Many prehistoric handprints show missing finger. What if this wasn't accidental? | Hacker News Reader

Many prehistoric handprints show missing finger. What if this wasn't accidental?

theguardian.com

55 pointsbookofjoe62 comments

"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."

If they were indeed missing fingers, it is more consistent with my understanding of people that was as a form on punishment, or disease, or accident. Not sure why the article jumped to religious rituals, no evidence was provided to prove that at all.

At a certain point, the line between religion, culture, and law becomes unclear. In a culture with ancestor-worship, where do you put "my grandfather always said that if someone steals food they should have a finger cut off"?

I'd say one clear difference between religious and legal reasons may be whether or not they were chopped off willingly. Outside of that, probably just curious minds being curious. Was this person devout, or were they a thief? Perhaps just trivia at this point.

The assumes a distinction between religion and law. Rituals don’t necessarily require consent.

Most male babies that are circumcised aren't asked beforehand.

Is consent under duress consent? If someone is told "God will strike you down if you do not accept the punishment imposed by the priest-king" and they agree to having their finger cut off, are they agreeing to their finger being cut off? They might be devout and a thief, agreeing to being punished only because they fear the divine alternative.

> agreeing to being punished only because they fear the divine alternative.

Or the earthly alternative: being stoned to death or some other life ending ritual.

Or maybe they were stoned out of their minds and were self mutilating…

There’s a Papua New Guinea tribe that cuts off a part of their finger each time a loved one in their family dies.

Yes, it was cited in the Guardian article: https://edgeofhumanity.com/2018/09/27/tribal-2/

Same reason that discovered human and animals figures are explained as "religious artifacts", rather than just dolls and toys made for kids. Everything found gets re-explained as having great significance, even if it was mundane.

This comes up in "A Canticle for Leibowitz", if you want another interesting take on the idea.

Problem is fingers are a bit more important than toys. Also there are tribes today still practicing this. Chop off the finger and eat it for good luck. Not hard to imagine the occasional psychotic shamanistic dude starting this practice from time to time. And we still practice circumcision in some Western cultures today.

Reminds me of the recurring "fertility cult items" or similar names in archaeological findings. As a code for "it's probably a dildo". (Yes, there are cult items too, but AFAIU this is at the level of a meme for archeologists on social media at this point)

nothing beats the "religious afterlife" takes. When they find some skeleton with some cooking pottery and archeologists/historians assume it's because the pre h historic culture had buried this person with cookery because he/she would need to cook in the after life - when most likely it's because the person was contaminated, and got buried/left with all his worldly possessions and everything else was burned off.

However, the custom of burying someone together with everyday objects is still observed, and the Egyptians also practiced a similar tradition. On the other hand, epidemiology has only become widely known in the last few centuries.

And you theorize that people understood contamination thousands of years ago?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory_of_disease

I don't think they'd have needed a model for why it happens to see the obvious correlation between using things used by a sick person and getting sick. It'd be compatible with the older idea of a "miasma" spreading the disease.

I agree. Evolutionary speaking, animals that develop different behaviors based on 'clean' versus 'unclean' would have a leg-up against the competition. Ants, to give a quick example, throw their dead out with the rest of the garbage.[1] (Which can lead to a funny experiment to have them carry out living members as well - "I'm not dead yet!"[2])

You don't have to understand why you are doing something - or even that you are doing it at all - as long as it works and gives you a benefit, however small. Without proper understanding you will also have false positives, but it's better to be assume there is danger than to assume there isn't any. False positives outweigh false negatives. (To a certain level, of course, too much of it and paranoia becomes harmful again.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necrophoresis

[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2009/04/01/102601823/h...

they don't necessarily need to figure out the germ theory to know that diseases spread from proximity and/or contact with sick people when it happens right in front of them.

Also, there could be many such reasons for burying/burning someone dead with his/her possessions. My point was that almost always it becomes "elaborate rituals and beliefs of afterlife with same worldly possessions that they had here on earth" - just because we know pharaohs/ancient Egyptians did it.

Laws were given to ancient Israelites about how to properly identify and quarantine those with infectious skin diseases somewhere around 1446 BCE.

It has been quite common to believe that all the personal property of any dead person was unsafe or unclean to use, and so was often burned or buried with them. This was observed, for example, in northern California tribes in historical times. Sometimes it only applied to weapons.

It doesn't depend on a belief in the afterlife. What archaeologists call "ritual" need have nothing to do with religion. Washing your car and mowing the lawn are American suburban rituals. Halloween, Christmas, and birthday celebrations are ritual. We also have ribbon-cuttings and graduations. When I was growing up we "pledged allegiance" to the US flag.

The whole point of the presentation alluded to in the article was so that the researchers could present evidence for this point. But because the guardian is clickbait garbage, they were sure not to include the details. Probably they knew that the chorus of people on social media repeating this meme would drive engagement.

