Altamira is a cave in Spain that preserves the cave paintings of the Upper Paleolithic era1. The cave is located near the city of Santillana del Mar and was used until approximately 12,000 BCE, when the entrance was blocked by a landslide. Recent research has shown that the drawings were made between 34,000 and 23,000 BCE.
Discovery of the Cave
The entrance to the cave was discovered in 1868 by a local hunter, Modest Cubillas Peras. His dog got stuck in the rocks, and in an attempt to free the animal, Modest discovered the entrance. He told the owner of the land, Count Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, about the cave. However, it was only in 1879 that the Count visited Altamira with his nine-year-old daughter, Maria. She was the one who saw the paintings on the wall and drew her father’s attention by shouting, “Look, daddy, bulls!”
Photograph of Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola
The discovery of his daughter inspired Marcelino, who invited archaeologist Juan Vilanova Y Piera. Together, they conducted research and attributed the cave paintings to the Late Paleolithic era. In 1880, Juan and Marcelino released a small brochure in which they described their discovery and the paintings. However, the archaeologists faced condemnation from the scientific community. Other scientists believed that Marcelino had made the drawings himself and that they had no relation to the prehistoric era. The painted images in Altamira were perceived as a forgery. Several years after Marcelino’s death, similar paintings were discovered in other places, which dispelled the doubts of the scientific community. In 1902, Emile Cartailhac, Marcelino’s opponent, wrote an article titled “La grotte d’Altamira, Mea culpa d’un sceptique”, or “The Cave of Altamira, My Skeptic’s Mea Culpa.” This work became the scientific acknowledgment of the authenticity of the Altamira cave paintings.
Photograph of 8-year-old Maria de Sautuola
Structure of the Cave
Altamira stands out among other caves in the area. The entrance is located on a small hill, and the temperature inside is about 14 degrees Celsius. The cave, which is now 270 meters long, is divided into several parts. At the entrance, there is a so-called “vestibule,” followed by the “Great Hall of Polychromes,” which is about 18 meters long and contains 16 clear large images. The colorful paintings cover even the ceiling of the Great Hall, which is dubbed the “Sistine Chapel of the Stone Age.” Also, in Altamira, there is the “Great Hall of Unclear Drawings,” where the paintings defy interpretation. Four more halls follow, containing many small drawings.
Ceiling in the Great Hall of Altamira
How Primitive People Painted and Why
Primitive people executed cave paintings in Altamira using wood charcoal, yellow-red ochre, hematite2, and other natural pigments. The images were applied with fingers, possibly with pieces of leather or wooden sticks. There are also many protrusions and cavities in the cave that primitive artists used to give the paintings a natural volume. The cave paintings are characterized by clear lines and precision, depicting images of bison, aurochs, horses, boars, palm prints, and much more.
There is a version that suggests that the primitive man created these drawings due to religion. Thus, people performed rituals for fertility and successful hunting. Some researchers argue that the voluminous drawings depict the Great Goddess – a deity of primitive religion that brought an abundance of food, health, and other earthly blessings. There are many anthropomorphic3 drawings of this type in Altamira.
Anthropomorphic image in full face
The cave also contains many geometric drawings and other signs the meaning of which is impossible to understand. Researchers suggest that this is something akin to a map, perhaps of the cave itself, in order to show other artists where and what to draw.
Geometric drawings in the cave
It is unknown which tribe created the drawings in Altamira, but the images were undoubtedly created by primitive ancestors. Their knowledge of painting caused scientists in the 20th century to rethink their views on a primitive man, who was not as primitive as they had believed.
In 1905, the seventh child was born into the family of Shigeyoshi and Katsu Abe – a girl named Sada. As the youngest daughter, Sada was surrounded by attention and care from her parents, who indulged her every whim. The girl learned to play the shamisen4 in order to be like her idols – charming geishas.
The main commandment of a geisha is to endlessly please a man without losing dignity.
However, when Sada was 15 years old, she was raped at a friend’s house. It turned her whole life upside down. Sada turned into an uncontrollable teenager: she did not obey her parents, skipped school and had many sexual relationships. As punishment, the girl was sent to the Yokohama geisha school in 1922. At that time, many Japanese families did this to cleanse themselves of shame and try to guide their daughters on the right path.
Images from the film “Empire of the Senses”, based on the biography of Sada Abe
At the geisha school girls are taught from early childhood, so 15-year-old Sada could no longer become a real geisha. Instead, she worked as a matigeisha, that is, a pseudo-geisha who provided sexual services. She was engaged in this activity for five years until she fell ill with syphilis. Then Sada became a licensed prostitute.
