Catherine McCoid and LeRoy McDermott hypothesize that the figurines may have been created as self-portraits by women.[12]This theory stems from the correlation of the proportions of the statues to how the proportions of women’s bodies would seem if they were looking down at themselves, which would have been the only way to view their bodies during this period. They speculate that the complete lack of facial features could be accounted for by the fact that sculptors did not own mirrors.
Yeah, I saw that rebuttal and it seemed pretty strange to me.
They couldn’t have been sculpting from their own perspective, because they technically had access to viewing themselves from a third-person perspective?
We technically had access to drawing with linear perspective all along, but somehow until only a few hundred years ago, this is the best we could do:
It just seems like a very modern-biased way of thinking about depiction. Mapping objective reality (rather than subjective perception) into art is a relatively new concept.
It’s missing some of the argument. Part of the idea is pre writing humans passing down successful pregnancy and reproductive information. Women obviously died from childbirth back then as they do now. One theory is that these women were trying to pass down some information of perhaps considered successful childbirth.
There have been times in relatively recent history where incorrect information about pregnancy was being passed down, plus a larger woman would be getting more nutrients in that time than malnourished women. An easy conclusion to make may uave just been to eat alot and be larger.
I mean, that lady’s crotch is bigger than her tits, she’s not exactly proportional from any perspective. I’m gonna go ahead and say that maybe we have no idea who made it and any argument concerning authorship is pure speculation.
Speculation and a hypothesis are two very different levels of certainty in a claim. I suppose, though, that this area of research is somewhat forced to use more certain language than other areas would be comfortable with, given the same quality of evidence. Recognize that “we’re just guessing here” also applies to the claim in the meme.
I’ve always liked me a big woman, but those ancient boys may have liked too big of a woman. Who am I to judge, though? Probably sign of a real good harvest, and I bet that made everyone horny back then.
They were most likely made by women, the proportions make sense when you think of a woman looking down at herself. It is just that when the first men to uncover the artifacts looked at them they said “wow, these were obviously made by men and are ancient porn!”
There are ones that have been found at various stages of pregnancy so were likely an educational tool.
Up until just a few decades ago the hardest thing for people to get was food, not housing as it is (for most of the people on Lemmy) today.
Because of this, being fat was seen in various societies as a sign of wealth or beauty, sometimes both. As late as a hundred years ago the US and Great Britain had “fat man societies”. Here’s an article on that:
We can’t really know why the “fertility idol” sculptures look that way, but if you’re an early human spending your life going through cycles of feast and famine as you follow prey animals sticking around with the fat person you ran into was a good way to stay alive.
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