Animal representation in human societies

I think that the animal representations made by the Indian mounds created a way for the Native Americans to explain and understand the world. It is probably similar to the animal representations in the Lascaux Cave. In both, the societies that created them used particular animals as symbols that helped to simplify the universe and the way it worked. The Native Americans' cosmologies typically divided the world into higher or lower realms, and created the mounds as monuments to the animal spirits which represented each realm. This simplified framework of viewing the world allowed them to make sense of the world around them, a trait that seems common to humans. We essentially do the same thing today, using modern science and technology to try and ever more simplify and understand the universe; only, the Native American societies that created the mounds disappeared or abandoned the construction of the earthworks several hundred years before the development of the scientific method. For us today, continually uncovering the workings of the natural universe allows us to feel like we possess some control over our environment. This human desire for control is also evident among the Native Americans, who built the mounds to "symbolize and ritually maintain balance and harmony with the natural world" (Indian Mounds of Wisconsin, 113). Along with the particular animals, the Native Americans also used the sun, moon, and stars as symbols on things like pottery, but the mounds were often used as burial sites and as part of death rituals, and so it makes sense that they only depicted living forms. The society that created the cave paintings of Lascaux may have created the animal representations in similar ways and for similar reasons. Much like the Native Americans, they used particular animals, in this case horses and aurochs, to symbolize different parts of the world.

To me, it seems that this kind of animal representation is very different from our use of animals as mascots or symbols of sports teams. To the two past societies we have talked about, their representations contained their ideology about the world. Their representations were part of ceremonies or rituals in which they were attempting to worship or glorify the animal spirits that symbolized the higher or lower realms. Our sports teams, however, merely symbolize a group of athletes that play a game, which has nothing to do with how we understand or categorize the world. There is no metaphysical aspect to the way in which we "worship" a sports team.