The visionary filmmaker Werner Herzog has described his friend and kindred nomadic spirit Bruce Chatwin as a ‘voyager of the mind'.[1] Herzog remembers Chatwin this way: "he had a profound, existential, curiosity about the world. He would follow a thread, and he would not be stopped from pursuing that thread and figuring it out."[2] One of the fascinating intellectual excursions Chatwin pursued in the course of researching and writing his book ‘The Songlines, involved him in an investigation of a paleontological site which contained strata of bones from one of our hominid ancestors, intermingled with those of an enormous saber tooth cat. The twin holes in various hominid skulls that match the dimension of the cat’s sabers, indicated that these two species had a relationship. This led Chatwin to speculate on primeval predation scenarios that could have implanted themselves in the depths of the human psyche.
Chatwin describes a network of long lava tunnels in a mountain side in modern day Kenya, where leopards dwell in the recesses, and baboons huddle for warmth near the entrance, as a present-day example to corroborate his theory. The baboons sleep in the cave entrance out of necessity, their survival depends upon the warmth the caves offer. These baboons have apparently decided that this practice of ‘Russian Roulette’ is an unavoidable compromise, as the possibility of becoming an occasional meal is preferable to the certainty of freezing to death. Whether the baboon psyche is capable of conjuring notions of a dark predatory presence, that exists as surely as the beasts lurking in the recesses of these caves, is hard to say. The enduring presence of such a malevolent figure that looms in the human psyche, reflects this imaginative capacity in our own species.
There was a deeply metaphysical dimension to much of Chatwin’s thought, as is evident in the hypothesis he formulated around this theme. He speculated that the juxtaposition of predator and prey evidenced in the fossil record, reflected events that served to inspire beliefs in an incarnation of evil and terror, i.e. the prince of darkness.
The following excerpts from ‘The Songlines' demonstrate both his hypothesis, as well as the imaginative artistry with which he presents it. The episode alone is worth the read of a book that is overflowing with what Werner Herzog refers to as 'ecstatic truth’ - a portrayal of events and facts that induces a sense of awe, the accompaniment of an encounter with a reality that has been revealed to a greater depth.
"A leopard will turn ‘man-eater’ usually – though not always – as a result of an accident, such as a missing canine. But once the animal gets a taste for human flesh, it will touch no other."[3]
"Whichever beast (or beasts) used the caves as its charnel-house, it had a taste for ‘primate’."[4]
"Dinofelis was a cat less agile than a leopard or cheetah but far more solidly built. It had straight, dagger-like killing teeth … Its bones have been unearthed from the Transvaal to Ethiopia: that is, the original range of man.”[5]
(Dinofelis aronoki; the species epithet came from the phrase arono ki which, in the language of the people of eastern Turkana, means "it was terrible".[6] Could this name derive from the ancient prehistoric terror this animal inspired, transmitting itself through perennial cultural consciousness, emerging and expressing itself today in our own language?
Chatwin credits the paleontologist who first developed the predation hypothesis in this way: "as I see it … (he) reinstated a figure whose presence has grown dimmer and dimmer since the close of the Middle Ages: the Prince of Darkness in all his sinister magnificence.[7]
"Could it be, one is tempted to ask, that Dinofelis was Our Beast? A Beast set aside from all the other Avatars of Hell? The Arch-Enemy who stalked us, stealthily and cunningly, wherever we went? But whom, in the end, we got the better of?"[8]
Chatwin observes that while we ultimately vanquished this beast, he lives on in his dominion of nightmare, and in the domain of myth. The theory Chatwin presents us with is an expression of a beautifully creative mind, but in this case it is wrong. If God can be thought of as love then this other being that sometime takes up residence in the human psyche, is the negation of love. Love cannot enter or exit from the event horizon that encircles this presence. He is a black hole, a vacuous silhouette defined by an essence that is love’s complete and total absence.
I hope I never have to cower before him.
Again.
[1] “Werner Herzog: ‘The World Reveals Itself to Those Who Travel on Foot,’” Travel, August 26, 2020, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/werner-herzog-interview-on-bruce-chatwin-film-nomad.
[2] “Werner Herzog.”
[3] Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines (London: Penguin Books, 1988).
[4] Chatwin.
[5] Chatwin.
“Dinofelis,” in Wikipedia, April 29, 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dinofelis&oldid=1221317325.
[7] Chatwin, The Songlines.
[8] Chatwin.
I've read that the homo sapiens species almost went extinct several times. DNA experts and paleontologists hypothesize that there were times during the last 200,000 years when the number of human individuals was only about 1000. The beasts could have won easily.
This post also makes me think of the Werner Herzog movie "Bear Man". For obvious reasons.
I share your hope to never cower before the darkness again. In this regard, the IFS model of the mind offers me hope that there are no bad parts. Slowly, ever so slowly, I’m making friends with my saber tooth tiger.