Traces of an Ancient Conversation

Over the years, Laura Lee and I have been blessed to visit many ancient and sacred sites around the world, from the temples of Egypt and the megalithic sanctuaries of Malta to Paleolithic cave sites in France, the pyramids of Mexico, Uluru in the Australian Outback, prehistoric monuments of the UK, and ancient sites of North America such as Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico. These experiences have deepened my appreciation for humanity’s shared spiritual heritage and the enduring wisdom preserved within traditional cultures. One aspect that continues to stand out in my memory is the artwork, particularly the petroglyphs, paintings, carvings, and other images people left behind.

There is something about seeing these figures, animals, spirals, handprints, and geometric forms in the places where they were created that makes them feel like traces of a conversation. Someone stood there, chose that particular image, and took the time to place it on the rock. Whatever their original meaning, these images seem to carry something of the people who made them and the communities and cultures of which they were a part.

This impulse to communicate through image and symbol reaches very far back into the human story. Long before written language, our ancestors were already documenting what was important to them. Ocher and other colored minerals were being collected and used hundreds of thousands of years ago. Later, we begin to find repeated geometric markings, lines, crosses, dots, and patterns. Eventually, there are painted caves, handprints, carved stones, petroglyphs, and small sculpted figures. Something was being expressed, and I find that simple idea fascinating.

Our human ancestors found many ways to preserve and communicate what mattered to them. Some of these early markings may have been practical. Some may have identified a place or a group, recorded an event, or shared information important to the community. Others may have expressed sacred relationships with animals, encoded wisdom about the natural world, connections with ancestors, or altered-state experiences.

Laura Lee and I sometimes think of these ancient images as a kind of journal, a way of preserving an experience that mattered. Possibly it was an encounter, a vision, a teaching, a journey, or a relationship with something in the visible world. In some cases, maybe it was an attempt to record an experience of another reality altogether.

That possibility becomes especially interesting to us through our work with Ritual Posture Experiences. Felicitas Goodman spent years looking carefully at ancient figurines and images of the human body. Rather than seeing them only as objects to be classified, she became curious about the gestures themselves. Why was the body positioned in this particular way? Why did certain positions appear repeatedly? Could the gesture itself carry information? Her exploration of those questions eventually became part of the heart of the work we continue at the Cuyamungue Institute today.

This work has changed the way I sometimes look at ancient imagery. When I see a figure with its hands positioned in a particular way, an unusual stance, an animal form, or a human figure that seems to combine ordinary and extraordinary features, I wonder whether I might be looking at more than a representation. Could some of these images be records of experiences?

Anyone who has participated in a Ritual Posture Experience knows how challenging these experiences can sometimes be to describe afterward. We encourage participants to journal immediately following the experience, and words are often only part of what appears on the page. People may draw circles, pathways, animals, faces, landscapes, geometric forms, or something they cannot quite explain. Sometimes the drawing seems able to hold something that words cannot. It becomes another way of remembering and giving form to an experience. In our ongoing research, we also continue to study ancient images containing distinctive human body positions, some of which have become part of the growing canon of Ritual Postures explored through the work of CUYA, the Cuyamungue Institute.

This naturally makes me wonder about our ancestors. Imagine returning from an experience that felt deeply significant, an encounter with an animal, an ancestor, a spirit, or an unfamiliar realm. Without written language, how would you preserve it? How would you share it with others or make certain that something important was not forgotten? you would tell the story,

It would stand to reason you would make a mark on stone, bone, wood, or the wall of a cave. That mark might remain long after the original story had disappeared. It reminds me of the old saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

This is part of what I have felt during my several visits to Chaco Canyon. I was standing in front of expressions made by other human beings who had looked at the same sky, walked across the same earth, wondered about their lives, and encountered mysteries of their own. Thousands of years separated us, yet something remained recognizable in the human need to express, to remember, and to share an experience with someone else.

We don’t need to explain every symbol in order to feel a connection with the people who made them. In fact, there may be something important in allowing some of the mystery to remain.

For me, that is where these ancient images continue to have their greatest resonance. The ancient world rarely speaks to us in sentences, yet it can speak in a powerful language that stirs something within us. It speaks through a hand pressed against stone, a spiral carved into a canyon wall, a painted animal deep within a cave, or a small human figure expressing something through a particular position of the body.

The exact meanings may be beyond our reach, but I invite you to consider that the conversation is clearly imbedded in the images and symbols they left behind.