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The Modern Antiquarian Forum » Ancient Figurine of Voluptuous Woman Is Found |
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Zariadris 286 posts |
May 14, 2009, 04:23
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Follow the link for pictures: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/science/14venus.html?_r=1&hp May 14, 2009 Full-Figured Statuette, 35,000 Years Old, Provides New Clues to How Art Evolved By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD No one would mistake the Stone Age ivory carving for a Venus de Milo. The voluptuous woman depicted is, to say the least, earthier, with huge, projecting breasts and sexually explicit genitals. Nicholas J. Conard, an archaeologist at the University of Tübingen, in Germany, who found the small carving in a cave last year, said it was at least 35,000 years old, “one of the oldest known examples of figurative art” in the world. It is about 5,000 years older than some other so-called Venus artifacts made by early populations of Homo sapiens in Europe. Another archaeologist, Paul Mellars of the University of Cambridge, in England, agreed and went on to remark on the obvious. By modern standards, he said, the figurine’s blatant sexuality “could be seen as bordering on the pornographic.” The tiny statuette was uncovered in September in a cave in southwestern Germany, near Ulm and the Danube headwaters. Dr. Conard’s report on the find is being published Thursday in the journal Nature. The discovery, Dr. Conard wrote, “radically changes our view of the origins of Paleolithic art.” Before this, he noted, female imagery was unknown, most carvings and cave drawings being of mammoths, horses and other animals. Scholars say the figurine is roughly contemporaneous with other early expressions of artistic creativity, like drawings on cave walls in southeastern France and northern Italy. The inspiration and symbolism behind the rather sudden flowering have long been debated by art historians. Commenting in the journal on the discovery, Dr. Mellars, who did not take part in the research, wrote that the artifact was one of 25 similar carvings found over the past 70 years in other caves in the Swabian region of southern Germany, “a veritable art gallery of early ‘modern’ human art.” These sites, he concluded, “must be seen as the birthplace of true sculpture in the European — maybe global — artistic tradition.” Scholars say the large caves were presumably inviting sanctuaries for populations of modern humans migrating then into Central and Western Europe. These were the people who eventually displaced the resident Neanderthals, around 30,000 years ago. Dr. Conard reported that the discovery was made beneath three feet of red-brown sediment in the floor of the Hohle Fels Cave. Six fragments of the carved ivory, including all but the left arm and shoulder, were recovered. When he brushed dirt off the torso, he said, “the importance of the discovery became apparent.” The short, squat torso is dominated by oversize breasts and broad buttocks. The split between the two halves of the buttocks is deep and continuous without interruption to the front of the figurine. A greatly enlarged vulva emphasizes the “deliberate exaggeration” of the figurine’s sexual characteristics, Dr. Conard said. The object reminded experts of the most famous of the sexually explicit figurines from the Stone Age, the Venus of Willendorf, discovered in Austria a century ago. That Venus is somewhat larger and dated about 24,000 years ago, but it is in a style that appeared to have been prevalent for several thousand years. Scholars speculate that these Venus figurines, as they are known, were associated with fertility beliefs or shamanistic rituals. The Hohle Fels artifact, less than 2.5 inches long and weighing little more than an ounce, is headless. Carved at the top, instead, is a ring, evidently to allow the object to be suspended from a string or thong.
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stardvd555 6 posts |
May 15, 2009, 03:50
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Scholars say the figurine is roughly contemporaneous with other early expressions of artistic creativity, like drawings on cave walls in southeastern France and northern Italy. The inspiration and symbolism behind the rather sudden flowering have long been debated by art historians. criminal minds 1-4 dvd boxset doctor who 1-4 dvd boxset
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tjj 3606 posts |
May 17, 2009, 13:43
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Although I didn't comment on this straight away I found it fascinating. I am just reading a book by Steve Taylor called The Fall, described thus: "Is it not 'natural' for human beings to kill each other, for men to oppress women, for individuals to accumulate massive wealth and power, or to abuse nature. The roots of our current malaise lie in an 'ego explosion' which occurred several thousand years ago. "Primitive", pre-civilisation men and women were largely free of social ills and had a more unified and harmonious state of being than us." I am only in the early chapters but the author points out that until around 4000BCE 'hunter-gatherer' communities were thought to be 'matrist' and woman had an equally (if not more so) important place as men, within the tribe/clan. This can be pulled apart in many ways mainly on the basis of 'where's the evidence' but the female figurines that have been found seem to corrorbate the importance of the female up until around 6000 years ago when 'civilisations' started to become patriarchal.
