First Cave Artists May Have Been Women
Oct. 15th, 2013 10:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shipperxNeat!
From Smithsonian Blog:
Since cave art often depicts game species, a subject near and dear to hunters, most researchers have assumed that the people behind this mysterious artwork must have been male. But new research suggests that’s not right: when scientists looked closely at a sample of hand stencils, a common motif in cave art, they concluded that about three-quarters were actually drawn by women.
What they looked at, specifically, was the lengths of fingers in drawings from eight caves in France and Spain, National Geographic writes. Biologists established rules of thumb for general differences between men and women’s hand structure about a decade ago.
Women tend to have ring and index fingers of about the same length, whereas men’s ring fingers tend to be longer than their index fingers.
[Archeologist Dean] Snow ran the numbers through an algorithm that he had created based on a reference set of hands from people of European descent who lived near his university. Using several measurements—such as the length of the fingers, the length of the hand, the ratio of ring to index finger, and the ratio of index finger to little finger—the algorithm could predict whether a given handprint was male or female. Because there is a lot of overlap between men and women, however, the algorithm wasn’t especially precise: It predicted the sex of Snow’s modern sample with about 60 percent accuracy.
The 32 hand prints he found in the caves, however, were more pronounced in their differences than those of the modern men and women he sampled. Based upon the model and measurements, he found that 75 percent of the hands belonged to women.
National Geographic points out that the mystery is far from definitively solved. While some hail the new study as a “landmark contribution,” others are more skeptical. Another researcher recently studied the palm-to-thumb ratio of the hand prints and concluded they mostly belonged to teenage boys, who, he told NatGeo, often drew their two favorite topics: big powerful animals and naked ladies.
Read more: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/10/ancient-women-artists-may-be-responsible-for-most-cave-art/#ixzz2hnxLbp5w
From Smithsonian Blog:
Since cave art often depicts game species, a subject near and dear to hunters, most researchers have assumed that the people behind this mysterious artwork must have been male. But new research suggests that’s not right: when scientists looked closely at a sample of hand stencils, a common motif in cave art, they concluded that about three-quarters were actually drawn by women.
What they looked at, specifically, was the lengths of fingers in drawings from eight caves in France and Spain, National Geographic writes. Biologists established rules of thumb for general differences between men and women’s hand structure about a decade ago.
Women tend to have ring and index fingers of about the same length, whereas men’s ring fingers tend to be longer than their index fingers.
[Archeologist Dean] Snow ran the numbers through an algorithm that he had created based on a reference set of hands from people of European descent who lived near his university. Using several measurements—such as the length of the fingers, the length of the hand, the ratio of ring to index finger, and the ratio of index finger to little finger—the algorithm could predict whether a given handprint was male or female. Because there is a lot of overlap between men and women, however, the algorithm wasn’t especially precise: It predicted the sex of Snow’s modern sample with about 60 percent accuracy.
The 32 hand prints he found in the caves, however, were more pronounced in their differences than those of the modern men and women he sampled. Based upon the model and measurements, he found that 75 percent of the hands belonged to women.
National Geographic points out that the mystery is far from definitively solved. While some hail the new study as a “landmark contribution,” others are more skeptical. Another researcher recently studied the palm-to-thumb ratio of the hand prints and concluded they mostly belonged to teenage boys, who, he told NatGeo, often drew their two favorite topics: big powerful animals and naked ladies.
Read more: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/10/ancient-women-artists-may-be-responsible-for-most-cave-art/#ixzz2hnxLbp5w
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-10-15 03:43 pm (UTC)One of my anthropology professors pointed out that the phrase "hunter/gatherer society" is inaccurate in that such cultures get the majority of their food from the gathering - mainly the work of women and children. The words should be reversed in that phrase because whatever meat the men capture is a suppliment to the diet, not the primary foodsource. But putting "hunter" first betrays which gender we prioritize (along with words like "Man" to mean all humans, etc)
Which isn't news at all. So if females were keeping the fires burning and cooking and taking care of babies in whatever shelters they had, it's impossible to imagine they might have also drawn on the walls? Really really impossible to imagine that women were capable even then of possessing creativity and imagination?
Another researcher recently studied the palm-to-thumb ratio of the hand prints and concluded they mostly belonged to teenage boys, who, he told NatGeo, often drew their two favorite topics: big powerful animals and naked ladies.
I think we just learned a whole hell of a lot more about that man's teenage pastimes than we ever wanted to. I mean, give me an f'ing break. Why the hell would anyone with half a brain assume that the subjects that interest teenage boys today, who are awash in media images catering to their needs and desires (and parents' pocketbooks) would automatically be the same as that of young males thousands of years ago when media didn't even exist?
no subject
Date: 2013-10-15 03:50 pm (UTC)That was the thing that most amused my about Discovery Channels utterly ridiculous "Naked and Afraid". There seemed a bit of eternal truth in the fact that practically every episode had the man demanding that they hunt meat and in his macho bravado somehow hurt himself thus ending up mostly eating what the woman gathered and fished while he 'healed up' from his self-inflicted wounds.
no subject
Date: 2013-10-15 06:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-15 05:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-16 02:08 am (UTC)