Immersive Cave Environments in VR: A Tool for Exploring Altered States of Consciousness and Creativity in Archaeology

Immersive virtual reality cave environments can induce higher emotional arousal, spiritual engagement, and improvements in creativity and flexible thinking compared to virtual open spaces. Participants performed pareidolic tasks in both settings, and the cave setting led to changes in semantic network organization and subjective experience. These findings support the hypothesis that ancient humans used caves for rituals involving altered consciousness, and demonstrate that VR can reconstruct early human experiences to investigate psychological and cognitive states. The work bridges cognitive archaeology and immersive VR technologies.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This study explores the use of immersive Virtual Reality (VR) cave environments to investigate hypotheses concerning altered states of consciousness, creativity, and flexible thinking in archaeological contexts. Building on the premise that ancient humans used caves as sites for rituals involving altered consciousness, we recreated a virtual cave environment to simulate these experiences and examine their impact on participants’ cognitive processes. Participants engaged in pareidolic tasks within both a virtual cave and a virtual open-space environment, allowing for comparative analysis of semantic network organization and subjective experiences. Our findings show that the cave environment elicited higher emotional arousal and spiritual engagement, as well as an improvement in the aspects of creativity and flexible thinking. These results suggest that VR can serve as a powerful tool in archaeology for reconstructing early humans’ experiences and investigating their psychological and cognitive states, thus providing new insights into their use of caves for mind-altering or ritualistic purposes. This interdisciplinary approach contributes to both cognitive archaeology and the development of immersive VR technologies in scientific research.