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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."
In related news, primitive hand stencils in caves are now likely considered as the first crude attempts at nail painting.
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What interested me about his research was the evidence that sexual dimorphism in humans was substantially stronger in the paleolithic than today.
To me that adds credence to the notion that society has removed a lot of the need for distinguishing between genders. Which was neat.
(deserved slap/punch)
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
It's hardly a surprise that since the world's biggest art revolution happened in the extraordinarily(perhaps even more than the middle ages or antiquity) patriarchal society of 1500s, it's not really a surprise that the biggest historical names associated with art are male and Italian.
The paintings are there to boast about their hunting skills and number of kills. The hand prints and stencils are there to boast about the number of women that the caveman has.
I always thought the "hand outlines" discussed here were created by blowing powder through a straw or tube over the hand on the wall.
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.
Looking at the actual hand prints, it doesn't look like they traced it like we would with a pencil. More likely, they blew a powder over their hand, which created the outline. This would explain why the result looks similar to a spraypaint stencil. It's still prone to being misleading, but I would think it would preserve the ratio between finger lengths fairly well, which is what they used to determine male vs female.
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.
Have they considered the null hypothesis?
Have they thought that perhaps men were simply less narcissistic, and just like on Youtube where women more commonly display their faces in their videos than men, the women stenciled their hands more frequently than the men... You know, because it's the painting not the damn hand that matters -- It's the content not the face presenting it that matters... yet they show their faces, even if it means obscuring a part of the content.
There's something deeply evolutionary to that: Women primarily value social standing of mates. Males primarily value youth and fertility / beauty -- visually identifiable things. As the peacock displays its plumage for the peahen, so to do the female humans instinctively put on displays for their prospective mates, while the guys try to "impress the girls" with what they have, can do, or provide.
"Look at this cave painting I made, I'm a good artist." "Yeah, well look at how sexy my hand is, you like being touched by it."
The study proves nothing, IMO. Look to the neurology we've inherited from our ancestors, there you will find the same ratios you can use to surmise which sex favored/favors certain behaviors now and in the past.
We call it interior decorating
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Not only between genders in Appalacia, between relatives too.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
Cave Walls = palaeolithic deviantart.com.
that were the teachers of children too, so they would use the cave painting to teach the children which animals were good for hunting and which were the predators that were dangerous, etc... teaching the basic knowledge for survival, between that and the real life experience evolution sharpened our minds to be what we are today
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Anthropologists debung male-centric myths, tech site breeds tens of sexist-joke comments.
Stay classy.
Neither patriarchy nor (private) property are thought to be present until very recent history (about 10.000 years, compared to 200.000 of Homo Sapiens).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarchy
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.
No he wasn't. He was just holding that penis for a friend.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
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.
... 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 wonder if they considered kids vs. adults when doing the hand size comparisons. It says they used the relative finger sizes, and I don't know how that compares across men/women/children.
Also, how do they even know that the hand stencils belong to those who painted the pictures. Then men could still be doing the painting, and they also included the hand-stencils of each of the women in their family (or harem) in their cave paintings. The pictures of animals shows the hunts you made, the hand stencils show your conquests with women. Not saying this is how it went down. I'm just speculating, but so are the scientists.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Do we have evidence that that correlation has remained constant throughout history (and into prehistory apparently) ? or are we assuming that that is how it has always been since that's how it is now? (assuming of course that that's how it is now.)
From Wikipedia's article on Digit Ratios:
That a greater proportion of men have shorter index fingers than ring fingers than do women was noted in the scientific literature several times through the late 1800s, with the statistically significant sex difference in a sample of 201 men and 109 women established by 1930, after which time the sex difference appears to have been largely forgotten or ignored. In 1983 Dr Glenn Wilson of King's College, London published a study examining the correlation between assertiveness in women and their digit ratio. This was the first study to examine the correlation between digit ratio and a psychological trait within members of the same sex. Wilson proposed that skeletal structure and personality were simultaneously affected by sex hormone levels in utero. In 1998, John T. Manning and colleagues reported the sex difference in digit ratios was present in two-year-old children and further developed the idea that the index was a marker of prenatal sex hormones.
So we have some evidence the difference was present as early as the 1800's, although that doesn't demonstrate that the ratio has necessarily remained constant, certainly not all the way back to pre-historical times. Given that Digit Ratios are a marker of in-utero exposure to Testosterone levels, I suspect it may very well have shifted over time (due to the correlation between Smoking, Obesity and elevated Testosterone levels in women).
Looking down at my hands, I see that I am a male who happens to be an exception to the rule, with a Digital Ratio of almost exactly 1 (Note: fingers should be measured from the palmar side, from fingertip down to the last skin-crease at the base of the finger; not straight-across the tips of the fingers). Fortunately for me, there is no strong correlation between In-utero and adult Testosterone levels.
If your logic holds, then why should you be inclined to believe the research conducted 60 years ago or more when women were considered merely inferior forms of men?
Given the time and lifestyle involved in such times, women were not really allowed to do much of anything.
Citation Needed. If you look at neolithic cultures around the world the society you describe was actually rare. Hunter/gathering societies need both parts of that equation; people hunting food and people gathering food. Interestingly, different societies partition the food processing differently. Sometimes the men do the grinding, sometimes it's the women, sometimes the men do all the butchering, sometimes the women do. IIRC, two New Guinea tribes considered each other heretics because in one group only the men cooked the meat, and in the other only the women did.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Then I would ask you why you think these women had the time to sit around doing cave drawings?
Men hunted period, that involved little time (if hunting was easy), women raise children, prepare clothing, food, and various other tasks.
All in all I would say the women were far busier than the men, take a look at any Indian tribe, same thing.
I would also expect that cave paintings were taken seriously, and therefore were regulated to chieftains and medicine men.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The relative finger sizes is probably referring to the digit ratio, which is determined mostly by prenatal testosterone levels, and thus not going to change much with age. However, it's not unthinkable that various differences, such as a different diet could offset the norm for the ratio.
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