Saami Religion and Finnish Rock Ar.pdf
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Communicating with “Stone Persons”: Anthropomorphism,
Saami Religion and Finnish Rock Art
Antti Lahelma
antti.lahelma@iki.fi
University of Helsinki, Finland
Institute for Cultural Research, Department of Archaeology
P.O. Box 59, 00014 Helsingin yliopisto
‘Christ-like’ shell to go on sale
A bar manager in Switzerland has announced plans to sell an oyster shell
resembling the face of Jesus Christ, according to local media. Matteo
Brandi, 38, may hope to repeat the success of a Florida woman who sold
a piece of toast said to bear an image of the Virgin Mary for $28,000. The
Italian said he had found the shell, whose contents have since been eaten,
in a batch two years ago. The oyster stuck to his hand as if God was calling
him, he said.
BBC news 13.1.2005
Introduction: The “Face on Mars”
sion to Mars
, directed by Brian De Palma
in 2000). More detailed images of the rock
formation taken by
Mars Global Surveyor
in 1998 and 2001 have thrown cold water on
theories of ancient Martian civilizations, and
the whole incident could easily be dismissed
as being just another example of the “lunatic
fringe” of science. However, there is a more
interesting side to this story that has to do with
In 1976, the American space probe
Viking 1
Orbiter
took a photograph of the surface of
the planet Mars, showing a region called Cy-
donia. The photo seems to show an enormous
human face, almost 1.5 km long from one end
to the other, staring back at the cameras of the
spaceship. Amused by the discovery, NASA
scientists published the image with a caption
that described it as showing eroded mesa-like
landforms, including a “huge rock formation
in the centre, which resembles a human head
[...] formed by shadows giving the illusion of
eyes, nose and mouth” (Jet Propulsion Labo-
ratory 1976).
NASA hardly anticipated the reaction
inspired by the photograph. In the past three
decades, the “Face on Mars” has become an
icon of popular culture, a common element
of conspiracy theories and UFO-mythology
(Sagan 1996: 52-55). Interpreted in lay lit-
erature as the vestiges of a lost civilization,
the “face” has been compared to the Sphinx
of Giza and the Shroud of Turin, featured in
numerous ‘New Age’ books, Internet pages
and even a major Hollywood movie (
Mis-
Fig. 1.
A photograph (P-17384) of the Cydonia
region of Mars, taken by Viking 1 on the 31
st
of
July 1976. The “face” is located in the upper
central part of the image. Photo: NASA.
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121
anthropomorphism, or the attribution of hu-
man characteristics to nonhuman things such
as rock formations.
People attribute human shape and quali-
ties (such as agency) to the widest range of
objects and phenomena imaginable. The
anthropologist Stewart Guthrie (1993) has
argued that anthropomorphism is a universal
strategy that logically arises from a kind of
betting game. Guthrie writes that
vival. In an ambiguous and threatening world,
making such errors gives us an evolutionary
advantage over the reverse strategy of assum-
ing no agents without concrete proof of their
presence. It yields more in occasional big wins
and avoiding big losses than it costs in more
frequent little failures. As a consequence, our
intuition does not require much solid evidence
for detecting agency, but easily ‘jumps into
conclusions’.
The relevance of the “Face on Mars”
or an oyster shell claimed to bear the face of
Jesus Christ to archaeology may not be im-
mediately clear. To most archaeologists, such
phenomena would probably appear strange or
ridiculous, because in modern Western culture
anthropomorphism is rarely attributed any
spiritual significance. But however bizarre
such things may appear, they bear evidence of
the pervasiveness of anthropomorphism even
in today’s world. Many non-Western peoples
do attribute cultural meanings – often related
to animism – to anthropomorphic rocks and
similar “natural” phenomena. And because an-
thropomorphism and animism are (according
to Guthrie 2002) strategies that are shared not
only by anatomically modern humans but even
many animal species, we should be prepared
to encounter them in prehistory also.
[…] we anthropomorphize because
guessing that the world is humanlike is
a good bet. It is a bet because the world
is uncertain, ambiguous, and in need of
interpretation. It is a good bet because
the most valuable interpretations usually
are those that disclose the presence of
whatever is important to us. That usually
is other humans. (Guthrie 1993: 3).
Because our species has evolved in envi-
ronments where we have to deal with both
predators and prey, our cognitive systems have
evolved so as to work on a ‘better safe than
sorry’ principle that leads to ‘hyper-sensitive
agent detection’. Since early prehistory, the
most important elements in the environments
of both humans and animals have been other
humans and animals. Humans and animals
affect our lives more than anything else, both
negatively and positively, making it vital to
detect all possible animals and humans in
our environments. Humans, therefore, have
a deeply intuitive tendency of projecting hu-
man features onto non-human aspects of the
environment, and we commonly perceive
intentional agency even in ‘dead’ objects.
