Wisconsin

While reading the "Indian Mound" assignment for our next class I saw several connections to an observation that were made in Monday's class about the possibility of paleolithic religion being similar to that of Native American nature-based spirituality. While I am not entirely convinced that there is evidence for religion in the drawings on the the walls of the French caves, I can imagine a situation where these drawings show us the very beginning of the evolutionary path that nature-based religion took (and continued to developed largely in a vacuum from the great monotheisms in the "old world") in the Western Hemisphere.

Looking at the images from the caves that many have seen as evidence for a shaman like personality in Paleolithic society, (if this understanding is indeed correct) a similarity can be drawn to those drawings of the mound builders. The expression of a human in either bird form or a bird costume seems to be a theme that ties these two human groups together (albeit through centuries of history and development). Not only has the art become more elaborate, but also the form of the bird is now not solely isolated to the head of the individual, but has encompassed his entire body.

What might have influenced this more visible expression of "religion" in the Native Americans as opposed to the paleolithic people? Besides the parallel development that the ancestors of the Native Americans shares with the ancestors of those who eventually developed the three great monotheisms that have come to dominate modern society, the Native American people (especially in the Midwestern, Great Lakes region) had a much greater connection to the "unknown" in regards to what lies beneath the water.

Not only is Minnesota the land of 10,000 lakes, Wisconsin has approximately 15,000 lakes of its own (this all besides the fact that the Great Lakes are right next door). This may have contributed to the fact that many of the "spirits" or supernatural creatures that were created by these early Native Americans were centered around these overwhelming abundant bodies of water.This picture in particular reminded me of the stories of Nessie (the Loch Ness Monster). Attempts to explain strange objects sticking out of the water can lead to many fantastical stories (even in modern society), which is probably the same reason for the rise of water spirits and monsters in the religion of the mound builders.

While I am not arguing that these links are rock solid, they do provide a continuation of the story that so many "experts" have taken from the Paleolithic cave paintings (despite the fact that our class, as evidenced by our discussion, disputes their conclusions).