstrated.

- Although I have written most of my papers on my own, my discovery of the second-known Paleolithic, schematic “Venus” was so surprising that it necessitated an examination by the world’s most eminent expert in micro-wear analysis, Dr. Francesco d’Errico of the Université de Bordeaux and the Institute for Human Evolution at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, and a Czech prehistorian, Dr. Martina Lázničková-Galetová of the Moravian Museum, to authenticate and place the engraving in context. The resulting research led to our article “Identification of a possible engraved Venus from Předmostí, Czech Republic” (Journal of Archaeological Science (JAS), 2011, n° 38, Issue 3 (March): 672-683), which can be downloaded by clicking on the appropriate icon at the bottom of this page. Based on microscopic analyses, the paper concluded that an engraving of a woman composed of geometric forms that belonged to René de Poilloüe de Saint-Périer and Raymonde-Suzanne de Saint-Périer could be Gravettian and be by the same hand as the famous Schematic Venus discovered in the 1890s. If so, the two engravings are apparently the only remaining works of one of the oldest and most original of Paleolithic artists – the Master or Mistress of the Schematic Venuses.

Left: Tracing of the main lines engraved on the bone analyzed in the Journal of Archaeological Science (JAS); grey = recent thin lines; black = smoothed lines depicting the schematic female representation.

Center: location of micrographs presented in Figs. 4 and 5 of the JAS study.

Right: a - area presenting scraping marks; b - area in which lines penetrate concavities produced by weathering of the bone surface; c - lines with sediment residues. Scale = 1 cm. (Figure 3 in the JAS article, Courtesy of my co-author, Dr. Francesco d’Errico). 

- “Palaeolithic Whistles or Figurines? A preliminary survey of pre-historic phalangeal figurines” (Rock Art Research, 2009, Vol. 26, No. 1: 65-82). Prehistoric phalanges with anthropogenic holes through one side of their shafts have usually been interpreted as whistles. But identical bones are used by several peoples as human effigies — most commonly of women and babies. Distal limb bones with incised or sculpted heads, eyes, arms and vulvas prove that such bones were also interpreted anthropomorphically by Eurasian cultures in the past. The use of phalangeal figurines from central Siberia to Greenland also suggests that the practice spread around the Arctic from ancient sources.

The paper uses ethnographic examples to illustrate a few roles women have played in the region’s cold weather economies and how female effigies reflect such roles, but none of the examples are offered as strict analogies with Paleolithic counterparts. Instead this article goes on to make a case from new internal readings of several prehistoric objects incorporating feminine imagery — including the “femme au renne” (reindeer’s woman) from Laugerie-Basse and an engraving from Étiolles — that some ancient feminine images reflect a vision of women in keeping with the division of labor in northern “hunter-sewer” subsistence models. Economic necessities may partly explain how pregnancy and compact feminine effigies have been viewed ideologically in cold Eurasian areas for millennia.

Finally, the possible existence of perforated phalanges from the Middle Paleolithic and even earlier is noted and a protocol of tests is suggested for determining whether their holes are anthropogenic or natural. If any of the holes in these older specimens turn out to be manmade, then the conclusion that prehistoric perforated phalanges are likely to be figurines will have to be extended to those made by archaic humans like Neanderthals.

My most recent articles to pass peer review are entitled:

1. 1)“A Possible New Class of Prehistoric Musical Instruments from New England: Portable Cylindrical Lithophones”, which will appear in the July 2013 issue of  American Antiquity (Vol. 78, No. 3),
   

2. 2)“A New Typological Ordering of Adena Tablets Based on a Deeper Reading of the McKensie Tablet”, which will appear in RES - Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics in 2014 (RES 65/66 Spring Autumn 2014, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology & Art Museum, Harvard University),
   

3. 3)“Western Saharan Sculptural Families and the Possible Origins of the Osiris-Horus Cycle”, which will appear in the November 2013 issue of Rock Art Research, and
   

