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> Cutting a chalk figure of Hercules as fighting warrior, with club poised to strike, would have served as a fine rallying point (...) Are we really going to d
by thih9 3y ago
> Cutting a chalk figure of Hercules as fighting warrior, with club poised to strike, would have served as a fine rallying point (...)
Are we really going to describe this figure with no mention of the giant erection? Talk about an elephant in the room.
Especially since it's unclear if the ancient warriors actually fought like this[1]. Plus, the phallus was not present in the original drawing according to the 2020 lidar scans[2]:
"From a review of historical depictions, the Giant's current large erection has been identified as the result of merging a circle representing his navel with a smaller penis during a 1908 re-cut: the navel still appears on a late 1890s picture postcard. Lidar scans conducted as part of the 2020 survey programme have concluded that the phallus was added much later than the bulk of the figure, which was probably originally clothed."
[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6mwsbg/did_the_gauls_actually_go_into_battle_naked_and/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6mwsbg/did_t...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerne_Abbas_Giant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerne_Abbas_Giant
- taneq 3y agoTurns out humans have been drawing dicks on things basically forever.
- debo_ 3y agoLong before we had dictation, we had dicktation
- tokai 3y ago[flagged]
- jessekv 3y agohttps://xkcd.com/1020/ https://xkcd.com/1020/
- andrewflnr 3y agoI don't get this one. It's way off center (more so than the drawing here), much more like a scabbard than a dong.
- alanbernstein 3y agoConstellations are not typically known for their realism.
- mangamadaiyan 3y agoI thought the same, until I saw Cygnus from truly dark skies. The constellation, which looks like a stick figure vaguely resembling a bird from city skies, quite literally looked like a swan in flight from dark skies.
- andrewflnr 3y agoSure, but why borrow extra unrealism in your interpretation when the traditional non-dong interpretation is closer?
- alanbernstein 3y agoPersonally I find nearly every constellation to be an extreme stretch of the imagination, so one interpretation is likely as good as another. I'm a city boy, though, I don't see them often.
- tokai 3y agoSo what if its a bit off center, when have someone ever had their scabbard between their legs? Also why would the club wielding great hunter even carry a scabbard? In the end its interpretation and your socalled traditional interpretation just seems off to me taking into account the fondness of schlongs ancient people had.
- andrewflnr 3y ago
- AlecSchueler 3y agoThey're talking about its function, so an appendage added 100s of years after the original was being used isn't very relevant.
- saalweachter 3y agoI'm going to headcanon -- you can headcanon reality, right? -- that that was just one in a series of events, of mischievous soldiers/maintainers adding the erection and generals/the local clergy ordering the giant clothed, with no way to know the original state of the giant.
- bee_rider 3y agoWhat is the past anyway? If something happened far enough back that all that we have left of it is stories and architecture, what is the reality, as separate from those stories? It seems like the sort of thing soldiers probably did.
- AlecSchueler 3y agoReality is what actually happened and we can view different past events with different levels of accuracy /certainty.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hnbad 3y agoIt's fun to think that someone at some point decided to just add a phallus to the drawing as an act of vandalism and that's what the giant is now best known for. But note that "probably originally clothed" cites an article that merely argues the figure was originally "wearing trousers" because the phallus was not present. It doesn't elaborate beyond that. Notably "trousers" in the modern sense didn't exist at the time so the speculation about clothing seems dubious without evidence of lost outlines.