The tradition of imitating the movements of animals seems to stem from the earliest periods of known human existence, that is the times when humans were hunter-gatherers and their entire livelihood depended on the natural world and the animals around them. Indeed, the earliest known artefact showing a man imitating an animal has been found in a Stone Age cave in France and is dated to approximately 15 000 BC.
It depicts a man clothed in animal fur and wearing the horns of a deer; his pose clearly imitates the movements of a deer. Man was a hunter during the early Stone Age. Thus it is no wonder that the majority of Stone Age cave paintings depict animals. Their function has been widely speculated about and most experts seem to agree that they had a magical function. By identifying himself with the being of an animal the hunter probably wanted to create a kind of magical bond with the animal his life depended on.
There may also have been a more practical reason for the imitation. With his primitive weaponry it was very important for the hunter to get close to animals. Once the hunter was able to imitate their movements, it was possible to get nearer the animals, without frightening them. Thus there may be several reasons why early man imitated the movements of animals. Dance anthropological studies have pointed out that these animal movements may, in fact, represent the origin of human dance.
Animal movements still form today an integral part of the training series of different martial art techniques, as will be discussed below. Also, hundreds of dance traditions around the world involve animal movements. Which animals were or are imitated naturally depends on the fauna of each geographical region. As mentioned already, in the sphere of Nordic shamanism, the animals imitated were the bear, the eagle and the deer or the elk.
Animal movements in Asia have often been based on the movements of, for example, monkeys, snakes, elephants, and peacocks and other birds, real or mythological. The popularity of animal movements is not limited only to archaic traditions. Even the charm of the most popular of all western classical ballets, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, is based on the fact that in its great “white scenes” the movements of the ballerinas aim to capture the essence of a swan’s being.