Extraordinary as it may seem, rites like this may be far more ancient and widespread than previously imagined. Among the Paleolithic cave paintings of Lascaux in France, for example, imagery combining anal penetration of bison bulls, shamanic and sexual ecstasy, hunting motifs, and hermaphroditic animal figures can be found—a striking echo of certain elements in the Okipa ceremony and other Native American belief systems. One picture, regarded as among the most important in the entire Lascaux complex, is of a shaman lying in rapture, with erect penis, in front of a bison bull. Penetrating the bull from behind is a spear that, according to Joseph Campbell, has “transfixed its anus and emerged through its sexual organ.” The phallic imagery of the bison is also combined with vulvar symbolism in the shape of the spilled entrails or wound of the beast. Elsewhere in the Lascaux caves, a startling and enigmatic figure of an apparently gender-mixing hoofed mammal appears prominently in one fresco. On the wall of a grotto known as the Rotunda is the image of a pregnant bull whose “two long, straight horns point directly forward from its head … and [whose] gravid belly hangs nearly to the ground.” Dating from around 12,000 B.C., these are probably the earliest known depictions of gender-mixing animals, and they are testimony to an ancient and profound association between variant forms of gender and sexual expression in animals and humans (see Campbell, Historical Atlas of World Mythology, pp. 58-66, for further discussion of these images). Campbell also draws a parallel between some of these figures and the contemporary shamanic practices of the Aranda people of Australia, which involve uncanny correspondences in terms of their mixture of phallic, anal, and male-female imagery. Perhaps not uncoincidentally, the Aranda also participate in a variety of homosexual practices, both overt and “ritualized” (see chapter 2 for discussion of Aranda penis-handling as a ritualized “greeting” gesture between men; for overt homosexual activities, see Ford, C. S., and F. A. Beach [1951] Patterns of Sexual Behavior, p. 132 [New York: Harper and Brothers]; Berndt, R., and C. Berndt [1943] “A Preliminary Report of Field Work in the Ooldea Region, Western South Australia,” pp. 276-77, Oceania 13:239-75; Murray, S. O. [1992] “Age-Stratified Homosexuality: Introduction,” pp. 5-6, in S. O. Murray, ed., Oceanic Homosexualities, pp. 293-327 [New York: Garland]).
21
Schlesier, K. H. (1987) The Wolves of Heaven: Cheyenne Shamanism, Ceremonies, and Prehistoric Origins, pp. 7, 14-15, 66-73, 78-111 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press); Grinnell, The Cheyenne Indians, vol. 2, pp. 285-336; Hoebel, E. A. (1960) The Cheyennes: Indians of the Great Plains, pp. 16-17 (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston).
22
Powers, M.N. (1980) “Menstruation and Reproduction: An Oglala Case,” p. 61, Signs 6:54-65; Parsons, E. C. (1939) Pueblo Indian Religion, pp. 831-32 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press); Tyler, H. A. (1975) Pueblo Animals and Myths, pp. 98, 131, 148-50 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press); Duberman, M. B., F. Eggan, and R. O. Clemmer (1979) “Documents in Hopi Indian Sexuality: Imperialism, Culture, and Resistance,” pp. 119-20, Radical History Review 20:99-130; Du Bois, C.A. (1935) “Wintu Ethnography,” p. 50, University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 36:1- 148.
23
Hill, W. W. (1935) “The Status of the Hermaphrodite and Transvestite in Navaho Culture,” p. 274, American Anthropologist 37:273-79; Haile et al., Love-Magic and Butterfly People, p. 163; Luckert, The Navajo Hunter Tradition, pp. 176-77; Hill, W.W. (1938) The Agricultural and Hunting Methods of the Navaho Indians, pp. 99, 110, 119, 126-27, Yale University Publications in Anthropology no. 18 (New Haven: Yale University Press).
