Consider: You've traveled far, through foreign lands, and have seen animals beyond description. One night, while seeking shelter from the elements, you find a cave. You climb inside and light your campfire, only to discover that the walls of the cave are covered in images of animals. You've seen a few of them, but not all, and you've recently seen one that isn't on the wall, so you do your best to reproduce it, leaving a hand print as a signature, possibly with extra info about direction, number or danger. After all, everyone knows about these caves. They are how you, and the other people of the lands you regularly migrate through, keep track of the local wildlife. You illustrate the behaviors you observe, so that others can know what animals are hunters, which are to be hunted, and what to avoid. You don't paint people, because that's not what these places are for... and because you don't want to advertise your presence, numbers or tactics too much, or you might get raided. This is a place to _track_ animals, not a place to keep track of people.
I get what your saying. Kind of like an open use survival shelter/hunting cabin, deep in the woods. Where we may have a book with written descriptions as well as drawings, they only had cave walls and "paint".
I always thought the handprints had more meaning than just I was here. Maybe some kind of exceptional hunting success or a leaders handprints or something like that.
3:03 Imagine if they were just down bad. Imagine archeologists 1000 years from now digging up pictures of Elastigirl and other Pixar moms and thinking they were fertility goddess.
I'm gonna bury myself with a platinum plaque that has writing in Club Penguin language but when they translate it it's only gonna say "you lost the game and you're gay now"
So what you're saying is that we have the ability to learn from the mistakes of our ancestors by finally creating actual fertility goddesses with the proportions of Pixar Moms?
14:28 Alongside the journalist being careful with photos of indigenous Australians, lots of Australian TV shows have a disclaimer before then warning aboriginal people that it may contain pictures, video, or voices of a deceased person. Something I remember very clearly from growing up
I think realistically this is closest to the real answer. Through many cultures depicting oneself meant taking one's soul, which is a concept that's been around for a long time.
@@davidfeston4370 Isn't it funny that we have so many people today that would claim "we" don't have souls yet there is evidence that could possibly suggest that the idea of a soul actually predates written and possibly even, fully formed, spoken language.
@@aaronmontgomery1304 It's not surprising, they saw dead bodies vastly more often than any of us unless you're in a profession like the funeral trade. Not just as adults, but as children. Animals, obviously, but also dead relatives. Seeing someone you knew as a living being become a lifeless body must make you wonder about the difference, the thing that is absent in that otherwise identical flesh. The anima. The spirit. Life.
Uneducated guess: Capturing the likeness of a person on a wall could possibly "trap their soul there" Some cultures do NOT want their picture taken, I wonder if it's something similar
Makes a lot of sense to me too, cos even when we look at Ancient Egypt, they were creating these depictions, so their Pharoahs would come back to life.
This was what I would have guessed. My thought went to how there's a superstition around mirrors trapping souls in them. Maybe it could have been a similar thing where having a portrait could lead to them being trapped in the material world and not able to pass on
Nah i dont think so because we know their religion was animism. They worspipped nature itself because they were hunters, you know like spirit of the forest, moon and stars and spirits of predator and pray. Basically they believed that everything is alive and part of one source, but they didnt really have concept of individual soul. No, those paintings are actually fitting quite well, depicting grand hunts and power of animal herds are the main focus which is why its the most detailed.
I've been a full time artist for over 40 years and I've always been *stunned* by the sublime sophistication and accuracy of the cave paintings. It amazes me.
You’re not giving ancient humans enough credit. They’re just like you and me. Humans have remained anatomically unchanged for hundreds of thousands of years.
@@TJ-W The OP is complimenting the ancient artist, not knocking them. I too think they are amazing and better than I could do and I paint! They are incredible works of art.
The "hood" looks much more like dreadlocks or similar. Personally I think that a lot of academics underestimate what humans will do to kill boredom if it's raining or snowing outside the cave for a while.
There's the theory that some of those "Venus" carvings were made by women as self portraits. So they were basically looking down at their body and carving, hence the no face. I find that quite the art concept, a true self-portrait without mirrors. And seeing that possibly more women did not go out hunting they might have had more calm time to spend in self reflection and art. Saying these were objectification without context of this time does not fit.
