Are we really that far from the primitive?

Or is our vaunted sense of civilization but a thin veneer, painted over the deeper, genetic tendency to atavism that fills all humanity?

  "Photographer Charles Freger travelled around a total of 18 different European countries in order to investigate the folkloric traditions and legends that surrounds each individual culture. In many festivals, events and traditions across Europe, there is usually a time when a man is dressed up as something wild and fearsome and paraded around a town to signify something or other that happened long ago. Charles decided to put these terrifying characters on a pedestal and shine a light on what they truly look like, away from the pushing crowds of the festivals and rituals. The National Geographic site describes Charles’ quest beautifully:

“In Corlata, Romania, men dress as stags reenacting a hunt with dancers. In Sardinia, Italy, goats, deer, boars, or bears may play the sacrificial role. Throughout Austria, Krampus, the beastly counterpart to St. Nicholas, frightens naughty children,” says Rachel Hartigan Shea.

“But everywhere there is the wild man. In France, he is l’Homme Sauvage; in Germany, Wilder Mann; in Poland, Macidula is the clownish version. He dresses in animal skins or lichen or straw or tree branches. Half man and half beast, the wild man stands in for the complicated relationship that human communities, especially rural ones, have with nature.”

These things bubble up from very deep in the subconscious, from a time when there was no iron or bronze, from a time of glaciers and mastodons.  It's a sort of genetic memory.  Absolutely fascinating.

More here.  Even more here.

Hat tip: American Digest

This reminds me of the Mandan Indian Buffalo Dance.   Very similar in the way the "wild thing" is objectified to make it controllable, understandable, in a confusing and unpredictable world.