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Most Cave Paintings Were Painted By Women, Says Penn State Researcher
barlevg writes "Analyzing hand-prints found in cave sites, an archaeologist from Penn State University has concluded that roughly 75% of all ancient cave art was painted by women. Previously it was thought that neolithic cave paintings were made mostly by men, perhaps to chronicle their kills. But an analysis of the relative lengths of fingers in hand stencils found on cave walls suggests that it was mostly prehistoric women--not men--who created these works."
Yea, while not getting into the politics of it, historically women were disadvantaged in terms of education and expression.
Is it any wonder that there was more notable male scientist and artists when women would not be allowed to pursue higher education?
And precisely how did we decide that these paintings weren't painted by outcast males with girlish mittens? Did we exhume Leonardo or Michelangelo to make sure he was "one of us"?
As well, it's not clear how we go from hand prints to a conclusion about who painted the animal outlines. I just watched Cave of Forgotten Dreams last week and I was thinking these thoughts all the while. I doubt we will ever know with any degree of confidence.
That's why Hertzog titled his movie "Forgotten". Because we'll never know. Hertzog is a strange duck, but he's not stupid.
We wonder why so many Americans are ignorant of the standards of science when the only time anything scientific captures their attention, it's complete bullshit wrapped around an intriguing nugget. Selling the bullshit sizzle but not the steak is the reason the majority of the population remains clueless about this important food group.
I always thought the "hand outlines" discussed here were created by blowing powder through a straw or tube over the hand on the wall.
I was suspecting that as well, and if that is the case the same potential for inaccuracy applies. It would be much like trying to trace something with a can of spray paint. On top of that is also the fact that some of the hand stencils are above the likely average height of a person at that time - requiring them to be holding their hand above their head - which would change the angle of spraying and the angle at which the powder hits the wall.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
It seems a little risky to make such a story with the maths they are using. As the article says they tested 32 hand prints, and 24 handprints were female, with the algorithm determining if the handprints belonged to a male or female painter having an accuracy of 60%. That doesn't seem very conclusive to me.
We call it interior decorating
-Ã-tzi
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Anthropologists debung male-centric myths, tech site breeds tens of sexist-joke comments.
Stay classy.
TL;DR version: Men wrote the history books, but they didn't do all of the history.
Ad hoc hypothesis to overturn new information, in order to force a fit with preconceived notions, aren't valuable to science. That is to say, come up with an objective test or GTFO.
I always thought the "hand outlines" discussed here were created by blowing powder through a straw or tube over the hand on the wall.
I was suspecting that as well, and if that is the case the same potential for inaccuracy applies. It would be much like trying to trace something with a can of spray paint. On top of that is also the fact that some of the hand stencils are above the likely average height of a person at that time - requiring them to be holding their hand above their head - which would change the angle of spraying and the angle at which the powder hits the wall.
It's unfortunate that this technique is lost to us and we can't reproduce it with modern humans in a controlled setting to account for such distortions.
Which would be..what, in this case? Equal creation by men and women? Or the previous, evidenceless and sexist assumption that "men must have done this"?
If by "evolutionary" you mean "bullshitish justifications of our society's gender roles as biologically determined truths", yes.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
... is that most hand reliefs are likely of a woman's hand, it doesn't mean that they did the art work.
It's a bit of a leap to go from identifying what gender the hand belongs to and who actually did the cave paintings. I'm guessing that the assumption is that the hand relief is the artist's signature. But we have no way of knowing that this is true or not. It could be just another image denoting the artists history (i.e. got married today).
Whoever painted them, cave paintings are cool!!
I'm not sure why you think your explanation is obvious. Here's another obvious explanation: "the paintings are there to symbolise the animal spirits they worshipped. The hand prints and stencils are there to show their animal gods how many worshipping children they have in this tribe."
Both explanations project our own viewpoints onto these people - there's nothing obvious about either. The only thing that's "obvious" here is that it seems, assuming the men have longer ring fingers thing held true back then, that the paintings were done by women.
Citation needed on "Genetics" dictating that male homo sapiens hunt while females gather where these inferred gender biases don't exist in any other species of mammal that I've seen with any regularity.. did you mean 19th-21st century social mores and otherwise baseless assumptions on evolutionary pscyhology?
If it's just a trope that you've heard and are repeating what exactly do you think you're adding to this discussion -- everybody else has heard it too.. doesn't make it right, eh?
Sexual division of labor does occur quite regularly in other mammals, although it doesn't necessarily fall into the same division across species. The primary factor behind it was likely the result of the differing economics of risk and a few other factors. Humans are omnivores, so meat and plants make for useful food sources, meaning that there are reasons to both hunt and to gather. Hunting is dangerous and has a high chance of failure, but men can survive at lower body fat percentages because they don't have a baby factory to maintain, and one male can impregnate several females, so a male dying is less of a blow to the population. After these roles were established, traits that were useful for these divided roles were selected for if not already present, as they would be a more desirable mate.
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Those who question a popular position, especially in a mocking or condescending manner, should strive to demonstrate a perfunctory attempt at providing evidence in support of an alternate viewpoint prior to publicly adopting the contrarian position.
To put this in simpler terms, either show evidence to support your specific position, or shut the fuck up and stop representing untested and unsupported ideas to be on the same plane as widely recognized and supported views that indicate only a vanishingly small degree of gender parity among Homo sapiens males and females with respect to sexual division of labor related to hunting responsibilities.
Have a nice day.
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