3:45 i actually have a problem with this being brushed off as objectification. many ancient cultures have abundant evidence of phallic symbolism; yonic symbolism (a term not used as widely as ‘phallic’- it means ‘of the vulva/vagina’) shouldn’t be treated any differently. a modern myth is that patriarchy has been entrenched in every human culture since before power structures emerged, but, ironically, these interpretations of archeological findings- eg. warriors’ burials only being given to men- are often the result of our modern patriarchal preconceptions. for example, those long-time assumptions that any warriors’ burials we found were ‘male skeletons’ was recently disproven with a re-examination from female archaeologists, who found that where they could get a probable sex, the ratio of men to women in these burials was pretty equal. to immediately assume this artwork to be objectification of women, by men, is, once again, imposing modern patriarchy onto the past. who is to say that a man drew this? or even only one person did? a renaissance depiction of christ on the cross is unlikely to be called fetishisation of the male body, because we are aware of the context in which the art was created. (not that that can’t be argued, but that’s a matter for another time!) just because we have little-to-no context on _the venus and the sorcerer_ doesn’t mean we should supplement it with our own cultural context. it’s bad practice, in my opinion. furthermore, there have been, and continue to be, many matriarchal societies across the world. bearing in mind that i don’t want my comment to be an attack, simply constructive criticism- the sentiment of critiquing objectification of women is always appreciated, but it’s important to apply it critically. after all, feminist critical theory is _critical_ theory, haha. edit: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abd0310 is the study i believe i was remembering. (many of the researchers were actually male, so that’s my slip-up/assumption, oops) cordis.europa.eu/article/id/423198-trending-science-prehistoric-women-warriors-move-over-man-big-game-hunter is an article about it i just started reading which seems like it’s going to break it down nicely! edit again: i encourage everyone to research this too! www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2021/research/gendered-roles-for-neolithic-farmers/ is another article about gender and burials, showing some differences this time. with everything when it comes to (pre-)history, we have to remember that we know _so_ little, and will never know anything 100%. exciting, right? edit again: heads up after a few people have pointed it out, one study doesn’t mean all hunter-gatherer societies had no gendered division of labour. while yes archaeology and anthropology began as essentially colonial pseudo-science (see the grave-robbing in egypt, for example), today the field has moved far from that, and the implications of the study i referenced are heavily debated. i don’t want this mistake to take over my point on culturally anachronistic hypotheses, but it’s super important to correct! while ‘man-the-hunter’ has ideological roots in patriarchal systems, that doesn’t discount empirical evidence of such a thing. the assumptions we need to correct are probably the ones that see this as placing men at the top of a social hierarchy, and that whatever the women did wasn’t respected. and hunter-gatherer cultures were, and are, incredibly varied; we shouldn’t generalise our conclusions to every “caveman” society.
I agree! Its so important to use historical thinking and put the evidence into the context of the past, not the present. They may not have depicted genitalia for any sexual or objectifying reason, but simply because it existed on the body. Especially if these were symbols of fertility, it makes sense to emphasize the stomach, breast, and genitals. This also wasn't exclusive to women. This is a separate part of history, but I remember going to an Egyptian history museum and there was a drawing/carving, I believe on a coffin. It depicted men who were all naked except for something on their head. It stuck with me because during Victorian times, they literally scratched over the carving of their genitals, which ironically just emphasized it more. I think we generally need to get rid of the idea, especially in historical context, that the existence of a naked body, large breasts, or genitals is inherently sexual.
@@nerfherder4284 i actually take a slightly different perspective on this, but i agree with your point! art is an expression of the artist, of the world around them, of anything- art criticism, of course, debates every aspect of this, and it’s wonderful. but the fact that art is a mode of expression doesn’t exempt it from being objectifying. film, for example, is a form of art; hitchcock’s _vertigo_ is definitely expressing things. but that doesn’t mean that the cinematography in the ‘ernie’s restaurant’ scene isn’t extremely objectifying. and that objectification exists to show the beginnings of jimmy stewart’s character’s obsession over ‘madeline’, but that doesn’t mean we can’t critically examine _vertigo_ and identify the objectification of women- it’s still art. (a more petty example, that is definitely specific to me, and possibly only me, is the art of dante gabriel rossetti. i feel like it’s 19th century porn. but that’s just me, hahah)
@@Mwamayaelle absolutely, all of this! our western preoccupation with the naked body as inherently sexual definitely stems in large part from victorian ideas about ‘human progress’- the ideology that held up the british empire by arguing that the british were superior to all other peoples, and therefore were right to subjugate and colonise them. ‘modesty’ as a sign of a ‘civilised people’ was completely a part of that. it reminds me of sauna culture in finland- my family over there don’t see the body as inherently sexual; it’s normal to go in the sauna with your family, naked. the english-speaking ‘western world’ sees that as gross.
My favourite theory when I was taking visual arts/art history in college was that the faces were lacking *because* of pareidolia; either because our ancient ancestors believed giving the works actual faces would somehow give the subject the ability to watch them or it would imbue the image with the subject's life essence. This theory made sense to me because one of the ways OCD first manifested in me as a wee child was an irrational fear that the author portraits on the back of the books my father would leave in the bathroom somehow gave the subject the ability to "see" me using the toilet. I felt so guilty and embarassed that Stephen King or Dean Koontz were somehow being broadcast a mental image of some random kid peeing or pooing and would have a sense of impending doom for hours afterward. (The solution, if anyone is curious, was to turn the books so the portrait was facing away from me. That later evolved to putting the books in the cupboard whilst apologising to the photo for the inconvenience before I used the loo and afterward apologising again as I tried to place the books back in the exact same place they'd been lying before I entered the room. Idk when I grew out of that, but I still don't use my phone on the toilet because of a similar OCD compulsion... so it may have just evolved. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) **Edit: Formatting to break up the giant block of text.
@@josephpostma1787 Yeah, OCD can lead to some pretty absurd and/or far-out rituals. 😅 I suppose there's some level of irony in it living up to the "disorder" part of it's name.
