A History of Religious Ideas, Volume 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries

by Mircea Eliade

Whatever may be thought of Marshak’s general theory concerning the development of civilization, the fact remains that the lunar cycle was analyzed, memorized, and used for practical purposes some 15,000 years before the discovery of agriculture. This makes more comprehensible the considerable role of the moon in archaic mythologies, and especially the fact that lunar symbolism was integrated into a single system comprising such different realities as woman, the waters, vegetation, the serpent, fertility, death, “rebirth,” etc.33 From analyzing the meanders engraved on objects or painted on the walls of caves, Marshak concludes that these designs constitute a system because they present a succession and express an intentionality. This structure is already documented in the designs engraved on a bone excavated at Pech de l’Azé (Dordogne) and belonging to the Acheulian level (ca. 135,000 B.C.), that is, at least 100,000 years before the meanders of the Upper Paleolithic.