[HN Gopher] The 160-year mystery of Europe's Ice Age 'queens'
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The 160-year mystery of Europe's Ice Age 'queens'
Author : nkurz
Score : 84 points
Date : 2024-03-09 03:31 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| stevenwoo wrote:
| We will never know but it is a fascinating topic and interesting
| to read all the speculation, the one thing tying the dimensions
| to climate is wild that anyone even thought to investigate.
| pan69 wrote:
| Reminds me of the song Sheela-Na-Gig by PJ Harvey. Growing up I
| had no idea what it was about, only later to find out (as with so
| many other things in life).
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQfElg77sCA
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheela-Na-Gig_(song)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheela_na_gig
| Contortion wrote:
| Somehow, despite being an alt-rock fan since my early teens, PJ
| Harvey had completely passed me by in all but name.
|
| Due to your link I'm now listening to the Dry album from start
| to finish and really enjoying it.
|
| So thanks friend for brightening my Sunday morning!
| gilleain wrote:
| This is now very off-topic to Ice Age Queens ... but yes PJ
| Harvey has some great tracks - one of my favourites is from
| the album '4 Track Demos', called 'M-Bike' that's about a
| motorbike as the focus of hatred of a boyfriend (I guess).
| It's great.
| defrost wrote:
| Add this to your list: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Henry Lee
| ft. P.J Harvey
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzmMB8dTwGs
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Hunting
| thom wrote:
| Oh wow, somewhat jealous of the rest of your Sunday now.
| Would love to be able to listen to music with fresh ears. And
| to be a teenage boy watching her 1995 Glastonbury set
| again...
| pimlottc wrote:
| There's an official music video as well:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQfElg77sCA
| adrian_b wrote:
| Perhaps just the ancestors of Barbie dolls?
| dvh wrote:
| Or Viagra
| ptsneves wrote:
| The article just mentions them as being pre-historic pinups.
| Curiously the romans left us lots of phaluses but I don't
| remember venuses being prevalent. Great cocktail material
| adrian_b wrote:
| The supposition of them being pinups implies that they were
| intended to be used by adults.
|
| Had they been dolls, they would have been intended to be used
| by children.
|
| The first supposition might be supported by the fact that
| carving any of these would have required much work, which
| might have not been justified for just making toys.
|
| On the other hand it is easier to imagine children playing
| with such small statues than a busy adult using them for any
| purpose. It is unlikely that the kind of dwellings that may
| have existed at that time included any part that could have
| been decorated with such figures.
|
| The article contains the supposition that they may have been
| used as some kind of home guardians, but the choice of a
| small feisty female figure does not seem very appropriate for
| such a role (instead of a more scary guardian).
|
| Perhaps they could have been owned by some shamans who used
| them in some rituals and they were small to be easily carried
| in their luggage, but being just toys for children seems an
| equally likely possibility.
| ptsneves wrote:
| Not sure if you read the article but it mentions the dolls
| had preeminent vulvas and sexual attributes. I think that
| excludes the children usage supposition. The symbolic or
| humorous interpretation is much more plausible.
| klyrs wrote:
| The article also mentions a child's fingerprint surviving
| in a clay figurine. This comment section is pretty wild;
| the article is pretty clear that there is a lack of
| consensus and multiple competing theories, yet so many
| comments seem to pick a single theory and run with that
| in exclusion of others.
|
| Given that these figurines were being produced for over
| 10k years with a global distribution, I'm gonna go out on
| a limb and suggest that multiple mutually exclusive
| interpretations could have been true in different places
| and times.
|
| And, hell, Barbie. In the last 100 years, we have
| observed a doll in the form of an adult woman go from
| being successfully marketed to adult men, to being
| successfully marketed to young girls. Why would we assume
| these Venus figurines had a single purpose?
| adrian_b wrote:
| The fact that the body parts that identified the statues
| as females were emphasized is likely to have been much
| less erotic at a time when nudity was frequent and
| unlikely to be hidden from the others.
|
| Emphasizing the fertility in the statues is a reason to
| believe that they could have been intended for use in
| some rituals or as good-luck charms, but it certainly
| would not have been a reason to censor their use by
| children who would have been habitually exposed to
| nudity, unlike today.
| neuromanser wrote:
| Children were most probably routinely exposed not just to
| nudity but also sex.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| Imagine trying to figure out a crucifix pendant separated by
| 50000 years of unrecorded history, and just give up on any hope
| to figure it out.
| berkes wrote:
| "This old culture clearly worshipped violence and torture"
| - some researcher in 3009 ACR
|
| (ACR-After Climate Restore)
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| see https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2008-11-24
|
| > "Oh, he comes back every two weeks or so. We gave him this
| big box of chocolates when he first arrived. Why? What'd you
| guys do?"
