10/02/2026
“DREAM HUNTERS” (Fire, Dreams, Reason)
“Domesticated heat expressed itself in the language of First Music. One only had to be attentive to understand it. When they learned to speak with fire, the hunter and the dancer acquired the skill of the artist.” (Excerpt from the story of the Casal 2026 role-playing game “Dream Hunters”).
The production of fire by one's own means is, in our opinion, the most important milestone in human evolution. There is no doubt that the Neanderthal contribution to the domestication of this hot element, if not crucial, was decisive. Studies recently published (late 2025) on sites such as Barnham (England) suggest that the ancestors of Neanderthals were already making fire regularly 400,000 years ago, long before Homo sapiens set foot in Europe.
The ability to protect ourselves from the cold, the creation of durable tools, utensils, and containers, and the transformation of game meats into more digestible products (more calories with less digestive effort) are fundamental advances that improved our quality of life and decisively contributed to the development of our culture. Thanks to this improvement, humankind began to envision a more peaceful future—the stress caused by uncertainties such as obtaining light and heat diminished—and to experience significant cultural enrichment. This was the ideal breeding ground for the development of sophisticated forms of communication such as language—oral, gestural, and written—and art. Reason begins its journey.
The increase or improvement of reasoning (that capacity of the human mind to connect ideas and draw conclusions) allows us to confront the immense complexity of social relationships: understanding that others think differently from ourselves, distinguishing between truth and falsehood, recognizing allies, and establishing connections. This conscious process—though sometimes instinctive—entails considerable brain activity and, therefore, an energy expenditure that can exceed 20% of our bodily needs. Clearly, such a considerable expenditure requires periodic replenishment.
Unlike reasoning, which is the product of external factors, sleep is ancestral. It is, almost certainly, the infrastructure upon which reasoning could be built. If we consider reasoning as high-precision software, sleep is the moment when the computer is turned off to clean the hardware and prevent it from overheating or becoming corrupted.
Without the pause of sleep to repair neurons, without this periodic replenishment of Reason, evolution could never have afforded the luxury of a brain as complex and "self-critical" as ours.
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That said, the Casal 2026 program will revolve around the Neanderthal legacy, with fire, dreams, communication, art, and reason as the five elements around which our activities will be based.
We will make tools and containers using heat, explore how cooking and drying food improve nutrition, learn about some of the benefits of solar energy—the possibility of pyrography, for example—and learn to respect fire and use it wisely. And if we're able, we'll create it from scratch. Or almost.
The dreams module will consist of a theoretical part (interventions by the facilitators, interpretations by the young people on the meaning of some dreams, accounts of their own "vivid" dreams, the phenomenon of "daydreaming," exercises for abstraction, and the use of and differences between common sense, reason, and instinct) and a practical part (drawing or graphic representation of a dream, the sounds of the subconscious, the music of a dream, making Native American dreamcatchers).
Communication and reasoning will be represented by language, art, science, and sports.
We will share our spoken language (we are fortunate to have seven different languages spoken by our participants) with the other members of the Casal. We will learn written language, Native American sign language, and sign language. We will invent "First Music," a language of our own creation that we hope will be in common use during the Casal. We will focus on dance as the main artistic medium, without neglecting drawing, painting, calligraphy (Oriental, Arabic, Gothic, etc.), or musical creation inspired by the environment. We will investigate the reality and possibilities of alternative energies. And we will practice sports with spherical objects on Mondays, athletics on Tuesdays, enjoy team sports on Wednesdays, and on Thursdays we will learn about unusual sports, such as flying disc or cricket.
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