4. 4)“Observations et hypothèses sur le site du Paly : Milly-la-Forêt (Essonne)” (Observations and Hypotheses Concerning the Megalithic Site of Paly: Milly-la-Forêt, Essonne), which appeared in the January 2013 issue of Art Rupestre (Bulletin du GERSAR No 63, Groupe d’Etudes, de Recherches et de Sauvegarde de l’Art Rupestre: pp. 29-32). This paper is the second of two about engravings on the menhir du Paly, which is also known as la Pierre Droite and la Pierre du Paly, and an adjacent quartzite slab. The previous article, which is entitled “Réexamen de Deux Sites à Gravures Piquetées. Milly-la-Forêt (Essonne)” (Art Rupestre, Bulletin du GERSAR No 62, Groupe d’Etudes, de Recherches et de Sauvegarde de l’Art Rupestre, June 2012: pp. 33-38) focused on doing two things.
   

Pecked panel of Butte de Chatillon 5. Tracing by Laurent Valois & Duncan Caldwell, May 2012.

The first was describing a pecked frieze, which I’d found in a cave called Butte de Châtillon 5. The panel is clearly Neolithic, since it includes four axes whose shafts hook towards the back of their blades just like the shafts of haches à crosses on Neolithic stelae in Brittany. But the pair of axes at the center of the top row are astonishing both because they are the only ones that have ever been found upside-down, and because the handle of the central one is surmounted by the kind of U-shaped motif, which is usually interpreted in the local iconography of the period as being the necklace of a “goddess”.

The paper’s second objective was to prove that a cruciform motif (see below), which my friend, Laurent Valois, found on the west side of the menhir (as opposed to the east side, where I found a face) was the most anthropomorphic example of the kind of motifs seen on Neolithic monuments at St. Samson-sur-Rance, Marly-le-Roi, the allée couverte de Prajou-Menhir at Trébeurden, and the Cave aux Fées at Brueil-en-Vexin, rather than an attempt to Christianize the monument with a cross (as has been suggested elsewhere). The motif consists of a cross with arched eyebrows above a pair of discoidal eyes at the summit, two branches below, which end in fingers (that I only observed while the first article was in press, hence the second article), and a rectangular base filled with a careful arrangement of pecked discs. Five of these discs form a shallow arch across the top of the compartment, creating a possible belt or waist, while a circle of nine discs around a central dot may form the figure’s belly and navel.

Tracing of the cruciform idol on the west face of the stele-menhir du Paly*, which is also known as la Pierre Droite of Milly-la-Foret. By Laurent Valois & Duncan Caldwell (June 6, 2012), all rights reserved. LEGEND: A - Edges of the stele-menhir. B - Two areas that resemble the discoidal pecked motifs in the base of the cruciform idol, but which appear to result from natural exfoliation. C - Natural cracks that produced exfoliated surfaces, which resemble pecked zones. D - Concavity which interrupts the pecked line between the cruciform idol and the menhir’s right edge. L - Right-hand limit of lichen which prevents full observation of the left hand. 

If the circle of white discs really is a belly, then its roundness could symbolize pregnancy. It is interesting to note that the period between a woman’s last period and her giving birth, at the end of a full-term pregnancy, is exactly nine lunar months (265-266 days). This suggests that the circle of 9 discs, which look like full moons, may be one of the oldest known calendars.

This theme of reflective discs seems to be picked up again on the horizontal slab adjacent to the menhir, where two basins have been polished in such a way as to make the puddle that forms in the larger one almost perfectly circular and in the smaller one oval to circular, depending on the water’s depth. This makes the surfaces of the two puddles mirror the sky in a way which makes them uncannily similar to the discs that one finds overhead - the sun and moon - but hardly anywhere else in nature without a telescope. Both of these modified basins also contain radial cracks and grooves, which are oriented towards at least three cardinal points. 

