On the Art of the Ancients
Sir Frederick
ScienceWeek http://scienceweek.com
The following points are made by Anthony Sinclair (Nature 2003
426:774):
1) Excavations at the cave site of Hohle Fels in southwestern
Germany have recently unearthed three small animal figurines, as
Nicholas Conard has reported(1). The figurines, none longer than
2 cm, were carved out of mammoth ivory sometime between 30,000
and 33,000 years ago by some of the first modern humans to
colonize Europe. One figurine is shaped like a bird, another like
the head of a horse, and the third seems to be half-man, half-
animal.
2) This find is an important addition to a group of more than 20
ivory figurines that have been found at four sites in the Ach and
Lone Valleys: Vogelherd, Geissenklösterle, Hohlenstein-Stadel and
Hohle Fels. Without question, they are the oldest body of
figurative art in the world -- pieces that show a coherent set of
manufacturing techniques and themes for representation. Alongside
the figurines found at each of these four sites are the remains
of waste from ivory, bone, and stone working. At these four
sites, could we be looking at the oldest artists' workshops?
3) The study of early art has been plagued by our desire to see
this essentially human skill in a progressive evolutionary
context: simple artistic expressions should lead to later, more
sophisticated creations. We imagine that the first artists worked
with a small range of materials and techniques, and produced a
limited range of representations of the world around them. As new
materials and new techniques were developed, we should see this
pattern of evolution in the archaeological record. Yet for many
outlets of artistic expression -- cave paintings, textiles,
ceramics and musical instruments -- the evidence increasingly
refuses to fit. Instead of a gradual evolution of skills, the
first modern humans in Europe were in fact astonishingly
precocious artists.
4) For example, before we were able to date directly the classic
cave paintings of southwestern France and Spain, eminent
archaeologists had devised evolutionary schemes that ordered the
works, from the first charcoal animal drawings to the more recent
multicolor animals drawn with a clear sense of perspective at
famous sites such as Lascaux and Altamira. And yet the beautiful
multicolor horses, lions and mammoths at the Grotte Chauvet in
France, discovered in the early 1990s and dating from 32,400
years before present, are now thought to be the oldest examples
of cave art in the world.
5) The oldest evidence for the use of textiles and clay -- at
Pavlov and Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic and some 26,000
years old -- does not suggest crude techniques or a poor
knowledge of materials. Among the textiles, there are a number of
distinct patterns, and also some finely made clay figurines.
Furthermore, the evidence of several thousands of small pieces of
ceramic has suggested to some that humans could deliberately
manipulate their raw materials to explode ceramics in their kilns
on command -- perhaps the earliest form of pyrotechnics.
6) At Geissenklösterle, Germany, a fragment of a bone pipe, of
the musical sort, has been found. This pipe was made from the
radius bone of a swan and has three clear finger holes. There are
also more than twenty specimens of musical pipe of the same sort
and age from Isturitz in France. Microscopic examination suggests
that they may have been reed-voiced instruments, like a modern
oboe, and that the finger holes have been chamfered to increase
the pneumatic efficiency of the finger seal: simple whistles they
are not. Such evidence of complexity is used to argue that these
cannot be the first musical pipes, even though they are the
oldest in the archaeological record(2,3).
References:
1. Conard, N. J. Nature 426, 830-832 (2003)
2. d'Errico, F. et al. J. World Prehist. 17, 1–70 (2003)
3. White, R. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 21, 537-564 (1992)
Nature http://www.nature.com/nature
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ON THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN HUMAN BEHAVIOR
The following points are made by C.S. Henshilwood et al (Science
2002 295:1278):
1) Archaeological evidence associated with modern cognitive
abilities provides important insights into when and where modern
human behavior emerged (1). Two models for the origins of modern
human behavior are current: (a) a late and rapid appearance at
approximately 40 to 50 thousand years ago (ka) associated with
the European Upper Paleolithic and the Later Stone Age (LSA) of
sub-Saharan Africa (2,3) or (b) an earlier and more gradual
evolution rooted in the African Middle Stone Age (MSA;
approximately 250 to 40 ka)(4,5). Evidence for modern behavior
before 40 ka is relatively rare and often ambiguous (2). However,
in sub-Saharan Africa, archaeological evidence for changes in
technology, economy, and social organization and the emergence of
symbolism in the Middle Stone Age may support the second model
(4, 5). Examples of these changes include standardized formal
lithic tools (5), shaped bone implements (5), innovative
subsistence strategies such as fishing and shellfishing, and the
systematic use of red ochre.
2) Utilized ochre is found in almost all Stone Age occupations in
southern Africa that are younger than 100 ka. The ochre may have
served only utilitarian functions (e.g., skin protection or hide
tanning)(3) or may have been used symbolically as pigment(4).
Evidence for the latter is a persistent use of ochre with
saturated red hues to produce finely honed crayon or pencil
forms. However, no ochre pieces or other artifacts older than
approximately 40 ka provide evidence for abstract or depictional
images, which would indicate modern human behavior(2).
3) The authors report they have recovered two pieces of engraved
ochre from the Middle Stone Age layers at Blombos Cave, South
Africa. Situated on the southern Cape shore of the Indian Ocean,
the cave is 35 meters above sea level. A 5- to 60-cm layer of
aeolian sand containing no archaeological artifacts separates the
Later Stone Age from the Middle Stone Age occupation layers. A
mean date of 77,000 years was obtained for the layers containing
the engraved ochres by thermoluminescence dating of burnt
lithics, and the stratigraphic integrity was confirmed by an
optically stimulated luminescence age of 70,000 years on an
overlying dune. These engravings support the emergence of modern
human behavior in Africa at least 35,000 years before the start
of the Upper Paleolithic.
References (abridged):
1. The term "modern human behavior" as used here has no
chronological implication and means the thoughts and actions
underwritten by minds equivalent to those of Homo sapiens today.
Key among these is the use of symbols.
2. P. A. Mellars, K. Gibson, Eds., Modelling the Early Human Mind
(McDonald Institute Monographs, Cambridge, 1996).
3. R. G. Klein, The Human Career (Univ. of Chicago Press,
Chicago, IL, 1999).
4. H. J. Deacon, J. Deacon, Human Beginnings in South Africa:
Uncovering the Secrets of the Stone Age (David Philip, Cape Town,
South Africa, 1999).
5. S. McBrearty and A. Brooks, J. Hum. Evol. 38, 453 (2000)
Science http://www.sciencemag.org
ScienceWeek http://scienceweek.com
--
Best,
Frederick Martin McNeill
Poway, California, United States of America
mmcn...@fuzzysys.com
http://www.fuzzysys.com
http://members.cox.net/fmmcneill/
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Phrase of the week :
"You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of
personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast
assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll's Alice might
have phrased it, 'You're nothing but a pack of neurons.'" Francis Crick 1994
"To explain something in terms of its interacting components does not mean you
explain it away. For example, if a physiologist were to publish a paper explaining the
neural basis of sex, i.e. in terms of the activity of neurons in the hypothalamus,
septum and other limbic circuits, and if .... were to read the paper, would they
suddenly stop having orgasms or stop engaging in sex? Or would reading about the
detailed physiological mechanisms and evolutionary origins of digestion suddenly stop
you from enjoying or digesting food?" V. S. Ramachandran 1999
:-))))Snort!)
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