That makes sense to me. Probably because I am always apologizing to "inanimate" objects. I don't have OCD (officially), but I get how when you're little you're more likely to come up with the he's looking at me sensation. If you can sense your dolls or stuffed toys looking at you or feeling uncomfortable cuz you just tossed them on a pile in the corner, why not sense the gaze from the head shot on the back of a book? (Pun not intended.) People or animals frequently look at a face (photo or reflection) and initially react with fear or wonder. BTW, after 60+ years, I have finally realized the so-called Normies don't always get it or understand, and that's OK. (I haven't learned how not to be sad they don't though.)
Idk about giving the subject the ability to see you, specifically, but rather inviting life, like a spirt or god, into it, thus allowing it too see and hear whatever is around it. Its a concept that's still around today with religious idols, like statues, that people believe to be holy. Someday, way off in the future, people are going to have the same wonder and confusion, the same questions about us and the art and objects we have in daily life as we do about people from way back then. I wonder what they'll come up with to explain our posters of actors and famous musicians? Or our kids toys? Or video games? We'll never know the answer to that because we'll all be long gone by then, but I wonder if these people from ages past wondered what we would think of their stuff and way of life when they were still around. Also, the thing you did with the books makes sense to me. I don't think I've ever experienced exactly what you're talking about, but I can understand to a degree what you mean. It's unsettling for me to think that someone could see me through an object or image that is facing me, but obviously they can't. Still an unsettling thought. I do hope it isn't causing you any undue distress now.
One thing I love about Joe Scott videos is that he is open to make mistakes, and also willing to provide an update. Ether withing the same video like with this one, or a few videos latter like with the video about the body that was found on Sumerton Beach, Adelaide, Australia .
One thing we often forget is that the only reason we see prehistoric paintings in caves is that any paintings made outside weathered away quickly. So, maybe only the best artists were allowed to paint in caves. As for why there are no human faces, I figure human faces weren’t as important - or important enough to go on scarce cave walls. Animals were pretty important in prehistoric times, and virtually ALL animals were strong and dangerous, but necessary for a decent human diet. Who knows?
Hey Joe, just wanted to point out that around the 7:00 mark you mention cave paintings in a cave called "Sulawesi", actually the island is called Sulawesi, the cave is called "Leang Tedongnge" which roughly translates to "the hole of Buffalo" or "cave of the buffalo"
This was good. Lots of ideas to consider. Thanks, Joe. I just saw a travel show that visited the cave and mentioned that the original paintings weren't just done in the dark by folks with no formal art training but the curvature and shape of the rocks & the cave itself was incorporated into the shape and perspective of the animals' bodies. How cool is that?!
The biggest thing you didn't mention is: bias in the archeological record. Maybe human faces were depicted on leather or woven into fabric or drawn on wood planks. Or on rocks around the village. And deep in caves they painted the animals. Or the few dozen paintings we do have just happen to be of animals. There's no way to know what existed that no longer does.
That's exactly my thought while watching the video. I was waiting for him to point that out, and he never did. I was like "Come on, there must be someone out there that considered the possibility that we were carving depictions of faces out of perishable materials, RIGHT? " 😅
@@fostena oh yes, it comes up fairly often in professional archaeology lectures. Part of it is also that speakers just assume you know this, but it does get mentioned often, that we simply don't know what existed that just didn't survive.
That's in interesting take! You can really see this by the fact that so little ancient "amateur" art exists. The artists that paint these amazing paintings didn't build their skills over night and likely took many years. Heck, as far as I know we don't typically dig up any kid art very often, never mind beginner art, which, like you said, was likely done on throw-away pieces like rocks, wood, or even hide.
This is a popular theory among archaeologists on this issue. I'm surprised Joe didn't mention it because it makes the most sense. Any drawings/paintings that early humans made on rocks outside would have weathered away long ago, so the art we are seeing in caves is just a small sample of the things early humans drew. Despite the name "caveman" most of our ancestors didn't make permanent homes in caves. They took shelter in caves at times, sure, but they were mostly nomadic because they had to follow the animals they depended on for food and clothing. So perhaps the cave drawings served as a visual aid while teaching young hunters about the shape and anatomy of the animals they hunt. That would explain the painstaking attention to detail in the drawings as well.
@@phaedrus000 and perhaps the caves were used when on the hunt. And that's why the "class room" was set up there. It was a place to take shelter near the good herds. And being in a cave, it was permanently out of the elements, so the "lessons" would remain. The hand prints could be your graduation diploma! lol. Have you become a full-fledged hunter? Leave your mark!
Complete side topic. If you tried 3D sculpting, you might find it easier. When drawing, you find that you have to translate 3D space to 2D, and sometimes thats difficult to figure out. Making a sculpture, you already have a point of reference, real life. You can see when a nose is too big or the torso is too short. Perhaps thats why sculptures came around before drawings an paintings
@colin-nekritz my original degree is automotive design, so I can sketch and render, but clay modelling always felt much easier. For a time it was my career. Transport and cars aren't people, but ranslating ideas onto 3D form still applies
A lot of ancient cultures believed that recording someones face was stealing their soul. I suspect there are very deep roots to that particular mythos.
@@simonedwards7696 It was pretty widespread interestingly, from the Mayans and Incas, to the Cheyenne, including many of the seafaring Polynesians. It is hard to say how widespread, as we have lost much from cultures with only oral histories.