Another interesting possibility is that the lines from the top corners of the compartment under the cruciform “idol” to the edges of the menhir may represent a ground or horizon line. If the line does represent such line, then it may represent separations between both the upper body and its lower generative portion, and between the apparent and buried parts of the site, which probably contains a burial chamber in addition to the menhir. If this interpretation is correct, the entire complex should be read anthropomorphically and represents two aspects of a female supernatural - one above ground and aligned with the cardinal points, two of which are associated with the sun’s passage through the sky, and the other below ground, and associated with death and regeneration. Both of the articles can be downloaded by clicking on the appropriate icons at the bottom of this page.

The most important of my essays still under peer review, “Human Hair Distribution, Increased Immuno-resistance and the First Baby Slings”, examines the effects of selective pressures associated with microenvironments within the first baby-carrying devices. It postulates that infectious and parasitic conditions in such sacks had a range of consequences, ranging from changes in juvenile hair distribution to immunological adaptations, and that a convergence of datable mutations and osteological changes indicates that infants in our lineage were forced to adapt biologically to the invention by 1.2 million years ago, and perhaps as early as the late Pliocene. 

It further argues that the side effects of this artificial environment may have even destabilized the status quo within an early hominan (hominid) population, causing speciation – and a key step in the evolution of our lineage.

One of the advance readers, Robert Bednarik, the editor of Rock Art Research, had this to say about the manuscript: “I think that your paper is very well argued, but will be hard to ‘sell’, because of its sophistication” (email, 10 Dec. 2008). On the other hand, the most recent advance reader, Francesco d'Errico, wrote that “... I found the idea and integrated interdisciplinary way you deal with the question fascinating. It is certainly worth publishing” (email, 12 Jan. 2010). So, after undergoing peer review, the article may be published relatively soon.

Beyond the realm of publications, I founded Prehistoric Art Emergency in May 1995, which initiated, centralized and forwarded international petitions against the destruction of the richest ensemble of open-air Upper Paleolithic art in Europe by a dam project in the Côa Valley of Portugal. This effort contributed to the decision to make the entire zone at Foz Côa an archaeological park – after half of the $300,000,000 construction budget had already been spent on making coffer dams and turbine tunnels.

I also organized and led the archaeological survey of the Great Sand Sea and Gilf el Khebir by GREPAL, which continues to generate numerous publications by GREPAL archaeologists Luc Watrin and Emmanuelle Honoré that are changing our understanding of the ancient cultures of the Sahara and the origins of the Neolithic cultures of the Nile.

GREPAL archaeologists Emmanuelle Honoré and Luc Watrin making the tracing that figured in her article “The Shelter of Headless Bovines: A Study of Wg 35 (Gilf el Kebir, Egypt)”. The same shelter was discussed in another article, “The Headless Beasts of Wadi Sûra II Shelter in the Western Gilf el Kebir: New Data on Prehistoric Mythologies from the Egyptian Sahara”, which they co-wrote with Khaled Saad and presented at the Tenth International Congress of Egyptologists, which was held at the University of the Aegean, on Rhodes, from 22-29 May 2008. (Photo by D. Caldwell)

As a result of my paleoanthropological articles on Neanderthal soft tissue reconstructions, research on New England’s paleo-fauna, extensive re-interpretation of prehistoric feminine imagery, and other work, I was elected a Fellow of the Marine and Paleobiological Research Institute in 2009 and an International Fellow of the Explorers Club in 2012. The editor of Rock Art Research has also asked me to be one of the journal’s referees and I have been an organizer, participant or speaker at numerous conferences, including work on the editorial committee of The International Conference on the Heritage of the Naqada and Qus Region at the request of Dr. Hany Hanna of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities. I have also been asked to teach graduate students at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris for the last three years and sit on the jury for their oral examinations (Feb. 25, 2011: Module d’Ecole Doctorale, Département “Homme, Nature, Société”, M.N.H.N. QP26).    

My experience in planning or contributing to exhibitions includes:

1. •“Maroc - Mémoire de la Terre” (Morocco - Memory of the Earth, 1999) at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris,
   

2. •“Ancient Art of the Cyclades” at the Katonah Museum of Art in 2006,
   

3. •“Lucy” at the Centre Européen de Recherches Préhistoriques  in Vallon-Pont d’Arc, France, and
   

4. •the creation of the Comparative Prehistory Hall of the National Museum of the Dominican Republic.
   

