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

Lion-man

en.wikipedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 90 posts

Re: Lion-man

#61

Post by IsTom »

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…

I can imagine them not having a lot to do during winter nights, besides sitting by the fire. That's a lot of time for carving.

Re: Lion-man

#62

Post by broken-kebab »

IsTom wrote: post #61
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…

I can imagine them not having a lot to do during winter nights, besides sitting by the fire. That's a lot of time for carving.

They had a lot to do during winter, though, cause it was a society with subsistence economy.

Re: Lion-man

#63

Post by [deleted] »

doctoboggan wrote: post #44

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…

[deleted]

Re: Lion-man

#64

Post by the_gipsy »

Loughla wrote: post #25
argee wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

But that's also just ignoring the fact that humans seem inherently drawn to the fantastic, whether in religion or something else. There isn't really any reason to believe that wouldn't have existed 40k years ago, correct?

This is the earliest evidence of such fantasy we have. It's not that this piece at this time was the earliest human fantasy, but there is a cutoff line somewhere between humans and our last common ancestor chimpanzees.

Re: Lion-man

#65

Post by broken-kebab »

samudrijan wrote: post #48
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not being a hunter-gatherer also helps, I imagine.

Re: Lion-man

#66

Post by benbreen »

I’m currently at the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul. Was just thinking of this post ten minutes ago when I saw what the plaque described as a “humanoid-lion hybrid creature” from the Neo-Hittite empire in 9th century BCE. In fact lion-men of various sorts are everywhere in the more ancient parts of the museum. Makes me wonder about potential continuity, as distant as this is.

Re: Lion-man

#67

Post by jaapz »

orsenthil wrote: post #14
andsoitis wrote: post #2

Between 35,000 and 41,000 years old. Germany.

TIL that Humans have been around for more than 40,000 years! I thought we started around 1000s of BC.

I was curious so I looked around a little bit

Apparently the oldest stone tools found that can be attributed to hominids, are around 3 million years old: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldowan.

When only counting Homo sapiens, they have found tools that are around 315.000 years old: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jebel_Irhoud.

And that's just what we have actually found :)

Re: Lion-man

#68

Post by IsTom »

broken-kebab wrote: post #62
IsTom wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can imagine them not having a lot to do during winter nights, besides sitting by the fire. That's a lot of time for carving.

They had a lot to do during winter, though, cause it was a society with subsistence economy.

If 30-40k timelines are right that's way before agriculture and any kind of "economy". It's firmly hunter-gatherers and there's not much of that to do when it's after sunset.

Re: Lion-man

#69

Post by 317070 »

jaapz wrote: post #67
orsenthil wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TIL that Humans have been around for more than 40,000 years! I thought we started around 1000s of BC.

I was curious so I looked around a little bit Apparently the oldest stone tools found that can be attributed to hominids, are around 3 million years old: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldowan . When only counting Homo sapiens, they have found tools that are around 315.000 years old: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jebel_Irhoud . And that's just what we have actually found :)

Also, while we don't have made statues that old, we do have manuports from 2-3 million years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuport

Manuports are natural rocks in "funny" shapes, like faces or falluses, which are found back (far) out of place and often in the neighbourhood of other human remnants.

Re: Lion-man

#70

Post by natpalmer1776 »

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.

In this case they were not attributing its purpose or meaning to sex, rather trying to identify the artists intended gender of the lion person.
Post reply on HN