6 ms·

> My understanding is that complex things like statues were not supposed to be possible 12,000 years ago. Huh? The Venus of Willendorf[1] is twice as old, and

by p-e-w 3y ago

> My understanding is that complex things like statues were not supposed to be possible 12,000 years ago. Huh? The Venus of Willendorf[1] is twice as old, and to my eye displays a higher degree of artistry than the statue shown in the article. Several such Venus figurines have been found in central Europe. Compared to the intricacy of the Venus' limestone carving, the statue from the article looks downright crude. The idea that it's "not supposed to be possible" to make something like that 12,000 years BP is ridiculous, and I can't imagine where you might have got that impression. Yes, the new statue is life-size, while the Venus is a figurine, but that doesn't necessarily make it any more difficult to manufacture (possibly easier, in fact). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Willendorf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Willendorf

arp242 3y ago
Venus of Willendorf is quite small, and not especially life-like, but similar large statues have been found in the area before, from around the same time (12kya ago). It's not even a unique find, and fits reasonably well(ish) in established chronology and progression (insofar that's possible for pre-history). Pretty much everything the previous poster said is wrong.
- 31carmichael 3y ago
  looks pretty lifelike to me; like most people I see at Walmart.
- runsWphotons 3y ago
  its not as lifelike as i hoped when i opened. not a Michelangelo.
  - Fluorescence 3y ago
    IMHO it's more interesting and a greater achievement than lifelike. To me it's an expression of fertile abundance that shows more intention, more imagination, more desire to communicate, more understanding of form and humanity than a straight depiction would.
    - boppo1 3y ago
      As an illustrator who has also done some non-negligible sculpting, this kind of stuff is so much easier than 'lifelike realism' that it's not even close.
    - arp242 3y ago
      The problem is, how do you distinguish between "lacked the skills or tools to make a true life-like statue" and "intentionally made something more abstract"? When I played guitar I liked doing noisy high-distortion stuff because I could play bad guitar and still make it sound kind of okay (to my ears anyway). Not saying that everyone who plays this type of music is a bad guitar player, because many aren't, but some are.
      - quietbritishjim 3y ago
        It reminds me of Oliver Sacks' excellent book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. It contains descriptions of several real cases of brain damage, including someone who literally made the mistake in the title of the book. He could still see but was increasing struggling to synthesise understanding of objects from the lines and patterns, culminating in that particular confusion (as he was getting up to leave a consultation with Sacks, he tried to grab his wife to put on his head). This person was an amateur painter, and his paintings were getting increasingly abstract as his condition worsened. The funny thing is, critics would comment that his art was improving in subtly and insight. In reality, he was losing his grasp of object coherence.
    - runsWphotons 3y ago
      i think it looks like what you would make if you werent as skilled, didnt have the right rock, or the tools that were as good as later sculptures. but its still neat.
  - chrisco255 3y ago
    The Lescaux cave paintings from 17K YA are remarkable. A prehistoric Sistine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qApjgI8Dbk8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qApjgI8Dbk8
ricardobeat 3y ago
NAA, but I think what you’re missing is that this Venus statue is something a single person can carve on their own time, anywhere. Carving a 2-ton statue in-place requires much better and larger tools, and some kind of social organization that values that activity and protects the site.
maratc 3y ago
What I think you might be missing is that Venus could be a pet project of a single person, done in their free time over some period. The statues, especially in the context of the greater site, could not be made by one person — many people should be working there for quite a long period of time, while physically staying in the place. Since they were working on the temple complex, (a) they could not be themselves participating in hunter-gathering activities (and we think human societies were engaged with that at the time); and (b) someone else should be providing them with the food, clothes, tools, and everything they need — implying there was some sort of a social structure (aka civilization). This is what I think GP meant when saying "not supposed to be possible 12,000 years ago".
- vanderZwan 3y ago
  I fully agree with what you're saying, but I just want add something to your comment in case people might misinterpret this sentence: > What I think you might be missing is that Venus could be a pet project of a single person, done in their free time over some period. Yes, a single Venus figure is likely made by a single person. But the Venus of Willendorf is not unique. There are 200 over known "Venus figurines" from a period of 300,000 BC to 11,00 BC. So they were a wide-spread phenomenon indicating some form of shared socio-cultural connection among the early humans despite how far we were spread out and how much lower the population density was compared to now. This is of course tangential to the point you were making. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_figurine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_figurine
- p-e-w 3y ago
  > The statues, especially in the context of the greater site, could not be made by one person Why not? Sculptors sometimes make dozens of sculptures per year, by themselves. > they could not be themselves participating in hunter-gathering activities Why not? Hunting and gathering doesn't occupy all of a person's time. I see no reason whatsoever to assume that those sculptures weren't created by part-time artists. > implying there was some sort of a social structure (aka civilization) Social structure exists even in apes, and is not at all synonymous with what the term "civilization" is usually taken to mean. As a sibling commenter has explained, there is nothing substantially new in this archeological find, and it fits well into our existing model of how people lived back then. Claims of an incoming paradigm shift triggered by this find lack any substance.
permo-w 3y ago
look, if you take the two things in isolation, then you may have a point. the Venus is certainly a more beautiful artistic piece but you're trying to argue that an 11cm tall figurine with no facial features is a civilisational achievement on par with a massive 'temple' complex full of metres-high sculptures, reliefs and symbols that would require significant societal organisation and advancement: protection, education, food surplus, likely division of labour. decades of work at least the Venus of Willendorf could indicate some of those things, but it equally could have just been made by one especially advanced human
- bazoom42 3y ago
  Nobody is arguing that. You are wildly fighting strawmen. But the claim that “complex things like statues” were “not possible” is clearly BS.
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    No it isn’t, and a small figurine is specifically not a statue
- p-e-w 3y ago
  > the Venus of Willendorf could indicate some of those things, but it equally could have just been made by one especially advanced human Hundreds of such figurines have survived to the present day, so tens of thousands must have been produced. They used materials transported over 1000+ kilometers. Clearly, those were made by a large-scale network of artists learning from one another, part of a pan-European culture – not by a random genius doodling around, otherwise they wouldn't be so similar to each other. It's also pretty obvious from looking at the figurine that this wasn't the artist's first work. They probably had to make hundreds such statuettes before achieving this level of detail, so they were likely at least part-time professionals.