I hope there will continue to be many opportunities for collaboration around the world.

Finally, decades of prospecting for prehistoric art amid megaliths and boulder formations just south of Paris with Laurent Valois, editor of the GERSAR journal of rock art research, continue to inspire my design of museums dedicated to the exploration of deep time. In the most recent of these projects, for example, Mount Olive College adopted a design for a thoroughly modern building incorporating aspects of a tumulus, rock shelters and megalithic alignments – with a stream cascading from a glass channel, which bisects the roof and illuminates one of the terraced galleries below.

Duncan & Pat Getz-Gentle (Getz-Preziosi) examining

Neolithic feminine figurines

* Au début de juin 2012, J’ai signalé au président du GERSAR les détails suivantes des gravures sur la face ouest de menhir du Paly :

1) La branche droite du cruciforme est prolongée par 5 doigts gravés. Cette observation permet d'établir que ce cruciforme est un personnage stylisé, conformément à l'hypothèse développée dans le bulletin 62. L'existence d'une seconde main est vraisemblable sous les lichens.

2) L’écusson contient plusieurs éléments inédits, y compris un discoïde central.

3)   Les lignes horizontales depuis les bords du menhir jusqu'aux coins supérieurs de l’écusson créent une sorte de "ligne d’horizon" ou de "sol". Je me demande si cette séparation peut être liée à la structure du site, avec une partie émergeante et un compartiment dans la terre, car il est possible que la dalle couchée à côté du menhir soit la couverture d’une sépulture. J’ai demandé l’autorisation de publier ces réflexions dans le bulletin 63.

  

© 2009 Duncan Caldwell

The Foz Coa / Coa Valley prehistoric rock art scandal

Prehistoric Art Emergency &  Foz Coa / Coa Valley home page

Archaeological tours

A Murder, Bombing, and Trip to “Dolmens”

This article is the first of two about engravings at a megalithic complex around a menhir, which is known variously as le menhir du Paly, la Pierre Droite and la Pierre du Paly, where I discovered a face on the east face and fingers and other anthropomorphizing features of a motif on the west face that had previously been interpreted as a Christian cross. These observations, which are split between the two articles, proved this article’s contention that the motif was actually a cruciform Neolithic “idol”. The paper goes on to describe a unique Neolithic frieze, which I found in a nearby cave (Butte de Châtillon 5). The panel contains such unique symbols as upside-down axes and an inverted axe surmounted by a U-shaped motif. If the U is like the ones that were engraved in dolmens, where they are often accompanied by mounds which seem to symbolize breasts, then it probably represents the necklace of a Neolithic “goddess”. (Art Rupestre: Bulletin du GERSAR n° 62 - juin 2012: 33-38)

Key words: Human evolution; Neandertal extinction; The Neanderthal insulation hypothesis; Baby sling adaptations; The baby-sling hypothesis  for human body baldness, Paleolithic venus / venuses; The “prey-mother” hypothesis -  A new interpretation of Paleolithic feminine imagery; Archaeological & prehistoric art cave tours; Testimonials; Prehistoric phalangeal figurines; Neanderthal extinction; Alan Dershowitz; Dan Burstein, Secrets of the Code; Marine and Paleobiological Research Institute (MPRI); New Dominion Pictures; GREPAL; Gaumont; Wellspring Museum; Neanderthal / Neandertal adaptations and extinction; Architecture & landscape design; Neanderthal diet; Neanderthal behavior; Evolution of large brains; Balkan prehistory; Vinca, Lepenski Vir; Martha’s Vineyard Community Services Possible Dreams auction; Robert Bednarik; Rock Art Research; Susiluola (Wolf) Cave, Lappfjärd, Finland; paleontology museum in Paris / Montmartre quarries; Neolithic mortuary monuments; Dolmens; Prehistoric French sites; Cave art; Prehistoric art; World’s oldest optical illusion;