The Ocher that Came from Heaven

Abstract

Just as our contemporary society seeks in certain animals’ behaviors ways for interspecies empathy, at the origin of our symbolic thought there were empathic strategies towards the other beings with whom we shared habitat, behaviors that, by mimetic appropriation, are the beginning of our mystical thinking and the aesthetic associated with it. Analyzing the cosmetic behavior of the bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus) and the neanderthal fossil record and the beginning of the colonization of Europe by sapiens, where the first musical instruments of the continent appear, we present some of these strategies at the origin of the symbolic consciousness in relation to the archetypal dream of flight and with bird watching.