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Since these are realistic, to me it means that the artists had an
| actual model if front of them. This what I find very interesting
| considering we expect that the environment was very harsh and it
| perhaps gives some weight to the 'queen' hypothesis.
| lukan wrote:
| "Since these are realistic, to me it means that the artists had
| an actual model if front of them"
|
| You find it surprising, that there were actual woman around in
| the ice age?
|
| Only when you need to paint or sculpt very fine details, one
| needs a model to sit still for hours. To model the basic shape
| like the Venus, it would be enough to sit in a corner and watch
| other women, or one women in particular.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Obviously I find it surprising that they had " _severely
| overweight_ " models... which is the whole point.
| lukan wrote:
| Ah, now I see your point.
| gyomu wrote:
| I think we tend to overestimate the purposefulness of things
| humans do.
|
| Why do so many artists draw anime girls and post them on twitter?
|
| Cause they're bored, cause they want to practice their skills,
| cause they want to impress their friends, cause they're horny,
| ... Probably the same here.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I think you may underestimate the purposefulness of anime
| girls.
| ramon156 wrote:
| I'm still trying to find the correlation
| mola wrote:
| All of these are interesting reasons. "They're bored" tells you
| a lot about the societal and economical situation Etc. These
| artifacts are physical imprints of the "spiritual" human
| condition. There's a ton of meaning there.
|
| I don't think purpose is the right word here, nor is it what
| being investigated.
| Ekaros wrote:
| And I think we might underestimate amount of downtime people
| have. Like keeping guard or watching herds of animals grazing
| or drinking... You could probably very well carry some tools
| and small figure during those times.
| throwup238 wrote:
| What people draw today is far less interesting because we have
| had global cross pollination via print for hundreds of years
| and the internet for decades. Where people draw inspiration and
| learn the mechanics of drawing is obvious
|
| These figurines are interesting because of the large
| geographical and temporal distribution long before humans even
| invented writing.
|
| However I think this article is overselling the similarities
| between the hundreds of figures found.
| scotty79 wrote:
| > figurines are headless and footless because they were self-
| portraits
|
| or because faces, hands and feet are hard to get sexy
|
| Ask any teenage boy (or a former one) who tried to draw naked
| ladies if he drew hands or feet. Exclude feet fetishists.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| You're assuming that because they're naked women that their
| purpose must be sexual.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I wouldn't call it a purpose. Just a source of inspiration
| and dedication.
| twic wrote:
| There's a particularly impressive one from Malta, although much
| later than many in the article, 3000 BC:
|
| https://artsandculture.google.com/story/VAWR7KPNk-UDKw
| jonah wrote:
| Interesting! We recently visited Parque Arqueologico Nacional
| de Tierradentro[1] in southern Colombia. The Hypogea remind me
| very much of the ones in Malta you shared. There, IIRC, they
| were saying they were 3,000 years old, but now online I'm
| seeing 600-900AD, so I'm unsure of the age, but it's neat to
| see a similar independently developed solution to a problem.
|
| [1] https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/743/gallery/
| twic wrote:
| Oh, that's stunning!
|
| Ancient people really did like digging holes and hanging out
| underground. Mind you, modern people do too.
| t-3 wrote:
| It's a lot easier and less labor-intensive to dig a
| dwelling or expand a cave that will keep you warm in winter
| and cool in summer than a to build an above-ground house
| that will. Rodents which would invade below-ground food
| stores weren't as widely spread in ancient times either.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > However, there are also more surprising ideas, such as the
| suggestion that the figurines are headless and footless because
| they were self-portraits made by women, who sculpted what they
| saw. In this scenario, the exaggerated breasts, stomachs and
| vulvas are purely the result of a woman's eye view.
|
| This reminded me about D. E. Harding's "On Having No Head".
|
| And also about the stereotype suggesting ladies are prone to
| self-perception biased in a specific way - often seeing
| themselves as overweight even when perfectly fit.