0:50 honestly, that helps prove the idea of "it's not the medium, it's how you use it" cuz you can make amazing art with really simple tools if you know how to use it effectively to get the effects you want
It's the oldest name we've yet found a record of, but is surely not the first name ever recorded -- the Sumerians would surely have invented written names before inventing written barley receipts to sign with those names.
Whoa, that's funny. I have only known the name "Kushim" as the name of the one bone creature in the "Threshold of Evil" stories. Did not know it used to be an ancient human name.
@@bartolomeothesatyr You're right - I should have been clearer - record of. BTW, He was from Uruk, the receipts - many found - date from the 3300 BC range, and one specifically is for "29,086 measures barley, 37 months, Kushim." Ah, the eternal joy of accountancy
An archeologist that came to my 5th grade class to show slides of the Lascoux Cave and talked about it got me hooked. Im retired now and I'm still hooked ❤
This video for me showcases how very good Joe is at presenting. I wasn't initially interested, watched the first couple of minutes and was hooked . Nice work Joe and team.
with how some folks today still believe that taking their picture robs a part of their soul , I can only imagine back then they took that belief far more seriously… 🤷🏽♀️
Looks like braids to me, but then I’m a woman who had two daughters who went through the French plait thing, so my interpretation would likely differ from a male archaeologist
Haven’t finished the video, so correct me if i’m wrong but I’m surprised you didn’t mention the theory that the reason Venus figures are proportioned like that is because that is how women’s perspective of their bodies from a top down view look. Like as a woman if you look down your body a lot of those features are exaggerated in a similar way to the statues. so some people speculate that maybe the venus figures are self-portraits of women of their own bodies. Two scholars McCoid and McDermott actually published a paper on it. and if you look it up there are some images associated with the theory comparing a top down view of a pregnant woman’s body and the venus of willendorf and it is uncanny EDIT: I am not fully on board with the idea the theory suggests that because they are self-portraits they are not also fertility figures. I don’t think it’s mutually exclusive
But, they would have a normal perspective if they watch another woman in front of them. Which makes more sense, to be drawing someone else’s body and head.
@@LucianoCantabruel But my point is that might be an explanation for why there is no head- you can’t see your own head. I agree that from a modern perspective it makes more sense to draw or sculpt someone else, but we have no idea what their culture was like. in the case of venus figures specifically, the fact they might have been self portraits explain why they would not include a head. And maybe they held cultural significance, and the fact it was your own body was the point
That's a very modern interpretation, and that's exactly the issue. It's based on modern feminist ideas, that didn't exist back then. What we know for sure is that obesity was a sign of wealth throughout history, until around the middle of the last century. It still is in some cultures.
@@andrasbiro3007 Number 1: The idea that an ancient society would naturally be patriarchal is itself a very modern idea. In reality, the more we uncover about this time period, the more the evidence points to a much more egalitarian structure, which makes sense for a hunter gatherer society where men might be gone from the home for long periods of time on hunting expeditions and women would be gathering a lot more of the actual daily food for the group. Also, studies have shown that the genetic groups found in neolithic societies more likely suggest that women and men had equal say in important decisions like who was included in the group, where to migrate and when Number 2: I’m a little confused on how a woman depicting herself is inherently feminist? And i’m not arguing that the fact that these statues fatness wasn’t also an important quality. In fact, if you look at the pictures I mentioned, the woman they used as a reference was herself pregnant and not slim. Multiple factors could have contributed to the look of the figures.
I showed this video to my dad (an archeologist for the past 30 years) and he said you did a really good job with keeping the facts true and straight. It's very rare for youtubers that touch on anthropology topics to not make errors in the facts. I personally just found your channel a couple weeks ago and I've been enjoying every single video I have watched! Keep it up, thank you for making this content.
There's a video of experimental archeology by a woman called Sally Pointer here on youtube where she tries recreating what the grid pattern on the figurine in the thumbnail is. It's really cool, especially for us archeology nerds. She went with the idea that it's a hairnet and i believe made it out of nettle fibers.
Also it's an "artist's lament" that still exists even with faces being depicted being super common - being able to draw people can also result in catching a lot of grief from people for various differing reasons. The easiest thing to do is NOPE.
Looked like dreadlocks, to me, which I'm sure were the predominant _(see: likely only)_ hairstyle of the time. 😅 I sincerely do not see a hood. The only reason I can accept why someone *might,* is the very straight hairline across the forehead. But yea, a hood, it ain't.
it reminds me of the dentalium shell and beaded headdresses sugpiaq yu’pik and unganax women in alaska wear as apart of dance and ceremonial regalia, maybe it was something similar(bone/horn/elk rib/mammoth ivory hair pipes? maybe porcupine quills antler fresh water shells(like olivella clam or oyster) or wing bones from birds? maybe clay wood coral amber jet or seeds?) all of these could’ve been acquired in the environment naturally or traded for
I have a possible motive to why a "later" artist might have added their flare to the ancient drawings. When I used to tune pianos-etched into the soundboard were the dates, and sometimes the names, of others who tuned the same piano as far back as the early 1900's. I considered it an honor to be part of history by putting my name and date next to theirs.
