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

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

#151

Post by hnfong »

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. I think it’s supposed to be more like 6000 years ago.

Recently I keep wondering whether people have thought about this from a statistical perspective.

Like, if I suddenly find a dead rat in my kitchen, what should I think about it? Should I consider that maybe I have had a pest problem for months or possibly years, or should I consider this as "we found evidence for rats existing in my house for at most one day"?

It seems archeology takes the "evidence based" approach and refuses to calculate the expected probability of more stuff being discovered that's older/more impressive using the fact that we are discovering (mostly) random stuff buried in the ground.

What are the chances that the stuff we dug up are not the pinnacle of human civilization back then, and merely an average object? If people 3000 years from now dug up a brick from a rural village, should they infer that we only know how to build brick houses and not skyscrapers? What are the chances of digging up remains of a skyscraper?

I have so many burning questions lol

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

#152

Post by hnfong »

tootie wrote: post #59
phero_cnstrcts wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that only works for organic material. Not stone.

The article says there were traces of pigment that could be dated. There are other techniques related to the layers of sediment or other clues. I think with a site like this they don't need to date every object. If they can gather enough data points they know when the site was in use. It's technically possible that the statue stone is older and was brought to the site and we might never know, but it's just highly unl…

I think the "highly unlikely" part is pure speculation.

If the stone in TFA gets buried when _our_ civilization collapses, the stone would now probably date to 2020 AD instead of whatever it should have been.

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

#153

Post by HPsquared »

hnfong wrote: post #151
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. I think it’s supposed to be more like 6000 years ago. Recently I keep wondering whether people have thought about this from a statistical perspective. Like, if I suddenly find a dead rat in my kitchen, what should I think about it? Should I consider that maybe I have had a pest problem for months or possibly year…

Pretty big error bars on any estimations, with the low number of samples. But yeah, I wonder if anyone has tried to give a confidence interval for "tech level over time".

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

#154

Post by pavlov »

Sharlin wrote: post #148
voldacar wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The non-realist aspects were definitely tied to cultural and religious signifiers.

There's actually a fascinating case where Egyptian artists were briefly allowed to abandon the established style and adopted a quite different one during the so-called Amarna period:

https://artsandculture.google.com/usergallery/amarna-period-...

Much of the art became almost caricatures with elongated features, but there was simultaneously a realist tendency where portraits of royalty were suddenly allowed to have a likeness. The famous Nefertiti bust is from this era.

It seems clear to me that the artists' skills was not the limitation, but the permitted range of expression was quite narrow until this rebel pharaoh unleashed the short-lived style revolution.

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

#155

Post by sgt101 »

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…

Yup - if you are thinking about what the story was in about 1978...

Since then there's been a big change from the idea cities were the only locus of culture and technology to a view that nomadic peoples were able to create significant ritual art, technical knowlege, and complex cultures. Of course the view from the 19th and early 20th C's was significantly informed by the need to justify all the genociding of nomadic peoples ("it's for their own good").

The idea I've heard recently is that agriculture grew out of nomadic people encouraging the food plants that they would be looking for in a years time by planting selected seeds and then going off to the next area, over time this led to crops that were more and more adapted as food stuff and this then enabled settled agrarianism. Places like Göbeklitepe are thought to be the ritual centers of nomadic cultures doing this sort of per-agricultural precession. I have read (no expert) that are similar sights in the southern united states where (now genocided) nomadic people used to come together and conduct major rituals which required significant communal investment and co-ordination.

Civilization with no cities... who'd have thought?

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

#156

Post by hnbad »

ido wrote: post #119
tanepiper wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who spends a lot of time closely with dogs, and recently raised a little of 6 spaniels - dogs "talk" via their facial expressions and can make sounds beyond just barks. My pet theory is that women bonded with dogs first through an ability to have a mutual understanding with non-verbal communication, and we most likely observed them and could "talk" to them in their own ways - something that has been lost a…

Why women specifically? Or did you mean humans?

Probably extrapolating from the debunked pseudoscience of "women were gatherers, men were hunters", which fuels 90% of present evopsych nonsense.

For those unaware: prehistorical "hunter-gatherer" societies likely did not have strong divisions of labor and there is no evidence to suggest such a universal division across gender lines. Quite the opposite, actually. Turns out when you hunt large mammals in a group, the statistical physical advantages men have don't really matter all that much and women in turn aren't inherently better at child rearing (which historically was a group activity shared by the entire tribe).

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

#157

Post by throwaway290 »

pakitan wrote: post #145
throwaway290 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Karahan Tepe is not hunter gatherers, it's a permanent settlement.

But even that aside, it is definitely not what the guy in video literally said, which is quote "their lifespans would have only been around 35 years", 5:22. By the way, I had to sit through 6 unskippable 10-second ads to tell you the timestamp (2 ads every time I scrub around).

Edited for brevity

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

#158

Post by sgt101 »

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 ..

>The birthplace of masonry .. the worlds oldest, longest-running university .. its oldest commons ..

Pardon my ignorance - what separates this from other sites like Lascaux?

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

#159

Post by Fluorescence »

runsWphotons wrote: post #143
arp242 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

IMHO it's more interesting and a greater achievement than lifelike. To me it's an expression of fertile abundance that shows more intention, more imagination, more desire to communicate, more understanding of form and humanity than a straight depiction would.

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

#160

Post by hnbad »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #81
an-allen wrote: post #55

I think whomever this statue represents, would get a cosmic kick out of people, 12000 years into the future, appreciating the majesty of his phallus.

It looks like it’s saying that Death is a wanker. I wonder if it was deliberately humorous, which would add another dimension. I know that the Incas had statues that were basically hardcore pr0n. I’m not sure the reason. Probably fertility stuff.

It's always funny to me how some people will go out of their way to avoid acknowledging that historical people may have liked sex or even been queer.

My favorite example is that of two Roman men apparently living together as a household and having items with very graphic depictions of sexual acts between men. They were obviously two very heterosexual men (maybe brothers) and the depictions of men ravaging each other's buttocks were probably a fertility or sports thing.

I may be wrong but I don't believe that the reason that bathroom stalls are frequently adorned with crude sketches of penises is "fertility stuff" either rather than just "lol dicks" and I don't think it's a stretch to extrapolate from this to prehistory.

There's a very real possibility that this is just a 12,000 year old "realistic human statue" of some bloke double-palming his stiffy (which according to the article is incidentally near a relief of another bloke presenting his stiffy one-handed with the other hand on his stomach). Yes, a two meters tall statue takes quite a bit of effort and suggests more than one person being involved in the process but that shouldn't be surprising.

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