of our species, it
was already realized how vital a spot in the animal's anatomy the heart
was. But even long before man began to speculate about the functions of
the heart, he must have learned to associate the loss of blood on the
part of man or animals with death, and to regard the pouring out of
blood as the escape of its vitality. Many factors must have contributed
to the new advance in physiology which made the heart the centre or the
chief habitation of vitality, volition, feeling, and knowledge.

Not merely the empirical fact, acquired by experience in hunting, of the
peculiarly vulnerable nature of the heart, but perhaps also the
knowledge that the heart contained life-giving blood, helped in
developing the ideas about its functions as the bestower of life and
consciousness.

The palpitation of the heart after severe exertion or under the
influence of intense emotion would impress the early physiologist with
the relationship of the heart to the feelings, and afford confirmation
of his earlier ideas of its functions.

But whatever the explanation, it is known from the folk-lore of even the
most unsophisticated peoples that the heart was originally regarded as
the seat of life, feeling, volition, and knowledge, and that the blood
was the life-stream. The Aurignacian pictures in the caves of Western
Europe suggest that these beliefs were extremely ancient.

The evidence at our disposal seems to indicate that not only were such
ideas of physiology current in Aurignacian times, but also certain
cultural applications of them had been inaugurated even then. The
remarkable method of blood-letting by chopping off part of a finger
seems to have been practised even in Aurignacian times.[254]

If it is legitimate to attempt to guess at the meaning these early
people attached to so singular a procedure, we may be guided by the
ideas associated with this act in outlying corners of the world at the
present time. On these grounds we may surmise that the motive underlying
this, and other later methods of blood-letting, such as circumcision,
piercing the ears, lips, and tongue, gashing the limbs and body, et
cetera, was the offering of the life-giving fluid.

Once it was recognized that the state of unconsciousness or death was
due to the loss of blood it was a not illogical or irrational procedure
to imagine that offerings of blood might restore consciousness and life
to the dead.[255] If the blood was seriously believed