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Stone Age Europeans may have deliberately amputated their fingers during religious ceremonies. The controversial idea could explain why so many of the prehistoric images of hands on cave walls are missing fingers.

鈥淔inger amputation was a reasonably common behaviour in many regions in the recent past,鈥� says Mark Collard of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. 鈥淭he available data seem to fit reasonably well with the hypothesis that some Upper Palaeolithic people engaged in finger amputation for the purposes of religious sacrifice.鈥�

Images of hands, whether handprints or hand stencils, are some of the most common forms of cave art. They are found on several continents.

Two French caves called Gargas and Cosquer are known for their unusual hand images. Gargas has 231 hand images and 114 have at least one finger segment missing, while Cosquer has 49 hand images, 28 of which are missing finger segments. 鈥淚n both cases it鈥檚 a fairly high percentage,鈥� says Collard. There are isolated examples elsewhere.

Nobody knows why. One suggestion is that the people鈥檚 hands were intact and the , just as we show 鈥渢hree鈥� by folding two fingers. Alternatively, Ian Gilligan at the University of Sydney, Australia has suggested that .

Off with their fingers

Collard and his colleagues wondered if instead people might have removed the fingers on purpose. To find out if this was plausible, they examined studies of recent human societies to see how many practised finger amputation. They found 121 societies that did it.

鈥淚 was pretty shocked,鈥� says Collard. 鈥淚t seems like such a debilitating practice that I couldn鈥檛 imagine signing up to do it myself. I still can鈥檛. Yet, we kept finding group after group that did it.鈥�

People amputated fingers for one of ten reasons, including as a marker of group identity and as a punishment. 鈥淲e decided that, based on the hand images alone, the most likely practices were mourning and sacrifice,鈥� says Collard. In some societies people voluntarily remove a finger while mourning. In others, voluntary finger removal represents a religious sacrifice done to appeal to a supernatural being 鈥� for instance, some women remove and eat a finger to help bring on pregnancy.

Collard suspects sacrifice was the real reason for finger removal in Stone Age France. 鈥淭he idea that the hand images reflect sacrifice is consistent with the way that cave art has been interpreted by many researchers over the years,鈥� he says. It has been linked to rituals that might involve mind-altering drugs. 鈥淐ave art is often in dark, hard-to-access parts of caves, which is consistent with them being part of some sort of dysphoric ritual.鈥�

Collard emphasises that this is a hypothesis. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not a slam-dunk case, by any means,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e could easily be wrong.鈥�

If the idea is correct, it hints at the state of society. 鈥淭he images may be telling us that early modern humans in Europe were divided into tight-knit groups that engaged in intense inter-group competition,鈥� says Collard. That鈥檚 because, according to studies of religious behaviour, unpleasant experiences can enhance cooperation within groups and lead people to distrust members of other groups.

Frozen hands

鈥淚 agree with the authors鈥� conclusion that the finger segments are really missing, but I am not convinced by their explanation,鈥� says Gilligan. He still thinks frostbite is more likely.

鈥淣one of the ethnographic cases they cite match the distinctive pattern seen in the ice age hand stencils 鈥� namely, a sequential shortening of fifth, fourth and third fingers, with the thumb spared,鈥� says Gilligan. 鈥淥n the other hand, pun intended, this pattern matches precisely the effects of frostbite. The pattern corresponds to the differing susceptibility of fingers to frostbite, with the thumb not affected.鈥�

Paul Pettitt of Durham University in the UK says there is no reason to think people鈥檚 fingers were removed at all, because they could simply have folded their fingers back. 鈥淭he argument that it鈥檚 not bent fingers has usually been made on the basis that you can鈥檛 bend one or more fingers back and then create a sharp-outlined hand stencil,鈥� he says. 鈥淚f you spend half an hour learning to create these things, you can do very sharp outlines with bent fingers.鈥�

While Pettitt agrees that some prehistoric people may have removed fingers, he argues this doesn鈥檛 explain the stencils. 鈥淢ost of the ethnographic examples involve the removal of a little finger,鈥� he says. The hand stencils in Gargas cave have up to four fingers missing. 鈥淣obody would be idiotic enough to remove every finger bar the thumb. That simply makes no sense.鈥