Environmental history and paleolithic conceptions of wilderness

Environmental Science

Oelschlaeger argues that Paleolithic humans held a variety of beliefs related to how they lived their lives, including those below:

that irrespective of place, nature was home

Prehistoric humans had a culture but did not think about their culture. They developed beliefs about their world but did not think of themselves as separate from their world. They saw themselves as a part of the nature around them. They were present in the world just as trees, rocks, plants and other animals were. To have a consciousness of culture would have meant that they were separate from the rest of the world around them (Oelschlaeger, p. 11-12). Their sense of being part of the world is demonstrated by their use of totems for family groups. That tied them to nature, and it was that totemic that identified them as "home." Home was wherever they were at the time, and their tie to nature was present wherever they were. They did not define any one place as "home" because they did not stay in one place, except within nature (Oelschlaeger, p. 13).

A that they regarded nature as intrinsically feminine

Prehistoric humans saw that they found everything they needed within nature to meet their physical needs. They saw a similarity to the way nature sustained them and the way a mother nurses her baby to sustain the baby. They came to think of nature as a "Magna Mater," because they believed that Nature would provide for them just as a mother takes care of her baby (Oelschlaeger, p. 16).

A that they thought of nature as alive

The belief that nature provides for human sustenance leads to the idea that nature is "alive and responsive" Oelschlaeger, p. 16). This made life for humans an interactive existence with the world around them, and meant that they should support each other (Oelschlaeger, p. 18). This meant that humans must treat nature with respect, leading to rituals to keep mankind's use of the natural world in harmony with nature (Oelschlaeger, p. 17).

A that they assumed that the entire world of plants and animals, even the land itself, was sacred

Paleolithic humans did not see themselves as better than other features in the natural world. They thought that everything in the natural world including plants, animals, bodies of water and the Earth itself contained spirits (Oelschlaeger, p. 17).

A that they surmised that divinity could take many narural forrns and that metaphor was the mode of divine access

The belief that all objects contained spirits led to the idea that divinity is present in all things. They did not create greater and lesser gods because they did not see any one element of nature, including themselves, as superior to any other element in nature, (Oelschlaeger, p. 21) but used metaphors to explain their relationship to the rest of the world. An example of that would be totemic beliefs (Oelschlaeger, p. 13).

A that they believed that time was synchronous, folded into an eternal mythical present

Influenced by cycles they saw in nature such as the repeating seasons of the year, Paleolithic humans believed that time repeated itself (Oelschlaeger, p. 21) rather than using fixed points in time as modern society does (clocks and calendars). This cyclical view demonstrated that nature renewed and replenished itself (Oelschlaeger, p. 24).