by p-e-w 3y ago

arp242 3y ago

Venus of Willendorf is quite small, and not especially life-like, but similar large statues have been found in the area before, from around the same time (12kya ago). It's not even a unique find, and fits reasonably well(ish) in established chronology and progression (insofar that's possible for pre-history). Pretty much everything the previous poster said is wrong.

31carmichael 3y ago
looks pretty lifelike to me; like most people I see at Walmart.
runsWphotons 3y ago
its not as lifelike as i hoped when i opened. not a Michelangelo.
- Fluorescence 3y ago
  IMHO it's more interesting and a greater achievement than lifelike. To me it's an expression of fertile abundance that shows more intention, more imagination, more desire to communicate, more understanding of form and humanity than a straight depiction would.
  - boppo1 3y ago
    As an illustrator who has also done some non-negligible sculpting, this kind of stuff is so much easier than 'lifelike realism' that it's not even close.
  - arp242 3y ago
    The problem is, how do you distinguish between "lacked the skills or tools to make a true life-like statue" and "intentionally made something more abstract"? When I played guitar I liked doing noisy high-distortion stuff because I could play bad guitar and still make it sound kind of okay (to my ears anyway). Not saying that everyone who plays this type of music is a bad guitar player, because many aren't, but some are.
    - quietbritishjim 3y ago
      It reminds me of Oliver Sacks' excellent book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. It contains descriptions of several real cases of brain damage, including someone who literally made the mistake in the title of the book. He could still see but was increasing struggling to synthesise understanding of objects from the lines and patterns, culminating in that particular confusion (as he was getting up to leave a consultation with Sacks, he tried to grab his wife to put on his head). This person was an amateur painter, and his paintings were getting increasingly abstract as his condition worsened. The funny thing is, critics would comment that his art was improving in subtly and insight. In reality, he was losing his grasp of object coherence.
  - runsWphotons 3y ago
    i think it looks like what you would make if you werent as skilled, didnt have the right rock, or the tools that were as good as later sculptures. but its still neat.
- chrisco255 3y ago
  The Lescaux cave paintings from 17K YA are remarkable. A prehistoric Sistine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qApjgI8Dbk8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qApjgI8Dbk8

