(The timing is right at least and the lead author is from the Smithsonian)
She probably shouldn't have but she let me hold them in my hands. You could see that they were made by stuffing a skull with grass then putting the clay over the skull - you could see the grass imprints on the inside. I think they were from 9000 BC, Syria region. Pretty much brand new compared to this lion.
The Eurasian Cave Lion was around there back then and was probably the direct model for the Lion-man sculpture. It was roughly 20% larger than modern African lions. Paleolithic cave paintings (e.g., Chauvet) show the male cave lions lacked the heavy neck manes of modern lions.
Been reading "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind", this piece is mentioned as the earliest proof of the Cognitive Revolution that we know of. It displays how humans were able to envisions things that do not exist, crafting fiction from reality. How early man was able to share stories and how religions probably came to be.
Isn't that begging the question? For one, people can wear a lion headdress, making it something that does exist in real life. Secondly, it seems to be carved from a single tusk, which might have forced some choices when it comes to anatomy, rather than being "as conceived".
> ... so why would a community living on the edge of subsistence, whose primary concerns were finding food, keeping that fire going, protecting children from predators, allow someone to spend so much time away from those tasks?
One possibility that occurs to me is the carving was done by the elderly, the injured, or possibility the young, who would not have such duties. A carving by a shaman is another possibility.
The idea that our hunter-gatherer ancestors were running around 16 hours a day with no downtime is a fantasy to begin with. They had more leisure time than early farmers and many Americans[1]
40k years from now, a hominid excavates a computer and materializes a login page in the ether. "We think they used this for ritual sacrifice or to brush their teeth or both."
I had a project at the Smithsonian's conservation analytical laboratory in the later 90s and made friends with a girl working in the lab that was working on these: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/251028779_Three_lat...
(The timing is right at least and the lead author is from the Smithsonian)
She probably shouldn't have but she let me hold them in my hands. You could see that they were made by stuffing a skull with grass then putting the clay over the skull - you could see the grass imprints on the inside. I think they were from 9000 BC, Syria region. Pretty much brand new compared to this lion.
The Eurasian Cave Lion was around there back then and was probably the direct model for the Lion-man sculpture. It was roughly 20% larger than modern African lions. Paleolithic cave paintings (e.g., Chauvet) show the male cave lions lacked the heavy neck manes of modern lions.
Been reading "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind", this piece is mentioned as the earliest proof of the Cognitive Revolution that we know of. It displays how humans were able to envisions things that do not exist, crafting fiction from reality. How early man was able to share stories and how religions probably came to be.
Isn't that begging the question? For one, people can wear a lion headdress, making it something that does exist in real life. Secondly, it seems to be carved from a single tusk, which might have forced some choices when it comes to anatomy, rather than being "as conceived".
> ... so why would a community living on the edge of subsistence, whose primary concerns were finding food, keeping that fire going, protecting children from predators, allow someone to spend so much time away from those tasks?
One possibility that occurs to me is the carving was done by the elderly, the injured, or possibility the young, who would not have such duties. A carving by a shaman is another possibility.
That question does not require any greater explanation than "there was little else to be done, besides waiting for the storm to subside".
The idea that our hunter-gatherer ancestors were running around 16 hours a day with no downtime is a fantasy to begin with. They had more leisure time than early farmers and many Americans[1]
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0614-6
40k years from now, a hominid excavates a computer and materializes a login page in the ether. "We think they used this for ritual sacrifice or to brush their teeth or both."
It appears to be a primitive game where the user tries to guess which of 9 images contains “traffic lights” or “motorcycles” (whatever they are).
You might enjoy the book "The Weans" by Robert Nathans, <https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2664067-the-weans>
Between 35,000 and 41,000 years old. Germany.
TIL that Humans have been around for more than 40,000 years! I thought we started around 1000s of BC.
More than 300,000 years.
Hello I'm interested in buying. Do you still have original box?
Box disintegrated in the rain, but product is in fair used condition for its age.