MAY 2006 



Decoding: the Tribe 



Carl Schuster's remarkable quest to trace 

 humanity's ancient iconography 



By Edmund Carpenter 



I first met Carl Schuster in the late 1950s. I was 

 living in desert California, with no phone and 

 few visitors. He simply appeared at my door: 

 "I understand you're just back from Irkutsk." 



Archaeology — nothing else — had taken me to 

 Siberia. But in those Cold War years, who would 

 have believed that? And who was this stranger? I de- 

 termined he wasn't getting past the screen door! 



My visitor spoke of his own research and men- 

 tioned photographs in his car. I thought it might be 

 easier to get rid of him from there. The first pho- 

 tograph showed an incised stone. He said it came 

 from California. I corrected him: Spain. Yet the back 

 of the photograph documented its California ori- 

 gin. He showed me more. I suggested we go inside, 

 out of the sun. 



There Schuster juxtaposed various images of ob- 

 jects spanning 30,000 

 years; they exhibited 

 strikingly similar de- 

 signs. He made no 

 claim to have doc- 

 umented historical 

 connections among 

 em, but the internal 

 testimony of the designs 

 themselves, he pro- 

 posed, pointed to 

 common symbolic 

 I origins. Such evi- 

 I dence flew in the 

 face of scholarly as- 

 sumptions about cul- 



tural history. But to 

 demand proof of his- 

 torical contact, he said 

 would be like requiring 

 a linguist to prove the affinity of 

 two languages by producing tape 

 recordings for each step in their sep- 

 aration. The standard, in other 

 words, would be unrealistic. 



Schuster s primary interest lay in the 

 intelligence behind the designs. To de- 

 code the symbolism, he traced a mem- 

 ory line from the present back to an- 

 cient times. Paleolithic peoples, he be- 

 lieved, invented an iconography to 

 illustrate genealogical ideas. They paint- 

 ed the designs on their bodies, displayed 

 them on garments and tools, and carried 

 them wherever they went. He offered par 

 allels with recent tribes — small-scale, kin- 

 ship-based societies. One simple motif is that 

 of an upside-down human figure. Another 

 recurring image is that of a human body with 

 two heads, both facing forward, or variations 

 on that theme. Yet another widespread de- 

 sign depicts human figures joined at the ex- 

 tremities, suggestive of paper dolls, and re 

 peated in ranks above and below. 



All those patterns can be interpreted as 

 expressions of genealogical connection, 

 or kinship, a paramount concern in all liv- 

 ing human societies, and perhaps one of the 

 first to elicit symbolic expression. Still other patterns 



Figurines depicting one body with two forward-facing heads have been made in many places at 

 many times: Eastern Europe, ca. 4000 B.C. (left); Tahiti, nineteenth century (above right); and 

 Mesoamerica, ca. 900-500 B.C. (opposite page at upper right). One interpretation is that they 

 represent a common tradition, dating from Late Paleolithic times as long ago as 30,000 years, of 

 representing a person's genealogical connection to both the mother and the father and, by ex- 

 tension, to their respective kin groups within the tribe. The principal joints (shoulders, elbows, 

 and so forth) in the European figurine are pierced, which serves to mark them; the marking of 

 joints is a common device that often seems to represent ancestors and descendants. 



%2 



NATURAL HISTORY May 2006 