ricardobeat 3y ago

NAA, but I think what you’re missing is that this Venus statue is something a single person can carve on their own time, anywhere. Carving a 2-ton statue in-place requires much better and larger tools, and some kind of social organization that values that activity and protects the site.

maratc 3y ago

What I think you might be missing is that Venus could be a pet project of a single person, done in their free time over some period. The statues, especially in the context of the greater site, could not be made by one person — many people should be working there for quite a long period of time, while physically staying in the place. Since they were working on the temple complex, (a) they could not be themselves participating in hunter-gathering activities (and we think human societies were engaged with that at the time); and (b) someone else should be providing them with the food, clothes, tools, and everything they need — implying there was some sort of a social structure (aka civilization). This is what I think GP meant when saying "not supposed to be possible 12,000 years ago".

vanderZwan 3y ago
I fully agree with what you're saying, but I just want add something to your comment in case people might misinterpret this sentence: > What I think you might be missing is that Venus could be a pet project of a single person, done in their free time over some period. Yes, a single Venus figure is likely made by a single person. But the Venus of Willendorf is not unique. There are 200 over known "Venus figurines" from a period of 300,000 BC to 11,00 BC. So they were a wide-spread phenomenon indicating some form of shared socio-cultural connection among the early humans despite how far we were spread out and how much lower the population density was compared to now. This is of course tangential to the point you were making. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_figurine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_figurine
p-e-w 3y ago
> The statues, especially in the context of the greater site, could not be made by one person Why not? Sculptors sometimes make dozens of sculptures per year, by themselves. > they could not be themselves participating in hunter-gathering activities Why not? Hunting and gathering doesn't occupy all of a person's time. I see no reason whatsoever to assume that those sculptures weren't created by part-time artists. > implying there was some sort of a social structure (aka civilization) Social structure exists even in apes, and is not at all synonymous with what the term "civilization" is usually taken to mean. As a sibling commenter has explained, there is nothing substantially new in this archeological find, and it fits well into our existing model of how people lived back then. Claims of an incoming paradigm shift triggered by this find lack any substance.

permo-w 3y ago

look, if you take the two things in isolation, then you may have a point. the Venus is certainly a more beautiful artistic piece but you're trying to argue that an 11cm tall figurine with no facial features is a civilisational achievement on par with a massive 'temple' complex full of metres-high sculptures, reliefs and symbols that would require significant societal organisation and advancement: protection, education, food surplus, likely division of labour. decades of work at least the Venus of Willendorf could indicate some of those things, but it equally could have just been made by one especially advanced human

bazoom42 3y ago
Nobody is arguing that. You are wildly fighting strawmen. But the claim that “complex things like statues” were “not possible” is clearly BS.
- edgyquant 3y ago
  No it isn’t, and a small figurine is specifically not a statue
p-e-w 3y ago
> the Venus of Willendorf could indicate some of those things, but it equally could have just been made by one especially advanced human Hundreds of such figurines have survived to the present day, so tens of thousands must have been produced. They used materials transported over 1000+ kilometers. Clearly, those were made by a large-scale network of artists learning from one another, part of a pan-European culture – not by a random genius doodling around, otherwise they wouldn't be so similar to each other. It's also pretty obvious from looking at the figurine that this wasn't the artist's first work. They probably had to make hundreds such statuettes before achieving this level of detail, so they were likely at least part-time professionals.