Actually, the headline notwithstanding, neither the article nor the statuette provides any clue as to how art "evolved," if by evolve we mean slow incremental development. "The inspiration and symbolism behind the rather sudden flowering have long been debated by art historians." That "sudden flowering" sounds like another example of Stephen Jay Gould's "punctuated equilibria" to me. "Scholars speculate that these Venus figurines, as they are known, were associated with fertility beliefs or shamanistic rituals." That's the problem with prehistory: There's never any history to back it up. Subtract from this article what is presumed and speculated, and what exactly do we know for sure? Not a hell of a lot.
Insightful commentary, Frank. Is it possible for someone to be an iconoclast in prehistory? No se.
ReplyDeleteIn case your readers are interested, the research was reported in Nature, accompanied by various editorials, etc. http://www.nature.com/nature/videoarchive/prehistoricpinup/. The link here is to a NYT piece about that research.
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