Sada Abe made several attempts to escape from the brothel where she was
Until 1934, the girl worked in several brothels until she was arrested for lack of a license. Sada lost her when she stole money from a client. In prison, she met a friend of the brothel owner, Kinnosuke Kasahara, who helped to free her. Kinnosuke took a liking to Sada, and they became lovers. Sada moved to a house bought by Kasahara and lived on the money he gave her. However, the man did not want to leave his family and marry Abe. Soon the lovers parted. Sada recalled:
“He didn’t love me and treated me like an animal. He was one of those scum who, after parting, begged me to return.”
After breaking up with Kasahara, Sada moved to Nagoya, where she met Professor Goro Omiya. A romance began between them, and on the advice of her lover, Sada got a job as a waitress at the Yoshida-ya restaurant in order to gain experience and open her own business in the future. The Yoshida-ya restaurant was owned by Kichizo Ishida. Passion broke out between the worker and the boss. The lovers spent whole days together.
“It is even difficult to explain what was so attractive in Isis. But it was absolutely impossible to say anything bad about him, about how he looked, what kind of lover he was, how he expressed his feelings. I have never met such a sexy man before,” Sada said.
However, like Kasahara, Ishide did not want to part with his wife and children. Sade had to break up with her beloved, and she fell into a deep depression. At this time, Abe attended one performance in which a geisha threatened her lover with a knife. Sada remembered this episode and performed this trick at the next meeting with Ishida. Kitizo liked it. During the next dates, Sada even strangled Kitizo, as it turned him on.
Sada Abe after her arrest
On May 18, 1936, Sada strangled Kitizo and lay next to his corpse for several hours. She then cut off his genitals, wrapped them in newspaper, and fled.
“I couldn’t take his body or head with me. I wanted to take a piece of his body that aroused the most vivid memories,” Sada will later tell the police.
The windows of the hotel where the murder took place
On May 19, 1936, Sada was arrested by the police, and on November 20 of the same year, the court sentenced her to 6 years in prison. In November 1940, she was released early due to a general amnesty. Sada changed her name, and nothing is known about her further fate. Based on police interrogations and inquiries, they wrote a book that became a bestseller. The story of Sada Abe became a popular subject for books, plays, and films over the following decades and even to this day. In 1946, women in Japan gained the right to vote. The new climate in the country turned Sada into a victim of male exploitation. The fury of the woman and her cruelty were regarded as an attempt to resist the harsh totalitarian regime.
Why does a person, who causes suffering to others, only listens to orders from above? Perhaps it is due to the existence of an authority that cannot be resisted. Or is the whole point that a person is a sadist and he enjoys physical violence toward people? These questions were answered by Stanley Milgram, an American social psychologist who conducted a series of experiments on submission to authority.
Stanley Milgram was born in 1933 in the Bronx to a Jewish immigrant family. After World War II, his parents adopted relatives who had survived German concentration camps. Perhaps this fact explains why Milgram decided to conduct an obedience experiment in Germany. The scientist wanted to understand: “Why did German citizens participate in the extermination of people in concentration camps? Don’t they realize how cruel and heartless that is?” Milgram suggests that, for ideological or political reasons, Germans tend to be more submissive. However, before coming to Germany in 1963, Milgram decided to experiment in the United States. The results of the study show that there is no need to go far: submission to the authorities is not a characteristic of Germans, but of human consciousness in general.
Stanley Milgram. Personal archive of a scientist
Preparation and description of the experiment
Initially, the experiment took place in New Haven on the territory of Yale University. Milgram and his team sent the ads to city dwellers aged 20 to 50 working in a variety of occupations, from factory workers to hairdressers. To participate in the test, respondents were promised to pay $4 and 50 cents for the move. However, the subjects were not told the whole truth about the experiment: they thought they would help investigate how pain affects memory. The experiment involved the experimenter, the subject, and an actor acting as the second subject. One of the experiment participants (“student”) had to memorize word pairs from a long list until he memorized all the pairs, and the other (“teacher”) checked from scratch first and punish him for each mistake with a stronger electric shock. The two subjects drew a “vote”, and everything was arranged in such a way that only the actor was the student, and the actual subject was the teacher.
The scarecrow’s head was been fastened to the chair, and the teacher sitting by the generator has 30 switches, each switch was responsible for discharge from 15 to 450 volts and was signed: “Fighting blow”, “Very strong blow”, “Danger: hard to beat”, etc.
