Morphic fields of mental activity and the prehistoric art

The symbolic communication are regarded by paleoanthropologists as the  defining characteristics of the Homo sapiens. One of the great mysteries of archaeology is why figurative art appeared suddenly around 37,000 years ago in the form of small sculpted objects and symbolic drawings and engravings on cave and rock shelter walls (1). A new mystery, that has recently emerged,  is why exactly the same kind of figures (wall painted hands), drawn with the same technique appeared at the same time (35,000 years ago) in caves of Cantabria (Spain) and Sulawesi (Indonesia) separated each other for more than 12,800 kilometers of desserts, mountains and the Indic ocean (2). One possibility is that this particular form of art emerged in Africa suggesting that art spreading from Africa to both Asia and Europe (3). Since no hands have been found painted with that technique anywhere else, the African origin of this art is very unlikely. An alternative explanation to this mystery could come from the Sheldrake’s theory of morphic resonance and Morphic fields (4).

 

 

 

Rupert Sheldrake is a profesor of Plant Biochemistry  at Cambridge University. Over the course of fifteen years of research on plant development he came to the conclusion that for understanding the development of plants (their morphogenesis), genes and gene products are not enough. Morphogenesis also depends on organizing fields. The same arguments apply to the development of animals. All cells come from other cells, and all cells inherit fields of organization. Genes are part of this organization.Sheldrake suggests that morphogenetic fields work by imposing patterns on otherwise random or indeterminate patterns of activity. Morphogenetic fields are not fixed forever, but evolve. How are these fields inherited? He proposes that they are transmitted from past members of the species through a kind of non-local resonance, called morphic resonance. The fields organizing the activity of the nervous system are likewise inherited through morphic resonance, conveying a collective, instinctive memory. Each individual both draws upon and contributes to the collective memory of the species. This means that new patterns of behaviour can spread more rapidly than would otherwise be posible (5).

The resonance of a brain with its own past states also helps to explain the memories of individual animals and humans. There is no need for all memories to be "stored" inside the brain. Social groups are likewise organized by fields, as in schools of fish and flocks of birds. Human societies have memories that are transmitted through the culture of the group, and are most explicitly communicated through the ritual re-enactment of a founding story or myth. Morphic fields underlie our mental activity and our perceptions. The existence of these fields is experimentally testable through the sense of being stared at itself. There is already much evidence that this sense really exists (6,7).

The morphic fields of social groups connect together members of the group even when they are many miles apart, and provide channels of communication through which organisms can stay in touch at a distance. The morphic fields of mental activity are not confined to the insides of our heads. They extend far beyond our brain though intention and attention. We are already familiar with the idea of fields extending beyond the material objects in which they are rooted: for example magnetic fields extend beyond the surfaces of magnets; the earth's gravitational field extends far beyond the surface of the earth, keeping the moon in its orbit; and the fields of a cell phone stretch out far beyond the phone itself. Likewise the fields of our minds extend far beyond our brains (8).

Under the basis of Sheldrate hypothesis, we can not ruled out that the different groups of colonising humans would have developed their artistic skills independently of one another but conected by a morphic field of creativity. There are numerous examples through the prehistory of such artistic coincidences in places separated by thousands of kilometers of land and sea.  For example, the almost identical pyramidal structures spread over the world or the stone spheres of Costa Rica and Bosnia Herzegovina. All these repeated artistic and symbolic manifestations could be explained through the Morphic fields of mental activity hypothesis.

1. Campillo J.E. Homo climaticus. Editorial Crítica, 2018.
2. Aubert M. et al. Pleistocene cave art from Sulawesi, Indonesia. Nature 514, 223-227, 2014.
3. Anonymous. 35,000 year-old Indonesian cave paintings suggest art came out of Africa. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/oct/08/cave-art-indonesia-sulawesi.
4. Sheldrake R. Morphic resonance: The nature of formative causation. Editorial Park Street Press, 2009 (reimpresión).
5. Sheldrake R. The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Memory of Nature. Editorial Simon and Schuster, 2012
6. Sheldrake R and P. Smart. Psychic pets: A survey in North-West England. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 61, 353-364, 1997
7. The sense of being stared at confirmed by simple experiments. Biology Forum 92, 53-76, 1999.
8. Sheldrake R. The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature. Vintage Books, 1988.