Maybe, in small tribes, the concept of self image did not exist. Everyone was a big family, and the concept of a person’s self identity never formed. And possibly, as societies formed and grew, that changed. And the concept of a face was given more value
I can think of one reason faces and human figures wouldn't have been depicted. If you slept there, having a human figure you couldn't quite make out in the dark would be a bit terrifying.
This pisses me off so much. What is it with mining companies and violating indigenous peoples? This reminds me of the uranium mine in the Grand Canyon that was going to try and haul radioactive material right through a reservation, on coal trucks (like the kind with the big rectangular containers on the back. Aka, not enough protection from radiation AT ALL).
I think it is a misconception to talk about cavemen. The fact that we mostly find remnants of ancient civilizations in caves is not because people lived there all the time. I would say in contrary. It is merely due to the isolated nature of caves, not being exposed to the elements, erosion etc, that caves are the only places where remains have not crumbled to dust and washed or blown away. I think the places where people actually lived must have been full of decorations, statues and whatnot.
Historians: WHY DIDNT ANCIENT HUMANS DRAW FACES ON HUMAN DRAWINGS/SCULPTURES???? Me, an artist : *imagine a fellow ancient artist furiously erasing faces because faces are hard to draw/sculpt as hell.".
Joe has used generative AI in the past (mostly for thumbnails, not video content) but he's seemed to ditch it as AI slop has become a phenomenon. Good move.
@@bleb87AI art can only exist when other art gets stolen, its inherently problematic because AI inherently is not a creative medium, it relies on the theft od uncredited artwork especially as it gets bigger.
I don't know if it's related but, primates avoid looking in the eyes at their peers for fear of getting their faces ripped-off. And even today, staring at a stranger is still weird in most cases.
In Finnish sulavesi would mean "meltwater". It's not the exact same as it's not a w but a fun factoid still. Also Kamala Harris name caused a few smirks here when she first started appearing in international news because Kamala means 'horrible' in Finnish, heh.
@@SetiSupreme-d7o That is pretty interesting as Indonesia could be considered to be at/in the "meltwaters of the Himalayas. There are so many words, from around the world, that shouldn't be similar to eachother and yet are very similar as if, even thousands of miles apart with different climates and cultures, they actually came from the same root word &/or demonstrate a far more traveled world than we ever thought.
@aaronmontgomery1304 Yeah, I've wondered about that too! It interests me from where all finnic people came from originally. Like, in the native Sami people from northern Finland you can see in many of them those mongolian types of facial characteristics! Although Sami (Saame/Säämi) people don't speak Finnish as their main language. They have their own native one. But still they come from the same roots. Actually their language is super interesting, I'll link a Sami rappers song here. There's a bit Finnish here and there but most of it is Sami language, the song is freaking epic! th-cam.com/video/hWDnTspmktM/w-d-xo.html
@@SetiSupreme-d7o Haha, yes that is interesting that similar words are used in many cultures but with very different meanings. The name Sulawesi probably means 'iron island' (in their regional language) because of the rich iron deposits there. Living in a country with more than 700 local languages, some words are exactly the same but the meanings are nowhere near each other, and some people slide in their own mother tongue to describe an item that people from other region also use for a different item, usually becomes the source of giggles and laughter. It's fun.
I think the fact we're hardwired to see faces makes drawing those more difficult, not easier. Our brain use heuristics to make face recognition easier, so it automatically gives more importance to certain features and also transform them in symbols: the eyes, the mouth, nose and omits others like the exact shape of the ears and the forehead and the top of the head. That's why all drawings made by children or untrained people look the same: this 'homunculus' kind of sketch with huge symbolic eyes and nose (usually rendered flat and in profile even when the view is of the front), huge mouth and small chin and compressed skull (usually missing half the volume of the head). You can see these features in ancient Sumerian and Egyptian art, Chinese and Japanese Art, early Medieval Art, etc, once you know what to look for you see it everywhere. Meanwhile we're not hardwired to process animal shapes so is easier to come to the conclusion that you need to transfer your visual perceptions exactly with as little modifying as possible on the flat, 2D surface to get a likeness. Also cultural taboos might have been around, against representations of the Dead. Notice that the human figures in Egyptian art are both the Gods and dead people in a funerary context... So there might have been magical beliefs from the oldest times, linking making a likeness with contact with the Dead or spirits or something similar. Very interesting subject.
Here’s a theory. Maybe like our modern seed vault they were preserving valuable information in a safe place like a cave. Maybe more common drawings were done elsewhere.
One helpful thing in videos like this where you're constantly jumping back and forth in the timeline would be to have an animated timeline with stamps marking what time you're currently talking about.
I moved from the US to Australia, and I heard there that first nations peoples painted animals and objects not for "decoration" but to communicate important ideas and information. For example, teaching young people how to hunt particular animals, origin stories, etc. That changed my whole understanding of what cave paintings are.
