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Lion-man

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Re: Lion-man

#41

Post by Nition »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #40
doctoboggan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the "Manufacture" section you will find this: > Wulf Hein and Kurt Wehrberger conducted an experimental replication with the kinds of stone tools available at the time. Removing the base of the tusk took ten hours. The body was carved with a steep-fronted scraper; the burins requiring regular resharpening. Several tools were needed to separate the torso from the insides of the arms while shaping the head…

> > The basic shaping is estimated to have taken around 200 hours, and in total the recreation likely took more than 370 hours. > Nearly a year of "full time" work at 40hrs/week went into this Sorry, I think you may be mistaken? From the section you quote, it looks like it's about 370 hours, or 9 weeks of full time effort. That's still a lot, but certainly not nearly a year.

I can also imagine that someone with a lot of practice might be significantly faster than some unskilled researchers.

I also don't think it rules out it being something for a child. It's not so rare to do big projects for you kids even today, over many evenings and weekends. And when you don't have any books to read or screens to watch...

Re: Lion-man

#42

Post by doctoboggan »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #40
doctoboggan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the "Manufacture" section you will find this: > Wulf Hein and Kurt Wehrberger conducted an experimental replication with the kinds of stone tools available at the time. Removing the base of the tusk took ten hours. The body was carved with a steep-fronted scraper; the burins requiring regular resharpening. Several tools were needed to separate the torso from the insides of the arms while shaping the head…

> > The basic shaping is estimated to have taken around 200 hours, and in total the recreation likely took more than 370 hours. > Nearly a year of "full time" work at 40hrs/week went into this Sorry, I think you may be mistaken? From the section you quote, it looks like it's about 370 hours, or 9 weeks of full time effort. That's still a lot, but certainly not nearly a year.

Yes you are right not sure how I flubbed that one. Made an edit in my comment.

Re: Lion-man

#43

Post by nofriend »

doctoboggan wrote: post #38
rayiner wrote: post #30

> Some researchers have ascribed sexual characteristics to the object. My wife jokes that anthropologists think everything is about either sex or religion. It never occurs to them that these figurines might be toys for kids. After all, children 40,000 years ago were anatomically modern. They would have gotten bored and wanted to play, or missed their parents while the parents were out foraging or hunting.

If you read the "Manufacture" section you will find this: > Wulf Hein and Kurt Wehrberger conducted an experimental replication with the kinds of stone tools available at the time. Removing the base of the tusk took ten hours. The body was carved with a steep-fronted scraper; the burins requiring regular resharpening. Several tools were needed to separate the torso from the insides of the arms while shaping the head…

>Nearly a year of "full time" work at 40hrs/week went into this

You uh, missed a decimal point there. A year at 40 hours/week would be 2000 hours, not 200. The quote "unless the sculpture was created slowly at odd moments over several months" seems accurate in light of that, but rather odd: why wouldn't it be created slowly at odd moments over several months, or even years? Was prehistoric man lacking in free time? The article eventually continues: "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?" Keeping a fire going or protecting from predators are tasks with rather a lot of down time. I can easily imagine a person doing either of those while also whittling on a piece of bone. It's also just ridiculous to assume that subsistence living meant being constantly on the verge of starvation. Sometimes times were bad, and many people died. Then later, times were good, food could be obtained easily, and plenty of time would be left over for leisure tasks.

Re: Lion-man

#44

Post by doctoboggan »

A bit of a meta comment: I love when wikipedia articles are posted to HN, I always click on them as I know they will be interesting. On one of the recent wikipedia article posts (Glacier Mice I believe) someone commented that there should be a bluesky bot that collects and posts these so I (well Claude..) made one!

https://bsky.app/profile/hnwiki.bsky.social

Check it out!

This article is the first post, and if there is 48 hours with no posts, then one from the archives is posted.

Re: Lion-man

#45

Post by pinkmuffinere »

Nition wrote: post #41
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > The basic shaping is estimated to have taken around 200 hours, and in total the recreation likely took more than 370 hours. > Nearly a year of "full time" work at 40hrs/week went into this Sorry, I think you may be mistaken? From the section you quote, it looks like it's about 370 hours, or 9 weeks of full time effort. That's still a lot, but certainly not nearly a year.

I can also imagine that someone with a lot of practice might be significantly faster than some unskilled researchers. I also don't think it rules out it being something for a child. It's not so rare to do big projects for you kids even today, over many evenings and weekends. And when you don't have any books to read or screens to watch...

Ya, I tend to agree. I think I personally have spent 9 weeks of effort on gifts for 2-3 people in my lifetime, and I don't even have kids yet.

Re: Lion-man

#47

Post by recursivecaveat »

argee wrote: post #15
fishfasell wrote: post #12

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".

Wouldn't you be wearing a lion headdress for some kind of symbolic reason though? Like it's not a very practical piece of clothing. I would guess you either want to draw some kind of parallel between yourself and lions, or maybe remind people that you're strong enough to have killed a lion. I don't think there are any animals that take hunting trophies like that.

Re: Lion-man

#48

Post by samudrijan »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #45
Nition wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can also imagine that someone with a lot of practice might be significantly faster than some unskilled researchers. I also don't think it rules out it being something for a child. It's not so rare to do big projects for you kids even today, over many evenings and weekends. And when you don't have any books to read or screens to watch...

Ya, I tend to agree. I think I personally have spent 9 weeks of effort on gifts for 2-3 people in my lifetime, and I don't even have kids yet.

That’s because you don’t have kids yet.

Re: Lion-man

#49

Post by samudrijan »

doctoboggan wrote: post #42
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > The basic shaping is estimated to have taken around 200 hours, and in total the recreation likely took more than 370 hours. > Nearly a year of "full time" work at 40hrs/week went into this Sorry, I think you may be mistaken? From the section you quote, it looks like it's about 370 hours, or 9 weeks of full time effort. That's still a lot, but certainly not nearly a year.

Yes you are right not sure how I flubbed that one. Made an edit in my comment.

Too busy thinking about sex and religion.

Re: Lion-man

#50

Post by thayne »

Nition wrote: post #41
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > The basic shaping is estimated to have taken around 200 hours, and in total the recreation likely took more than 370 hours. > Nearly a year of "full time" work at 40hrs/week went into this Sorry, I think you may be mistaken? From the section you quote, it looks like it's about 370 hours, or 9 weeks of full time effort. That's still a lot, but certainly not nearly a year.

I can also imagine that someone with a lot of practice might be significantly faster than some unskilled researchers. I also don't think it rules out it being something for a child. It's not so rare to do big projects for you kids even today, over many evenings and weekends. And when you don't have any books to read or screens to watch...

It could also be passed down through multiple siblings and possibly generations. And possibly the creation of it was itself a pasttime.
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