And, it’s always men who did the painting!
“Persons of Grotto.”
Yep. I used the phrase “prehistoric person” for that very reason. (I realize you weren’t referring to me.)
And I didn’t bother, choosing the sexist shortcut because I’m lazy.
Anyway, can you imagine a WOMAN dragging a dead horse deep into a cave? She might break a nail, hyuk, yuk, yuk! 
Now we add “males did all the interesting work that survives” to the list of cliches and misapprehensions.
I don’t know who is more at fault: you for thinking that atistically inclined prehistoric people created art without creating spiritual influence, or the other for suggesting that spiritual influence could happen without art.
IN animist cultures (including to some extent modern Japan), objects created for aesthetic pleasure are known to have spiritual effect, as are all other objects with aesthetic properties.
No comment.
All those little statues of women with swollen bellies prove that the society that created them was matriarchal or matrilineal or worshipped a female supreme goddess or a whole pantheon of goddesses or that they were used as fertility symbols or success icons or were pornography for men who were turned on by heavy-set women or were used to scare men who were repulsed by heavy-set women or were used to ensure longevity or said something about the cycles of nature or were used to encourage women to eat more or to eat less or that they should go on the Atkins diet or the macrobiotic diet or were already on the paleo diet or, you know, whatever:
Jennshark writes:
> I left Ohio cuz I was bored
As did I, so I guess that two examples completely proves the point for all time.
Wouldn’t that depend on how you grab it?
We LOVE Time Team! We’re nearing the end of a 16-season bingewatch :eek:
In our house we also question the ability to identify a tiny bit of pottery so conclusively; there are other things on the show that are a bit :dubious: but I find everyone so likeable (especially Phil; though, have you noticed he looks just like Donald Trump?)
Our doggies dug up a small piece of very thick pottery in the backyard. I identified it as “Early Roman” from a sacred temple holy olive oil pitcher (ca. 243 A.D. in New Jersey).
It sure does for me!
Not really; horses’ nails are pretty tough.
Does anyone remember an early Zap Comix story in which an anthropologist misinterprets the meaning of some cave paintings?
I expect that post has deep, spiritual significance.
I could have responded with my initial reaction: " ? "
We always called this “poles and holes”.
The Xiaohe (Little River) Cemetery in western China, where some of the earliest “Tarim mummies” were found, is interesting in this regard:
They did DNA sequencing on a number of the bodies, so they do know biological sex, but I would be surprised if they did everybody.
(I did my field school at Jamestown (Virginia), where fertility symbols weren’t so much mysterious as downright pornographic.)
You know, I have sometimes wondered about some of the more bizarre (to me) archaeological relics. Are they so well preserved not because they were of great importance therefore rarely worn, but were so rarely worn because ancient peoples thought they looked bizarre also? In other words is it a sacred trival head dress, or is it Great Aunt Uggitia’s ghastly craft project that was hidden in the back of the cave right after that side of the family left? And then there’s the matter of religious texts. What if it’s all Bronze Age fan fiction?
Were the “life-size wooden phalluses” life-size or optimistically life-size?
Y’know, when you’re a bunch of guys and the hot chick is 13, you find an alternative.
Or, in the case of The Illiad, slash?
Was that in 1882, when the population center moved into Indiana?
Given that both Jennshark and I moved east, I’m not sure what it could have to do with the population center’s movement.