Then the experiment began: the teacher read the words aloud and the students had to give the correct answer, if it was wrong, the teacher increased the voltage each time. It’s important to note that the actor was just pretending to be hit. At the same time, when the subject hesitated and did not want to discharge strongly, the experimenter asked to continue using 4 phrases:
“Please continue/Please go on”;
“Experiment requires that you continue”;
“You must continue”;
“You have no other choice, you must go on”.
Electric shock generator used in the experiment
The experiment ended if the subject refused to obey and left, or if he reached 450 volts and gave the student this current shock three times. After the experiment, the subjects were interviewed.
In the classical variation of the experiment, the student was in a room isolated from the teacher. The subject could not hear the victim, only when the current discharge was equal to 300 volts, the actor began defiantly knocking on the wall, and then showed no signs of life: he did not complete the tasks, and did not respond.
Experiment results
Before the exam, Milgram interviewed undergraduate and graduate students, as well as 39 professors and psychiatrists, who tried to predict how many subjects would refuse the experiment, and how many would complete the experiment. All respondents agreed that 20% of the “teachers” would stop at 225 volts and only one person in a thousand would turn on all the switches.
However, the results differ from the forecasts. In the classic variation of the experiment, 26 subjects out of 40 (65%) reached the end of the experiment, and five people (12.5%) stopped at 300 volts when the victim began to protest by hitting the wall. Four subjects (10%) stopped at a voltage of 315 volts, two (5%) – at 330, and one people each – at the next three levels (345, 360, and 375 volts).
The subject switches the switches on the generator
Why did people obey?
Milgram, in his book “Submission to authority. A Scientific View of Power and Morality”, explained this behavior of the subjects.
1. Obedience is human nature
Milgram said, “We are born with the potential to obey.” In the course of evolution, behavior that did not lead to survival disappeared. Behavior, including hierarchy, authority, and a special social structure, does not disappear, but on the contrary, develops. It is for this reason that submission is a natural process, especially for someone born into society. The moment an individual begins to obey authority, he acts as part of the general structure – his conscience recedes into the background.
2. Not my responsibility
People who obey authority are in the so-called agent state and act according to the mind of another person. For this reason, they do not feel responsible for their actions. To feel responsible, you need to understand that your “I” is behind all actions, while the subject thinks: “I have nothing to do with it.” This is especially noticeable in one of the variations of the exam, where the subject himself did not turn on the switches, but only noted the student’s mistakes: more people obeyed the authority since they did not feel that they were hurting the victim with their own hands.
The “teachers” shifted the responsibility to the experimenter, believing that he knew what was right. In situations where the subject had doubts, and the experimenter emphasized that he took full responsibility, the internal tension disappeared and the subject went through the experiment to the end. There were cases when people blamed the victim, called her stupid, and were unable to remember a few words. “He was so stupid and stubborn that rightly so,” said one of the subjects who obeyed. People reassured themselves that they did not feel sorry for such an unworthy person who could not do elementary things.
3. Disobedience causes fear
When the subject agrees to participate in the experiment, he sincerely wants to help scientists. The “teacher” wants to follow all the instructions, show himself on the good side, and be polite. It seems to the subject that by refusing the experiment, he will let the experimenter down, and also destroy his image as an authority – this is arrogant and rude. Insubordination in this context is psychologically worse than submission. After all, refusal will lead to social disapproval, of anomie. For this reason, in most cases, the subjects continued the experiment.
The victim is strapped into the electric chair.
4. Image of Authority
Subordination is possible only if there is the real authority. An ordinary person does not have such power. In one variation of the experiment, the victim and the experimenter switched places. Now they shocked the scientist, and the order was given by an ordinary person. All subjects stopped the experiment when the experimenter began to complain of pain. Thus, an authority must have a certain attribute, knowledge, status, and place in the social structure to be listened to. In the study, the authority was the experimenter – a scientist, an educated person who knows more than the subject. The “teachers” trusted the scientist and completely relied on his opinion.
The Milgram experiment does not seek to denigrate people, to present them as cruel and unmerciful. All subjects were nervous, and doubtful, but did not dare to disobey the authority. They tried with all their might to avoid the victim, not to look at her, denied their responsibility, and talked with the experimenter that it was inhumane to continue the experiment, but did not refuse to participate.
Milgram’s research showed an important thing: when people enter the social structure, their individuality fades into the background and they forget about humanity. This is the weakness of our nature. Nevertheless, it can be overcome, because there were people who refused to obey. Cicero said: “The power of nature is great,” but man is stronger.
The article is based on Stanley Milgram’s book Submission to Authority: A Scientific Perspective on Power and Morality.
