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In Dust and Ashes
05-20-2006, 02:17 PM
I'm taking Art History, Ancient through Medievil. right now, we're doing Prehistory and everything is open for interpretation. at first the book's given theories were agreeable, but the more I think about it, the more I think we all try too hard to think that ancient people groups were so much different than us.

let me explain.
the biggest thing we are discussing (besides stonehendge) are the venus figurines which are basicly mini statues of naked girls. with all of them, there is no face, hands/arms, and feet are virtually non-existant, and the emphasis rests on their stomach, breasts, genitals and thighs, which are usually way over exaggerated.

of course the reining theory is that these statues are fertility statues used as a supersticious way to give good luck to child bareing or whatnot. It seems logical, but I was walking downtown last night and one of the shop windows had a modernistic wooden carving of a girl....
she was naked, had no face, no feet, no hands, and the emphasis was put on her breasts, stomach, hips, thighs, and genitals. all of which were exaggerated and stretched in some form or fashion.

I realized then that we really stretch our imaginations way too much thinking that people back then were so different from us.

so anyway, the point of this thread is basicly to share interpretations of prehistoric art and whatnot.

In Dust and Ashes
05-20-2006, 02:20 PM
here is the Venus of Willendorf, the most famous of it's kind.

In Dust and Ashes
05-20-2006, 02:23 PM
this is the Chinese Horse. another famous one.
people say that the horse is pregnant and being shot at with arrows
or
pregnant and running through a field.

Nak Nak
05-20-2006, 04:18 PM
neither of those things exist because the earth is only 500 years old.

L'egoMan
05-20-2006, 09:15 PM
neither of those things exist because the earth is only 500 years old.

Isn't it 6000 years old?

Anyway, Hambakmeritru. I also like to believe that people back then were not as different from us at all. The cultures have changed though and the meaning of symbols and such...

sleepy sinner
05-21-2006, 09:28 AM
There are many post-structuralist, psychoanalytic, feminist and queer theories discussing why women are marked so explicitly sexually - why they are marked by their bodies as 'the other', while it is assumed that men in their absence from such representation are the norm/universal and the rational, technical (non-bodily) ones etc. I find it very interesting and I would probably interpret the images that way. That is controversial though. I guess I'm saying it's like stone age porn! Although of course perhaps the fertility symbol theories could be right, you never know.

Cave drawings are exciting though...a record of humans experiencing changes in skill, understanding, imagination and intelligence (hopefully...hehe).