We speak of “Mother Nature”, talk to a car
or a computer as if it could understand us, or
mistake an upright rock for a human.
Guthrie sees a close relationship between
anthropomorphism and animism; in his view,
both anthropomorphism and animism arise
from the same, largely unconscious perceptual
strategy of detecting humans and animals
(Guthrie 1993: 61). This strategy inevitably
leads to numerous errors, but according to
Guthrie, these are “reasonable errors” in the
sense that they increase our chances of sur-
Anthropomorphism and Finnish rock art
Although the examples discussed by Guthrie
are mostly taken from contemporary advertis-
ing, arts, theology, philosophy, etc., he does
present a few instances of anthropomorphism
in a prehistoric context (e.g. Guthrie 1993:
120, 134-135) and it seems easy to find more.
In this paper I will concentrate on the case of
seeing “faces” in natural rock formations, par-
ticularly in Finnish rock art and Saami (Lapp)
sacred sites known as
sieidi
.
Finnish rock paintings
Finnish rock art, which consists of paintings
only, is typically located on outcroppings
of rock (usually granite or gneiss) that form
vertical surfaces rising directly from a lake
(Kivikäs 1995, 2000, 2005, Taskinen 2000,
Lahelma 2005). Only a few paintings do not
122
conform to this general pattern of location: in
less than ten cases, paintings have been made
on large boulders rather than cliffs, and a small
number of sites are associated with flowing
water rather than lakes. There is not, however,
a single painting known that is not (or has not
been) intimately associated with water.
The number of rock paintings known to
exist in Finland today is a little over one hun-
dred. Some of these may be ‘pseudopaintings’
or natural accumulations of red ochre, but at
least 90 sites have identifiable figures and
are likely to be of a prehistoric date. All the
paintings are made with red ochre and feature
a limited range of motifs, including images of
elks, boats, stick-figure humans hand stencils
and geometric signs. Interpretations given to
the art include hunting magic (Sarvas 1969),
totemism (Autio 1995) and shamanism (e.g.
Siikala 1981, Lahelma 2001, 2005). Of these,
shamanism is commonly favoured today (e.g.
Miettinen 2000 calls it a ‘canonical’ interpreta-
tion), even though alternative interpretations
still persist alongside the shamanistic one.
Geographically the paintings are con-
centrated in the Finnish Lake Region in the
central and eastern parts of the country. The
area around Lake Saimaa is particularly rich
in rock paintings, but some sites are located
far from this main rock art region. Five sites
have been found in the vicinity of Helsinki,
two in the far northeast of the country, and one
site in the southwest, close to Turku (Åbo).
Although the first rock painting in Finland was
discovered already in 1911, the vast majority
of sites have only been found in the past three
decades. One may therefore still expect the
distribution map to change somewhat.
Because the paintings are almost without
exception associated with water, they can be
dated by the shore displacement method. The
Holocene isostatic land uplift and associated
tilting of the Fennoscandian landmass has
been a major factor in the formation of the
Finnish landscape. As a result of these proc-
esses, some paintings evidently originally
made from a boat close to the surface of a lake
are now situated more than ten meters above
water. Assuming that no scaffolding or other
artificial means were used to paint higher than
Fig. 2.
Distributions of prehistoric rock paint-
ings (dark grey areas, based on Kivikäs 1995
with additions) and historically known
sieidi
(light grey areas, based on Sarmela 2000)
in Finland, with some of the sites discussed
shown. The distributions overlap in a small
area in Northern Finland, close to the eastern
border, where two rock paintings have been
found.
water level (which seems like a rather safe
assumption to make), the probable age of
the paintings can be calculated based on our
knowledge of the hydrological history of Finn-
ish lakes. According to current understanding,
the paintings of the large Lake Saimaa region
date from approximately 5000-1500 cal. BC
(Jussila 1999; Seitsonen 2005a), and similar
datings have been suggested for other areas
as well (e.g. Seitsonen 2005b). This locates
the paintings mainly within the period of the
Subneolithic Comb Ware cultures, which prac-
ticed a hunting-gathering-fishing economy.
However, the rock painting tradition appears
to continue to the early part of the Early Metal
Period (1900 cal. BC – 300 cal. AD). Evidence
of barley cultivation as early as 2200 cal. BC
has recently been found in the Lake Region
(Mika Lavento pers. comm.) Seeing that many
of the finds associated with the rock paintings
date from the Early Metal Period (fig. 10), rock
paintings appear still to have been in active use
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Fig. 3.
Some Finnish rock painting sites that have been perceived as anthropomorphic in shape:
a) Astuvansalmi, b) Lakiasuonvuori, c) Viherinkoski A, d) Mertakallio. Photos: Eero Siljander
(a), Antti Lahelma (b & d), Miikka Pyykkönen (c)
when primitive agriculture was introduced in
the Lake Region.