Here are some of my theories about cave paintings. 1 - they were used as part of a kind of “theatre” method of storytelling, where the actual people in the caves, or maybe their shadows cast on the walls, acted out the parts of humans in the story. Thus, there was no need to portray what the people themselves could. 2 - they were painted simply because they looked nice, and made the cave look “lived-in”. Or, simply because they could - it showed “we’ve been here”. 3 - painting animals “in life” when they aren’t docile and domesticated is actually difficult, maybe painting people who could stand in front of you and pose for you wasn’t considered an interesting subject, but painting the animals in motion from memory of how you saw them in the heat of the hunt was much more difficult. 4 - maybe it was just a pastime, to occupy your clan during the dark winter evenings. Maybe they’re just a big game of Pictionary, like “Grog, draw a Big Sharp Tusk Creature - you have twenty drum beats to complete it!”
Maybe it was a way of teaching the kids about the various animals and how they hunted them. A blizzard in the middle of winter in the ice age must have been pretty tedious, even if you semi hibernated.
That ivory bust is as far removed in time from Ayla, as this fictional character from "The Clan of the Cave Bear," set at the end of the last Ice Age some 11.000 years ago, is from our modern age. Doesn't matter, already named "Venus of Brassempouy" or not, to me that little relic is called "Ayla."
Or it's just like those headless Barbies that are often found in old attic boxes or garage sales. It's an early example of a ball and socket joint. Wood or whatever the head was made from rotted away a long time ago. But the clay or ivory part that is the body is what was found after all that time. I'd hazard to guess that the actual head had some kind of slot opening in the back and was bound onto the figure with a good bit of string. And then that would be covered up with a glued-on hairpiece or something. So many of the totem dolls are probably incomplete in that regard.
My theory is an old saying in the art world. Don't do portraits of your friends unless you wish to lose a friend. Faces are difficult. And I imagine especially difficult with their limited mediums.
Much like the rapture, which doesn’t exist in the Bible, neither does abortion, in fact, right in Genesis it’s said a life doesn’t begin until it takes its first breath, and babies don’t breath in the womb. Basically you got a bunch of men making shit up.
@@colin-nekritz Could you please site a chapter and verse? I know it says Adam and Eve did not have life untill GOD "breathed into them the breath of life" but I don't recall it saying anything about life, in general, not being "alive" untill first breath. If a person (after Adam and Eve)... (or a "lesser" animal, for that matter) weren't alive before the first breath, how did said person manage to PHYSICALLY take a breath?! Also, the rapture is specifically mentioned several places in The Holy Bible and is suggestively mentioned in several places. Many different books, not the least of which is "The Revelation to John"!
14:23 It's also the law than any tv show/documentary/tv news clip that contains images or voices of indigenous people who've died HAS to have a disclaimer, very similar to a"PG" or "M" warning. "Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that the following program contains images and voices of people who have died"
@@tadcastertory1087Is it considered “pandering” to not show a persons dead body on the news without giving a warning? No, it’s our cultural taboo to not show the dead, so it’s not a big step to say that it’s taboo to not mention their name during a mourning period. The audacity of thinking that your way is the only way and that honoring the wishes of other cultures is pandering says a lot about you, and frankly, none of it good.
*Should be noted all the 'hoods' and 'baskets' on the head could be depictions of braids, dreads, pleated and braided hairstyles, or other ornate hairstyles that would've been very recognizable to the people say, 20,000 years ago, that have just been lost to time. It's a bit strange that most people today assume anything that isn't "straight Caucasian hair" must be some kind of hat or hood. It uh, it could even just be depicting curls. Edit for more examples: Otjize by the Himba tribe; these people use clay in their hair to make hairstyles that look absolutely alien. And it's beautiful. Please look these up if this comment intrigues you! Who's to say what kinds of things these are depicting; they may not be hats. : )
Yeah, after doing further research, I really wonder if it was some kind of braids or something in their hair that made them create that pattern when carving it. Especially looking at the Venus of Willendorf. I recommend looking at the Wikipedia of the Venus de Brassempouy. There's an image of someone's drawing of what they believed the woman could have looked like, but its obviously inaccurate, almost laughable.
Some native peoples believed that realistically portraying a face was tantamount to stealing a person soul. That feeling could’ve been universal in prehistoric times.
those little thumbnail sketches ARE you drawing your way out of a paper bag! you understood the composition you wanted and articulated what you needed the artist to recreate for you! drawing 'bad' is better than not drawing at all!
I feel like humans didn't paint faces back then because there weren't enough reflective surfaces to make them obsessed with their own face. Once humans started staring at their own faces, they started obsessing over them, and representing them more?
Thats a good point, though theres still the thing that people, at least modern people, also hold value in the faces or depictions of other people, specifically those close to them. Like an artist might paint his wife, a parent might take pictures of their child, etc. I definitely feel like mirrors could have contributed to having more faces drawn. Like some people would probably want to have pictures of themselves drawn to look at it.
yeah, I did wonder why they didn't depict other people too.. maybe they were too busy surviving, and just depicted animals because they seen them the most. Maybe they DID depict others but those artifacts weren't made of stone or ivory and so didn't stand the test of time. if I whittled someone out of wood, I don't think that would make it thousands of years? It's so interesting to think about.
fair point but I would like to imagine ancient people would be as appreciative of the beauty of others as we are today . not everything has to be a self portrait. hell I avoid looking at myself as much as possible but I draw my friends and idols a lot
I agree. Possibly before the more common reflective surfaces eye-contact was seen as rude/aggressive/taboo (have you ever made eye-contact with a primate?)
