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Several stencils in Cosquer cave appear to be made by hands that have digits
missing. Photograph: Fanny Broadcast/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images
Several stencils in Cosquer cave appear to be made by hands that have digits
missing. Photograph: Fanny Broadcast/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images
The ObserverArchaeology



MANY PREHISTORIC HANDPRINTS SHOW A FINGER MISSING. WHAT IF THIS WAS NOT
ACCIDENTAL?

Canadian scientists say evidence from cave art all over the world shows digits
may have been ritually removed to appease deities or aid social cohesion



Robin McKie Science Editor
Sat 23 Dec 2023 11.00 ESTLast modified on Sat 23 Dec 2023 16.04 EST
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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.

Nor was the habit unique to one time or place, he added. “Quite a few societies
encourage fingers to be cut off today and have done so throughout history.”

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An image from Cosquer cave. Photograph: Henri Cosquer/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images

Collard cited the Dani people from the New Guinea Highlands. “Women there
sometimes have one or more fingers cut off following the death of loved ones,
including sons or daughters. We believe that Europeans were doing the same sort
of thing in palaeolithic times, though the precise belief systems involved may
have been different. This is a practice that was not necessarily routine but has
occurred at various times through history, we believe.”

Collard and colleagues first published their finger amputation thesis a few
years ago but were criticised by other scientists, who argued that the
amputation of fingers would have been catastrophic for the people involved. Men
and women without fully functioning hands would be unable to cope with the harsh
conditions that prevailed millennia ago.



Since then, Collard, working with PhD student Brea McCauley, has gathered more
data to back the amputation thesis. In a paper presented at the European Society
conference, they said their latest research provided even more convincing
evidence that the removal of digits to appease deities explains the hand images
in the caves in France and Spain.

> This practice was clearly invented independently multiple times. And it was
> engaged in by some recent hunter-gatherer societies

Mark Collard and Brea McCauley, archeologists

These paintings fall into two types: prints and stencils. In the former, a
person placed his or her hand in pigment then pressed it on to a wall, creating
a handprint. Stencils were created by placing a hand on a wall and then painting
pigment over it to create a silhouette. In both cases, hands with missing digits
were found among the wall art at four main sites; Maltravieso and Fuente del
Trucho caves in Spain, and Gargas and Cosquer caves in France. The Cosquer
caves, near Marseille, were the most recently discovered in 1985 by scuba diver
Henri Cosquer.

The team looked elsewhere for evidence of finger amputation in other societies
and found more than 100 instances where it had been practised. “This practice
was clearly invented independently multiple times,” they state. “And it was
engaged in by some recent hunter-gatherer societies, so it is entirely possible
that the groups at Gargas and the other caves engaged in the practice.”

Nor were the examples confined to Europe, they add. Four sites in Africa, three
in Australia, nine in North America, five in south Asia and one in south-east
Asia contain evidence of finger amputation. “This form of self-mutilation has
been practised by groups from all inhabited continents,” said Collard. “More to
the point, it is still carried out today, as we can see in the behaviour of
people like the Dani.”

Collard pointed to rituals still carried out in Mauritius and other places, such
as fire-walking, face-piercing with skewers and putting hooks through skin so a
person can haul heavy chains behind them. “People become more likely to
cooperate with other group members after going through such rituals. Amputating
fingers may simply have been a more extreme version of this type of ritual.”

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