Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

12,000-year-old realistic human statue was unearthed

arkeonews.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 252 posts

Re: 12,000-year-old realistic human statue was unearthed

#141

Post by defrost »

boffinAudio wrote: post #138
bazoom42 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know sculptures and cave-paintings much older than this, some made with great artistic skill, so clearly no archeologist would suggest art was “not possible” at this time. Still a significant find and very fascinating.

Not to mention, Narwala Gabarnmang pretty much blows every precept about the rise of humankind out of the water. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabarnmung The birthplace of masonry .. the worlds oldest, longest-running university .. its oldest (still functioning) commons ..

It's a stand out site, for sure.

There are more photos than just the single one in the wikipedia link here:

https://landscapeaustralia.com/articles/nawarla-gabarnmang/

Re: 12,000-year-old realistic human statue was unearthed

#142

Post by [deleted] »

derefr wrote: post #93

Is there some way that we could "scan the Earth" to find other long-buried sites like Göbeklitepe? Would it be possible to do something from imaging satellites — something akin to ground-penetrating radar / laser range-finding / ultrasound — that might not be good enough for much, but which would be "just good enough" to find any other gigantic cities with walls built of dense stone, hidden under 10-50ft of dirt or s…

[deleted]

Re: 12,000-year-old realistic human statue was unearthed

#143

Post by runsWphotons »

arp242 wrote: post #113
p-e-w wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Th…

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.

its not as lifelike as i hoped when i opened. not a Michelangelo.

Re: 12,000-year-old realistic human statue was unearthed

#144

Post by Sharlin »

gumby wrote: post #71
verbify wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of these universals are shared with other mammals (especially apes)?

I don't think any other species has the set of facial muscles humans do. Cats seem inscrutable because they have very few; dogs seem more understandable because they can move their eyebrows. I think the non-human animal with the most facial expressions is the chimpanzee, but even then it is much less expressive than a human in this regard. Various mammals have (non-facial) macroexpression somewhat similar to humans,…

As other commenters said, cats are far from inscrutable. But a lot of their expressiveness comes from their tail and ears, two modalities that humans happen to lack.

Re: 12,000-year-old realistic human statue was unearthed

#145

Post by pakitan »

throwaway290 wrote: post #132
mkaic wrote: post #13

If you're interested in learning more about these incredible Turkish archaeological sites, I can't recommend the YouTube channel Miniminuteman [0] enough. Milo is extremely passionate about his field of study and makes highly entertaining and informative videos about archaeology and anthropology, including a recent series where he became the first real archaeologist ever to be allowed to film a documentary on-site at…

He mentions that people back then lived around 35 years. I recall reading it's a mistaken interpretation of the average age, while many people died infants adults actually easily lived to 70+ yo. Is it true and he made the same mistake or am I thinking about a different period in history?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-gatherer

> Researchers Gurven and Kaplan have estimated that around 57% of hunter-gatherers reach the age of 15. Of those that reach 15 years of age, 64% continue to live to or past the age of 45. This places the life expectancy between 21 and 37 years.[54] They further estimate that 70% of deaths are due to diseases of some kind, 20% of deaths come from violence or accidents and 10% are due to degenerative diseases.

Re: 12,000-year-old realistic human statue was unearthed

#146

Post by Sharlin »

derefr wrote: post #93

Is there some way that we could "scan the Earth" to find other long-buried sites like Göbeklitepe? Would it be possible to do something from imaging satellites — something akin to ground-penetrating radar / laser range-finding / ultrasound — that might not be good enough for much, but which would be "just good enough" to find any other gigantic cities with walls built of dense stone, hidden under 10-50ft of dirt or s…

GP radar should work, as long as the artifacts are of a material sufficiently different from the earth on top of them for the interface to cause a radar echo. I’ve no idea what exactly counts as sufficiently different" though.

Re: 12,000-year-old realistic human statue was unearthed

#147

Post by ricardobeat »

p-e-w wrote: post #107
bluehorizon2 wrote: post #102

It feels like the significance of this is lost on many people. My understanding is that complex things like statues were not supposed to be possible 12,000 years ago. I think it’s supposed to be more like 6000 years ago. The fact that it has been carbon dated to 12,000 tears should means that we have to rewrite the theories on the start of human civilization. These statues needed to be carved out of tools and the edu…

> 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. Th…

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.

Re: 12,000-year-old realistic human statue was unearthed

#148

Post by Sharlin »

voldacar wrote: post #75
pavlov wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a fairly good idea of how sculpture evolved in the past 5,000 years or so. By 2500 BCE, the Egyptians had already mastered realistic sculpture: https://www.mfa.org/gallery/masterpieces-of-egyptian-sculptu... But this discovery is a whopping 7,500 years older. It would have been inconceivably ancient to the pyramid builders too.

Those statues clearly show some development, but I wouldn't say the Egyptians had mastered realistic sculpture. There is clearly still some kouros-like stylized anatomy here, especially visible in the standing figures. Compare to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polykleitos#/media/File:Doryph...

It’s of course difficult to say how much of the perceived non-realism was simply about cultural aesthetic preferences with regard to style. Especially given that the statues that have survived are those with special cultural or religious significance.

Re: 12,000-year-old realistic human statue was unearthed

#149

Post by mvdwoord »

tonyvince7 wrote: post #134

Graham Hancock must be feeling vindicated

I visited a small archeological site on Corsica yesterday. This got us talking about this stuff which led to my gf asking to watch the gobekli tepe episode of ancient apocalypse last night.

Just after, as I was checking hn, this article was dropped. Same thing went through my mind.

Post reply on HN