Maybe it's the other way around - it's that we STARTED to be so hyper focused on faces just recently, approximately when we started to paint them? Otherwise - how do you prove that we actually were hyper focused before, without all those face paintings?
According to Jean Auel (Clan of the Cave Bear/Earth's Children series) the Venus of Brassempouy was a portrait of Ayla. She later visited Dolni Vestonice, an artist there happened to see that sculpture and was inspired to depict her friend, the wonky-faced shaman. Apart from the dating of the two pieces, it all checks out.
What a nice guy. Who doesn't want to just chill with this guy in the video? With his sense of humor and everything? You know, he's contagiously focused on his goals and future. He looks at these figurines all day. What a guy. You don't come across such a specimen outside of China
Prosopagnosia (face blindness). Maybe humans had to develop the ability to recognize faces first. It was just not relevant enough to be drawn for a long time.
Drawing faces is hard and badly drawn faces are creepy, no one wants themselves depicted in the uncanny valley. That's my guess as to why they didn't draw faces. You can't do something well unless you do it badly first and if doing it badly makes the subjects angry then you'll never get enough practice to do it well.
We can also state, with absolute certainty, that the ice age head is not British from the fact that it is in the British museum. Context is everything!
Maybe people didn't paint faces because no one knew what they looked like. So when reflections were discovered, maybe then people allowed their faces to be sketched.
It does up until the forehead, there’s sort of a lifted edge, although that doesn’t preclude something like bangs, but it’s that lifted edge at the forehead why its called a hood. But I’m with you, certainly looks more like braids or locs.
0:30 if it makes you feel better nearly every artist’s mockups look like that. If you watch videos of them working you’ll notice most of their sped up video is cleaning up their dirty af initial sketches.
The artists that created those paintings were obviously very sophisticated. The nuance and attention to detail are astonishing. The intent of the artists was to inspire wonder and awe. It worked then, and it works now. Amazing!
One of my favorite conspiracy theories is that theres a reason we are soo good at recognizing faces, theres a reason we KNOW what humans look like. The central part of this theory is the uncanny valley- why do we dislike thing that are almost human, but Very Much Not? Is it something our ancestors needed? Perhaps before, we didn't need it.
obviously commenting before I watched it since it was just posted 1 minute ago, but I really hope Joe brings up a print found in the mud made by some prehistoric dude face planting.
Me: *avoids looking at my own face and body as much as possible* I envy those who like their face enough to take so many selfies. I have mostly cat pictures. Hardly any of myself.
@@sylviaalger4917 I just have so much wrong with my body in general that if having a functional body required me to have a different face, I would take it in a heartbeat. As it stands my face is cute enough, but like, my god between a deviated septum, a mouth too small for my teeth, and constant post nasal drip and sinus infections, my face isn’t THAT cute.
I just left a rambling commercial similar to this lol. I've only been okay taking pictures of myself in the last few years. I've NEVER been comfortable with other people taking pictures of me.
I hadn't realized that Faces are hardly ever seen in ancient art. It's definitely mysterious and worth investigation. What could be the explanation for this mystery not being mentioned when I was in school? There are lots of topics never mentioned to young students, but this is something worthy of speculation. Tell the kids about this and see if anyone's imagination goes crazy and comes up with possible explanations.
With the cave painting, some animals have dots next to them. The dots coincide with that animals birthing period. So 3 dots would be roughly march, 10 would be roughly October/November time, counted by the full moons.
Okay. I've put together some of the hypotheses and come up with this: 1) The cave paintings were in fact for storytelling and teaching. Hunters would show off to the wives and kids in the cave their hunting tall tales and teach the youngsters how to hunt as well. 2) At some point, the superstition arose that painting a face would either a) capture a soul and bind it to the cave, or b) create a spirit that could mess with you or perhaps cause a curse. So it was taboo to do so. 3) The figure of the hunter getting gored by the bison was either to demonstrate as part of a hunting lecture what not to do, or to explain what happened to Billy on the last hunt. Whoever drew it might have been somewhat chided by the other people of the cave, who feared it would bring out yet another goring. "But at least I didn't draw a face on it dear."
My theory? Uncanny valley. You also don't see a lot of hands or other complex stuff. It could be that faces just never got enough detail (probably due to available materials) to not make the depiction evil/unholy/posessed/etc... until much later.
Yeah drawing a good face is hard, could be the cave was reserved for the best looking art, and no one was drawing good enough faces (because of the higher standards due to the uncanny valley) to deserve space in the cave.
