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Cave Folk

The cave goons baptized their brood in excavated mammoth skulls, tubs of blood from the saber-toothed cats they felled with hardwood clubs and stone. They’d consecrate their newborn whelps with warm viscera, plunging their grub-like bodies into fresh kills, the feasts to come. With dreams of T-Rex T-bone steak, they’d dwell on the distant past. But when times were lean —Pleistocene lean— they’d settle for hide and gristle, the marrow to be found in the cracked bones of megafauna du jour.

Sometimes the menu was one another —Cannibal Friday— which led to the popularized phrase of the time: “Thank goodness it’s not Friday.” When the cave brutes ate their neighbors, enemies and loved ones alike, they believed they inherited the qualities of those they consumed. If these beliefs hold any merit, it might explain how and why Oko adopted Ogo’s propensity to defile his brother’s mate after supping on his brains. Just one more mystery in this tragic, curious world.

The cave oafs warmed their dwellings with fire —fire!— the gift from the rhinoceros-headed warrior, Zogo, who dwells under the mountain. The ability to conjure and wield flame preceded the miraculous invention of the wheel, which gave birth to a divergent sect of technophobes, Neanderthals, that shunned these unholy atrocities, and thus fell far behind. But back to fire —fire!— which provided warmth, light among the darkness, hardened spear tips, cooked meat, a means to torture enemies with an artistic nuance of pain. Fire was a game changer. A real hot item. Fire lit the world, well, on fire.

The cave loons were cultists, devotees of bastard religions, strange and surreal creeds often limited to a single tribe or family. The skull cult collected the bones of their dead, namely their cranial bones, or their mandibles, sometimes their upper vertebrae, which were used as game pieces or wind chimes. In the Vindija Cave, in modern-day Croatia, mandible bones, aged in excess of 8000 years, have been found spread out in a circular formation. Perhaps most curious of all is the scrimshaw symbols engraved upon these hundreds of facial bones, carvings which are believed to be numeric figures, a lottery of sorts, maybe a crude calendar. There is no way of looking back now, seeing and knowing for certain if Dogo spread his mother and children’s jawbones for entertainment, art, or ritual. It is not a popular opinion, but it is credible when examined with all the evidence: the concentric mandibles of the Vindija cave might be the earliest iteration of Wheel of Fortune.

The cults of the cave goons are as numerous as the unanswered riddles to their various histories, with more unknowns than a Neanderthal had brain cells. In addition to the skull cult, there is the bear cult; the vulture cult; the cannibal cult; the horse head cult; the meat cult; fire cult; sex cult; serpent cult; blonde woman cult; the seven-breasted rhino cult, among no end of others. There are godlike figures that are vague and pre-mythic: the sun-headed titan; the snake with two tails; the rock eater; the cloud rider; the hyena maiden; the sabretooth king, the flock of wingless buzzards; the flock of winged penises. There is no end to the creative gobbledygook of the cave clerics.

When the cave swain boys reached manhood (age four) they were sent on their own to live as they may, unarmed and naked among the wilds, only to return to the tribe after slaying their first cave lion, and eating its heart.

When the cave damsel girls reached womanhood (age six) they were offered in trade or good faith to voracious, brutal bastards with muscles as hard as knotted wood and tempers as volatile as magma.

When the cave thralls beheld the hyena maiden, they knelt in devotion, hoping to live beyond their humble prostration. When they witnessed the rock eater, they tenderly rubbed at their teeth, wincing at the thought of limestone for supper. When the cave cretins glimpsed a flock of wingless buzzards they scratched their heads and wondered, how? When the cave pagans saw a flock of winged penises they looked away and wretched into the sand, they wondered, why?

When the cave boors felled the mastodon, they feasted and filled their bellies. When they set fire to the armored Glyptodon (the only way to kill it), they removed its bony plates, applying them to the pelts they wore, inventing protective garments for battle. When the cave lords spilled the blood of the mighty Megalorceros, they marveled at the width of its antlers. Sometimes they’d hang these above the fire pit in their cavern dwellings, other times, they fashioned blades for killing more beasts, or one another.

Sometimes, when their hearts were open to inspiration, the cave folk wept at the utter beauty of their world, the unrelenting savagery that accompanies its every corner.

If the cave goons lived today —as they were and not as they have evolved— they’d scrutinize their modern brethren, their present-day world in horror and fascination. Who’s to say what might go on in their dim little minds? The cave folk might be comforted, or maybe terrified, to learn that some things never change.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

James Callan is the author of the novels Anthophile (Alien Buddha Press, 2024) and A Transcendental Habit (Queer Space, 2023). His fiction has appeared in Apocalypse Confidential, BULL, X-R-A-Y, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Mystery Tribune, and elsewhere. He lives on the Kāpiti Coast, Aotearoa New Zealand.