Right, it couldn't possibly be because they know more than you two and have actual reasons after having spent years becoming experts on the subject, building on the knowledge of thousands of others who dedicated their lives to studying it, could it?

This is also the premise of David Macaulay's children's cult classic Motel of the Mysteries [1], in which archeologists from the year 4022 dig through layers of trash to find the remnants of our current civilization, and interprets the excavated structures in clinical fashion. The joke is that we, as readers, understand that it's just a motel and they've found the bathroom, but the archeologists believe it's a porcelain burial chamber featuring royal vestments (i.e. plastic toilet seat). It's silly but fun. [1] https://www.vox.com/22753080/motel-mysteries-book-david-maca...

Another possibility (or rather, an extension on the idea of punishment) is that it's a form of irreversible social segregation. For better? as in: "we, the enlightened and courageous fingerless!", or, more likely-seeming, for worse - as in: "the shame of the fingerless shall be forever visible to all".

On the topic of accidents, it could be a common injury from flint knapping. We know that more than 30% of injuries in modern flint knappers are on the fingers[0], and it's reasonable to think it would be a common injury for historical peoples too.

Presumably lots of tool use, like using a grindstone or wielding a handaxe, would also put the fingers at risk.

[0] https://www.kent.edu/cas/news/despite-dangers-early-humans-r...

I’m not saying I find it compelling evidence, but they note that ‘[t]he team looked elsewhere for evidence of finger amputation in other societies and found more than 100 instances where it had been practic[c]ed. “This practice was clearly invented independently multiple times,” they state.‘

And people have done (and continue to do) some rather gruesome and barbaric things based on religious beliefs. Digit mutilation seems rather benign, really.

To touch more directly on what several others posts have mentioned (and based on my limited experience of "knew some archeologists in grad school, and have a passing interesting in the field") "ritual" is the archeologist go-to in place of both "we don't know" and many different flavors of "we're not comfortable with what this might imply". (With examples of the latter including "challenges long-standing assumptions in the field", "touches on taboo modern subjects", and "the rest of this work is good, I don't want to derail everything into a debate on something controversial".)

Gotta drum up interest for those sweet research grant monies.

> 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.”

I don't get it. What is the evidence that this is a spiritual or cultural practice compared to it being caused by natural hazards? Showing up in many places around the world independently would seem to be more suggestive of natural causes than anything else, wouldn't it? And the fact that some societies today, or in recent history, have done it doesn't mean much to me either—should we ignore the fact that most cultures today don't cut off fingers, and only count on the one or two that do? What's the actual evidence mentioned in the article?

Finger amputation is practiced in countries with Sharia law, in Japan (Yakuza), in various tribes in PNG, etc.

That said, even in places where it happens, only a tiny fraction of a percentage will actually have it done to them, so it does seem unlikely that you'd have multiple prehistoric societies where finger amputation was practiced as a matter of course for most people.

The assertion is not that this "was practiced as a matter of course for most people."

The assertion is that many "celebrity handprints" feature missing digits - perhaps they famously survived a crocodile bite, perhaps they sacrificed a finger to implore rain, maybe they were punished for sleeping with the wrong person.

Our modern Instagram wall has many features that aren't a matter of course for most people.

What's missing here is an understanding of what it takes for a persons stenciled hand to get a prime location under a sheltered outcrop to be preserved for many generations.

These hands are a sample of a larger population, but what is the bias?

That's not evidence for cause though. It's a possibility of course, but there are many more mundane explanations.

Lots of things back then bite… I know plenty of fellas in FL with missing fingers from things that bite. If it was consistently the pinky or something then maybe you’re onto something but I think it’s probably due to “nature”.

This seems way more likely than some unknown ritual. Back then humans were much more frequently in combat with animals.

Combat with animals, combat with each other, combat with nature, our digits are pretty fragile.

Also, have to work with your hands all day long without gloves.

> This seems way more likely than some unknown ritual. Back then humans were much more frequently in combat with animals.

And gets even more likely if you take into account that a small bite almost certainly would get visibly infected, thus requiring amputation.

You don't need germ theory to recognise a wound that is visibly infected.

No HN discussion of voluntary finger amputation would be complete without mentioning that it was central to a superb science fiction short story: Richard McKenna’s "Mine Own Ways", which appeared in the 1961 "Year's Best SF" as well as in anthologies published after the author's 1964 death. To oversimplify, an interstellar anthropologist on a primitive planet discovers that the amputation ritual is crucial for the evolution of the hominids he is studying into full-fledged humanoids-- by needing to get his own finger chopped off.

If anyone finds themself thinking about this particular gruesome subject for any longer than the time it takes to scroll these comments, then McKenna's story is worth a read. The Internet Archive has a crummy OCR version.