& Morton 1991). When children grow, faces
acquire emotional and social significance. As
Guthrie writes, “
Choosing among interpreta-
tions of the world, we remain condemned to
meaning, and the greatest meaning has a
human face
” (Guthrie 1993: 204). This fasci-
nation with faces is not learned, but based on
human biology, and appears to have been char-
acteristic of hominids for hundreds of thou-
sands of years (see below). Seeing “faces” in
Seeing “faces” at rock art sites
All humans are fascinated with faces and face-
like shapes. Even newborn infants show an
interest in human faces, and children display
great competence in recognising emotions,
attractiveness or individual features of human
faces already at a very young age (Johnson
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natural objects is thus a particularly interesting
case of the process of anthropomorphism.
That some of the cliffs where rock paintings
occur in Finland exhibit human-like “faces”
has been recognised for some time. The
archaeologist Jussi-Pekka Taavitsainen was
the first to publish this observation in 1981,
although according to Milton Núñez (pers.
comm.) it was first discovered by Ushio
Maeda, a Japanese exchange student who
studied archaeology at the University of Hel-
sinki in the early 1970’s. Maeda noticed that
the large and important rock painting site of
Astuvansalmi resembles a huge human face
in profile view, its eyelids closed, as if it were
sleeping (fig. 3a). Taavitsainen presented three
further examples – the paintings of Mertaka-
llio, Löppösenluola and Valkeisaari, all located
in South-Eastern Finland (Taavitsainen 1981,
figs. 1, 3 and 4). Of these, the three first men-
tioned sites include formations that are said to
resemble a human face in profile, where as at
Valkeisaari, it is possible to recognise a human
face in frontal view. The above mentioned sites
remain among the most striking examples of
anthropomorphism in Finnish rock art.
Several other examples of anthropomor-
phic rock painting sites have been presented.
Miettinen sees a human face in profile in the
painted rock of Verla (Pentikäinen & Miettinen
2003: 12). At the site of Lakiasuonvuori it is
possible to distinguish two faces, one in profile
(Pentikäinen & Miettinen 2003: 11) and one
resembling half of a human face (fig. 3b), seen
as if it were peering from behind a corner. The
painted boulder of Viherinkoski A (fig. 3c) has
the rough appearance of a human head. The
site of Ilmuksenvuori includes two features
that have attracted the attention of modern
observers. One is a large granite head, with
a nose, chin and eyes formed by the natural
features of rock, rising from the lake (Kivikäs
2000: 42-43). Some remains of red ochre paint
can be seen on the “head,” but it does not seem
to have been applied to make the features more
human-like. A second human-like formation at
the same site illustrates the pitfalls associated
with these kinds of observations. Kivikäs notes
the “gnome-like” shape of the formation, but
fails to appreciate the fact that it consists of
rapakivi-granite – an easily crumbling type of
rock that is unlikely to have retained its shape
for millennia.
The list of purportedly anthropomorphic
sites could be continued. But regardless of
the number of examples presented, this kind
of “face-spotting” remains a somewhat dubi-
ous branch of rock art research. Recognising
human features in natural cliffs is a fundamen-
tally subjective experience. How can we, in
the absence of living informants, know what
formations were considered anthropomorphic
by a Stone Age people? And how can even
begin to guess what (if any) cultural meanings
were attached to them? Did these “faces” in
rock stimulate religious feelings or just amuse-
ment and curiosity?
Although the significance of anthropo-
morphic natural formations is clearly a difficult
subject for prehistoric archaeology, a number
ways to tackle the question can be suggested.
It would, for example, be possible to arrange
different kinds of experiments in which test
persons are brought to the vicinity of an
“anthropomorphic” rock and asked to record
their observations. Something like this was
attempted in 1993, when two young Khanty
brothers, Yeremey and Ivusef Sopotchin, were
brought to the rock painting of Astuvansalmi
and their behaviour at the site was observed.
The brothers, sons of a Khanty shaman, are
said to have immediately recognised the cliff
as a sacred site and to have forbidden anyone
from climbing on top of it. Furthermore, they
claimed to recognise some of the paintings as
representing scenes from Khanty mythology,
made sacrifices of money, muttered prayers in
Khanty and acted out a ritual shooting of the
rock (Pentikäinen 1994, Pentikäinen & Miet-
tinen 2003: 13-16). However, the artificial set-
ting of this experiment does not seem to stand
to closer scrutiny. The Khanty are natives of
the extremely flat River Ob region, where
rocky cliffs such as Astuvansalmi practically
do not exist (Jordan 2003: 79). Moreover,
given the costly arrangements of the trip
and the presence of academics and reporters
(whose employer, a popular magazine called
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