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handofdave 3515 posts |
May 17, 2009, 13:58
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Ouch, I really gotta butt in here. Why wouldn't a figure like this not come out of a Patriarchal society? And how do we arrive at the conclusion that our hunter-gatherer ancestors were peace loving feminists? There's not a shred of real evidence to support that. In fact, if we look at hunter gatherer societies today, we can observe violent behavior in many of them. Sorry... I'm of the opinion that many westerners have a biased desire to think their prehistory conformed to our liberal, enlightened sensibilities. But there's absolutely nothing to go on to confirm that.
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tjj 3606 posts |
May 17, 2009, 14:16
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handofdave wrote: Ouch, I really gotta butt in here. Why wouldn't a figure like this not come out of a Patriarchal society? And how do we arrive at the conclusion that our hunter-gatherer ancestors were peace loving feminists? There's not a shred of real evidence to support that. In fact, if we look at hunter gatherer societies today, we can observe violent behavior in many of them. Sorry... I'm of the opinion that many westerners have a biased desire to think their prehistory conformed to our liberal, enlightened sensibilities. But there's absolutely nothing to go on to confirm that. Your comments are appreciated, it could be a lively debate. I was merely reporting on a book I'm reading (with and open mind) and and qualified my post with 'the lack of evidence' slant. The word feminist was not mentioned in my post and I only suggested that the figurines that have been found could contribute to 'some evidence' that the status of women was once generally higher. Lets discount all together the feminist movement of the 20th century when looking at this argument, that is not where I was coming from at all. My perspective is from the anthropological aspect only.
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handofdave 3515 posts |
May 17, 2009, 14:32
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I was only using the term 'feminist' as shorthand for 'societies where women are equally respected.' I wasn't suggesting that the 20th century political entity known as the feminist movement was around way back then! Anyway, my alarms go off anytime I hear someone mistake their assumptions for evidence.
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moss 2897 posts |
Edited May 17, 2009, 16:21
May 17, 2009, 16:18
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Well as one who trogs through the news most days, I read she was a pornographic piece of neckware, that presumably males wore beneath their 'cloaks' on a string, she had'nt got a head but had two rings for attachment.... http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090513/full/news.2009.473.html (that link is respectable) there again today someone was speculating in the news that homo sapiens polished off the neanderthals by eating them.. mind you he had only found one piece of evidence to support it!....
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handofdave 3515 posts |
May 17, 2009, 16:45
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It's incredible to me how some people will take one small find and use it as the foundation for a wildly extrapolated theory. It usually comes down to ego... people's pet theories are so intertwined with their sense of self that they become aggressively resistant to anything that challenges it. Either that, or there's contemporary racial politics involved. There's a constant battle going on amongst archeologists about who the original inhabitants of the Americas were from. There are quite a few Eurocentric paleontologists who got all excited about a single skull found in Washington state that had Caucasoid features, as if this single anomaly somehow proved that whites got here first (and by extension, their 'manifest destiny' to take the continent by force was somehow justified because of this!) At the same time, some native groups were very obstructionist when it came to further examination of the skull, claiming ancestral dignity was at stake. Even amongst the highly educated, there's still a tendency to embrace the evidence supporting one's bias, and discard that which doesn't.
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Zariadris 286 posts |
May 17, 2009, 17:34
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handofdave wrote: It's incredible to me how some people will take one small find and use it as the foundation for a wildly extrapolated theory. It usually comes down to ego... Even amongst the highly educated, there's still a tendency to embrace the evidence supporting one's bias, and discard that which doesn't. I've come across this again and again with regards to prehistoric sites in the former eastern bloc/ussr which have attracted all sorts of quacks and demagogues with nationalist agendas.
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tjj 3606 posts |
May 17, 2009, 17:57
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moss wrote: Well as one who trogs through the news most days, I read she was a pornographic piece of neckware, that presumably males wore beneath their 'cloaks' on a string, she had'nt got a head but had two rings for attachment.... http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090513/full/news.2009.473.html (that link is respectable) there again today someone was speculating in the news that homo sapiens polished off the neanderthals by eating them.. mind you he had only found one piece of evidence to support it!.... Handofdave, I've just read your most recent comment which was well argued. When I saw the inital post I was surprised that only one person had answered because it is very interesting. Moss mentions reading that the figurine was a piece of pornographic neckware, which again seems to throw a very 'last century' approach to the matter. Pornography surely is a modern concept where the human body (usually female, though certainly not exclusively) is exploited for sexual titillation. I can't get my head round 'hunter-gatherer' clans being into pornography somehow. There is an interesting comment on the link which was not there when I first saw it - worth a read.
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