I'm having a lot of trouble even finding the crummy Internet Archive version.

If you can find a copy of this anthology [0], it's in there.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov_Presents_The_Grea...

I think it's in here: https://archive.org/stream/MerrilEdTheYearsBestSF05/Merril_e...

Plausible, but so are less dramatic explanations like animal bites and other injuries. Amputation was likely preferred to a festering wound that wouldn't heal.

Or maybe they're just depicting making signs with their hands? All of the images in the article can be replicated by making hand signs and using them and stencils.

Seems unjustified to jump to ritual mutilation. Reminds me of that joke that everything archaeologists don't understand is a ritual artifact.

Have they found many skeletons that are missing fingers?

Dont let science and evidence get in the way of a guardian article.

The number of skeleton finds contemporary to art, and their completeness might be an issue. I know the French found skeletons of Cro Magnon people at Les eyzies (where I have seen the cave paintings)

How many cave paintings of hands have survived, compared to the number of complete sets of prehistoric human hands?

I believe most fossil finds are of one or two bones, and full or near-full skeletons are rare.

Very few prehistoric skeletons have been discovered complete, and finger bones are small and at extremities, so more likely to go missing. I doubt we could tell unless the removal left obvious signs on the remaining bones.

Maybe it was sign language

Or maybe that's how they got the rings off for divorce

I wonder how do you chop a finger with a stone "blade" without butchering the whole hand.

And what about infections afterwards? I know ancient humans were quite hardier than us but I don't see how doing finger amputation with crude tools and no cleaning would not lead to systematic wound infection. Maybe they were using fire?

Likely in much the same manner as a trepanation can be performed with a stone blade with a greater survival rate than the same operation using state of the art Victorian surgery tools.

https://neuroscientificallychallenged.com/posts/history-of-n...

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/antiviral-herbs

Stone tools are still used for surgery: https://surgicaltools.co.uk/catalogue/blades-knives/scalpels...

Unless you can find actual figurine or statues, I call BS on chopped fingers.

I'd first look at:

Are they pointing up, or in a particular direction?

What is the most number of full fingers in pictures versus the number of pictures that have missing fingers.

Whats the least number of intact fingers, and whats the mean/avg etc

What do characters with matching # of fingers have in common in their depictions

the symbol could denote identity, rank or some other factor of acknowledgment/signage.

EDIT @Defrost,

I wasnt trying to sound so harsh - all I was saying is that a stencil and a painting could just mean they are specifically curling their fingers in order to stencil a pointing hand with 1 or two fingers?

So, maybe its a symbol other than "Here is a picture of Grock - He Bad. We Cut Fingers For God. We shame him with this stencil of his disfigured hand. You no talk Grock."

> Unless you can find actual figurine or statues...

Say what now? Figurines | statues are crafted, they could easily be fashioned to have two heads or seven fingers. They say much about what the artist might imagine, not so much about what is real.

The evidence drawn upon here is from handprints and stencils .. hands pressed in paint and then against a wall, or a hand placed against a wall with pigment blown across the hand to create an outline.

In parts of the world (Northern Australia for example) this has been a continuous practice for tens of thousands of years until the present day.

The examples they have show partial fingers.

The mystery is whether these are lost to accidents, biting animals, etc. or parts chopped off as punishement or parts sacrificed to give thanks or request a favour from some higher power.

Let's not forget noodling => https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noodling

I wonder if there is a bias in finger loss? People use fingers and have preferences in use. Used fingers may get infected by bites by animals/snakes - and some snakes are very toxic. You can not cut off a leg after a poisonous snake bite, but with a finger you may have a choice? In religion one would want to cut a minimalist finger - you do not want to disable followers = your army? That said, there may be too few missing finger/painted figures/in many places to decide.

Perhaps in 10,000 years archaeologists will find urinal drawings of circumcised penises and guess that there was some religious reason to chop off foreskins… they’d even be right!

Seems like a stretch here though.

It was likely frostbite. Or maybe the print was done in stages and they wore jewellery. Either way, this dominant narrative of ancient humans being complete savages is quite annoying.

It seems highly unlikely, considering how important hands are for survival, the risks of a debilitating handicap or death if something went wrong, and the fact that hands don’t seem to be linked to any sort of spiritual symbolism (as opposed to eyes, forehead, etc.) in any religion, at least not to the point of doing something so extreme to them.

Even if trepanation was used in very ancient times, it had, to my understanding, some surgical goal.

So, this is yet another case of ‘research’ exhibiting poor logical skills.

How do we know they didn’t fold the fingers?

That would explain the "stencil" images, but not the "print" images, which the article says exist. This other article says digits are missing only for stencil images (in European cave art) and posits that folding digits was some sort of code: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25734300-900-cave-pai... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38769396

Has anyone mentioned the Yakuza yet?

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