|
| Could these ways of thinking exist (notably worldwide, also
| notably supposedly predating abstraction-capable languages) even
| during the prehistoric days when there was no modern kind of
| cultural influence?
| shrubble wrote:
| Isn't there the belief that few hunter gatherers were overweight
| because of the continual need to move and do things to have
| enough food? So what would an overweight, meaning very well-fed,
| woman mean in such a society?
| goda90 wrote:
| I think it's more likely hunter-gatherers that live in seasonal
| climates would be skinnier in the spring and fatter in the
| fall. Lots of fat would mean it was a really good summer and
| winter probably won't be as difficult.
| carrozo wrote:
| _"ancient paleolithic venus statues were likely made by women who
| were examining their own bodies and sculpting them from their own
| first person POV, rather than, as previously assumed, exaggerated
| features from an outside perspective."_
|
| From this tweet with photos for reference:
|
| https://x.com/na74362408/status/1559314219295805440?s=46
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| I accept that the angles might be similar to a lying down
| position, but, especially the back, I don't think your head is
| flexible enough for you to see that yourself.
|
| It probably wasn't the women examining their own bodies, but a
| sculptor examining the bodies of women lying down.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| I like this theory because it allows for convergent evolution
| in their shapes, which makes a much more compelling explanation
| for their longevity than even finding and replicating them at
| habitation sites, much less cultural transmission over tens of
| thousands of years.
| sorokod wrote:
| Wouldn't that perspective affect how arms and hands are
| depicted? Also, worth saying something why the looks of other
| females in the group are not relevant.
| every wrote:
| These seem from hunter/gatherers with a cycle of feast/famine in
| a harsh climate. Those who could most efficiently store energy in
| fat would be most likely to survive the cycle. And undoubtedly
| both infant and maternal mortality would be high. Fecundity might
| be both a valued individual and group trait. One or more of these
| traits might be in the designs of these figurines. Possibly they
| are talismans...
| GaggiX wrote:
| >Though more recent artworks - including those generated by
| artificial intelligence - are sometimes biased towards men, in
| the Stone Age women were centre-stage.
|
| Women are still centre-stage of nowadays artworks, probably for a
| different reason than in the past. I remember my sister
| complaining about how little artwork there was of male characters
| compared to female characters on the Internet.
| golergka wrote:
| Is there a reason that the most obvious explanation is almost
| never suggested?
|
| Its porn.
| stargazer-3 wrote:
| It is mentioned in the linked article.
| zingababba wrote:
| Depends highly on the individual/tribe too. One tribe's
| spiritual totem is another tribe's spanking material.
| contingencies wrote:
| Random hypotheses: ice-queen lesbian dildo cult, she-shamanic
| fertility tool with potential for ritual insertion, leadership or
| speaking token in pre-historic matrilineal societies (we learned
| in the 20th century that many early and mobile societies were in
| fact matrilineal and patrilineal societies only came to dominate
| after "civilization" ~= settled expansionist warmongering).
| rhelz wrote:
| The article mentions the remarkable stability in form these
| figurines had, but towards the end, they started variating in an
| interesting way, and perhaps this variation can give us clues as
| to what these figurines meant.
|
| Specifically, the figurines tended to get more stretched out, and
| more abstract (see
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Monruz#/media/File:La...)
|
| As this trend continued, the statues started looking less like
| figurines of women, and more like...phaluses, e.g.
| https://www.donsmaps.com/milandesvenus.html
|
| What are we to make of this? Sheer speculation of course, but I
| wonder if it has something to do with those european tribes
| discovering that it was sex which caused pregnancy. It might seem
| incredible that we didn't always know this, but even into the
| 20th century, we were discovering cultures which hadn't made that
| connection yet.
|
| So imagine you have no idea where babies come from...just every
| once in a while, a woman would grow a belly and start putting on
| fat...and a baby would come. Sexy, sacred, and mysterious...and
| very worthy of making artwork to celebrate.
|
| Eventually, however, they made the connection. I think these
| later venus figurines are attempts to acknowledge the male role
| in reproduction--and also attempts to reconcile their sense of
| the sacred with both the godlike-power females have to produce
| new people, with the newly discovered godlike power males have to
| get females pregnant.
|
| Perhaps it also documents the transition from female, earth-
| mother-based religion to the sky-daddy-based religions we've had
| ever since.
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