24
For overviews of ritual homosexuality and alternate gender systems in New Guinea and Melanesia, see Herdt, G. H. (1981) Guardians of the Flutes: Idioms of Masculinity (New York: McGraw-Hill); Herdt, G. H., ed., (1984) Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia (Berkeley: University of California Press). On the “third sex” category, see Herdt, G. (1994) “Mistaken Sex: Culture, Biology, and the Third Sex in New Guinea,” in G. Herdt, ed., Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History, pp. 419-45 (New York: Zone Books); Poole, F. J. P. (1996) “The Procreative and Ritual Constitution of Female, Male, and Other: Androgynous Beings in the Cultural Imagination of the Bimin-Kuskusmin of Papua New Gunea,” in S. P. Ramet, ed., Gender Reversals and Gender Cultures: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives, pp. 197-218 (London: Routledge). For ceremonial transvestism and “male menstruation,” see, for example, Schwimmer, E. (1984) “Male Couples in New Guinea,” in Herdt, Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia, pp. 248-91; Lutkehaus, N. C., and P. B. Roscoe, eds., (1995) Gender Rituals: Female Initiation in Melanesia, pp. 16-17, 36, 49, 69, 107, 120, 198-200, 229 (New York: Routledge); A. Strathern, in Callender and Kochems, “The North American Berdache,” p. 464.
25
Herdt, Guardians of the Flutes, p. 94; Schwimmer, “Male Couples in New Guinea,” p. 271; Van Baal, J. (1984) “The Dialectics of Sex in Marind-anim Culture,” in Herdt, Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia, pp. 128-66.
26
Herdt, Guardians of the Flutes, pp. 87-94; Poole, “The Procreative and Ritual Constitution of Female, Male, and Other,” pp. 205, 217; Sorum, A. (1984) “Growth and Decay: Bedamini Notions of Sexuality” in Herdt, Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia, pp. 318-36; Lindenbaum, S. (1984) “Variations on a Sociosexual Theme in Melanesia,” in Herdt, Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia, pp. 83-126.
27
An echo of these beliefs can also be found in native North America: the Cherokee maintain that female opossums (a North American marsupial) are essentially parthenogenetic, i.e., they reproduce without males (Fradkin, A. [1990] Cherokee Folk Zoology: The Animal World of a Native American People, 1700-1838, pp. 377-78 [New York: Garland]).
28
Herdt (Guardians of the Flutes, p. 91) tentatively identifies this as the “crested bird of paradise”; however, the description of its round display platforms (constructed of twigs and straw, with a central pole) strongly suggests that this is actually a species of bowerbird. Most likely it is MacGregor’s bowerbird (Amblyornis macgregoriae), whose “maypole” bower type matches this description, and whose orange crest also fits the description of this species provided by Herdt. For further details, see Gilliard, E. T. (1969) “MacGregor’s Gardener Bower Bird,” in Birds of Paradise and Bower Birds, pp. 300-311 (Garden City, N.Y.: Natural History Press); Johnsgard, P. A. (1994) Arena Birds: Sexual Selection and Behavior, pp. 206, 211-12 (Washington, D.C., and London: Smithsonian Institution Press). Among the Kaluli people, the (male) Raggiana’s Bird of Paradise and other brightly colored birds are also considered female; men adorn themselves with their plumes to acquire the beauty of these supposedly feminine creatures (Feld, S. [1982] Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression, pp. 55, 65-66 [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press]).
29
Although Poole (1996:205) identifies this only as the “night bird,” it is most likely a species of nightjar (family Caprimulgidae), frogmouth (family Podargidae), or owlet-nightjar (family Aegothelidae).
30
Herdt, Guardians of the Flutes, pp. 131-57; Gardner, D. S. (1984) “A Note on the Androgynous Qualities of the Cassowary: Or Why the Mianmin Say It Is Not a Bird,” Oceania 55:137-45; Bulmer, R. N. H. (1967) “Why Is the Cassowary Not a Bird? A Problem of Zoological Taxonomy Among the Karam of the New Guinea Highlands,” Man 2:5-25; Juillerat, B., ed., (1992) Shooting the Sun: Ritual and Meaning in West Sepik, pp. 65, 282 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press); Feld, Sound and Sentiment, pp. 68-71; Tuzin, D. (1997) The Cassowary’s Revenge: The Life and Death of Masculinity in a New Guinea Society, pp. 80-82, 94, 209-10 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Some Australian
