our past, our ancestors painted on the 
walls of caves. They left us a vivid 
portrayal of man seeking and making 
contact with animals that goes far be- 
yond simple depictions of the hunt, 
of hunters and their quarry. They also 
show us a powerful sense of kinship, 
a sense of two worlds that belong to- 
gether. These worlds have somehow 
become wrongly and artificially sep- 
arated. The ancient cave paintings 
show a perception of a power that 
is more than physical and testify to 
a belief that this power can be trans- 
ferred from one world to the other. 
Neither humans nor beasts are shown 
as superior; both have their proper 
realm of potency. Our folk tales of 
today tell of animals acquiring human 
powers such as speech and abstract 
thought. In the days of our ancestors 
it was the other way around: we sought 
to acquire the power of other animals. 
At the dawn of humankind, man 
and beast lived in much greater prox- 
imity. They sheltered in the same 
caves. In parts of East Africa, the 
skulls of the dead were until recently 
placed far in the rocky recesses of 
caves, as though human death were 
somehow mitigated through the on- 
going presence of animal life. Today 
our concern for immortality (surely 
the greatest quest of all) is directed 
toward the stars. That is where we 
seek signs that we are not alone in 
the universe, that we are part of some- 
thing infinitely greater and more en- 
during. Our cave-dwelling ancestors 
looked to the stars too, but they also 
looked to the animal world to find 
something of themselves there, seek- 
ing to find the fullness of their nature 
and the extent of their greatness and 
power. But that was before we do- 
mesticated animals and taught our- 
selves that we were superior. The tour- 
ist in East Africa may well be trying 
to reach back, searching for a lost 
identity and a sense, however tiny, 
of immortality. 
The early interrelationship between 
man and beast, both affective and ef- 
fective, mystical and practical, soon 
became formalized in complex sys- 
tems of totem and taboo, systems that 
stressed the proximity of all living 
things, rather than their distance. The 
medieval European system of heraldry 
perpetuated the notion of a mystical 
bond between families of men and 
families of animals. And today, we 
have bestial national emblems and 
royal or sacred, protected species. Play 
and dance, both highly educational 
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31 