I think the fact we're hardwired to see faces makes drawing those more difficult, not easier. Our brain use heuristics to make face recognition easier, so it automatically gives more importance to certain features and also transform them in symbols: the eyes, the mouth, nose and omits others like the exact shape of the ears and the forehead and the top of the head. That's why all drawings made by children or untrained people look the same: this 'homunculus' kind of sketch with huge symbolic eyes and nose (usually rendered flat and in profile even when the view is of the front), huge mouth and small chin and compressed skull (usually missing half the volume of the head). You can see these features in ancient Sumerian and Egyptian art, Chinese and Japanese Art, early Medieval Art, etc, once you know what to look for you see it everywhere. Meanwhile we're not hardwired to process animal shapes so is easier to come to the conclusion that you need to transfer your visual perceptions exactly with as little modifying as possible on the flat, 2D surface to get a likeness. Also cultural taboos might have been around, against representations of the Dead. Notice that the human figures in Egyptian art are both the Gods and dead people in a funerary context... So there might have been magical beliefs from the oldest times, linking making a likeness with contact with the Dead or spirits or something similar. Very interesting subject.
Bias in the archeological record. My theory is that they carved faces into perishable materials (wood) and outside caves, and those depictions have been lost. Much like we tend to imagine that Ancient Romans and every ancient civilization was in a world made of stone. It's because stone lasts, wood does not.
To me, the figurine doesn't look like she's wearing a hood at all...To me, it looks like she has plaited hair.
I thought the same ❤
Thought that too
Me, as well.
Looks like dreadlocks to me
Agree!
My theory is that faces hadnt been invented yet.
Maybe they were just too ugly to reproduce in art?
😂
People then: 🟡
😶
@@danielmize6567 Too ugly? By which standards? Of 2024?
Consider: You've traveled far, through foreign lands, and have seen animals beyond description. One night, while seeking shelter from the elements, you find a cave. You climb inside and light your campfire, only to discover that the walls of the cave are covered in images of animals. You've seen a few of them, but not all, and you've recently seen one that isn't on the wall, so you do your best to reproduce it, leaving a hand print as a signature, possibly with extra info about direction, number or danger. After all, everyone knows about these caves. They are how you, and the other people of the lands you regularly migrate through, keep track of the local wildlife. You illustrate the behaviors you observe, so that others can know what animals are hunters, which are to be hunted, and what to avoid. You don't paint people, because that's not what these places are for... and because you don't want to advertise your presence, numbers or tactics too much, or you might get raided.
This is a place to _track_ animals, not a place to keep track of people.
Very compelling explanation. I never thought of it this way
I get what your saying. Kind of like an open use survival shelter/hunting cabin, deep in the woods. Where we may have a book with written descriptions as well as drawings, they only had cave walls and "paint".
Your speculation represents a rather plausible, theoretical outlook.
I always thought the handprints had more meaning than just I was here. Maybe some kind of exceptional hunting success or a leaders handprints or something like that.
Like kids putting their handprints in concrete. It's fun.
3:03 Imagine if they were just down bad. Imagine archeologists 1000 years from now digging up pictures of Elastigirl and other Pixar moms and thinking they were fertility goddess.
I'm gonna bury myself with a platinum plaque that has writing in Club Penguin language but when they translate it it's only gonna say "you lost the game and you're gay now"
So what you're saying is that we have the ability to learn from the mistakes of our ancestors by finally creating actual fertility goddesses with the proportions of Pixar Moms?
@@9elypses what if i didn’t actually know what the game was until I was an adult but was already attracted to women by then?
14:28 Alongside the journalist being careful with photos of indigenous Australians, lots of Australian TV shows have a disclaimer before then warning aboriginal people that it may contain pictures, video, or voices of a deceased person. Something I remember very clearly from growing up
I thought that was only a thing in the last few years, thanks for sharing the info!
@matthewryan2887 We're so nice eh?
No faces = anonymity.
They didn’t want to be placed on a government list
no face--no tax! 😂
I think realistically this is closest to the real answer. Through many cultures depicting oneself meant taking one's soul, which is a concept that's been around for a long time.
@@davidfeston4370
Isn't it funny that we have so many people today that would claim "we" don't have souls yet there is evidence that could possibly suggest that the idea of a soul actually predates written and possibly even, fully formed, spoken language.
NAME GORK SHACKLEFORD
@@aaronmontgomery1304 It's not surprising, they saw dead bodies vastly more often than any of us unless you're in a profession like the funeral trade. Not just as adults, but as children. Animals, obviously, but also dead relatives. Seeing someone you knew as a living being become a lifeless body must make you wonder about the difference, the thing that is absent in that otherwise identical flesh. The anima. The spirit. Life.
Uneducated guess:
Capturing the likeness of a person on a wall could possibly "trap their soul there"
Some cultures do NOT want their picture taken, I wonder if it's something similar
Makes a lot of sense to me too, cos even when we look at Ancient Egypt, they were creating these depictions, so their Pharoahs would come back to life.
This was what I would have guessed. My thought went to how there's a superstition around mirrors trapping souls in them. Maybe it could have been a similar thing where having a portrait could lead to them being trapped in the material world and not able to pass on
Thats a good theory i like it
The Evil Eye
Nah i dont think so because we know their religion was animism. They worspipped nature itself because they were hunters, you know like spirit of the forest, moon and stars and spirits of predator and pray. Basically they believed that everything is alive and part of one source, but they didnt really have concept of individual soul. No, those paintings are actually fitting quite well, depicting grand hunts and power of animal herds are the main focus which is why its the most detailed.
I've been a full time artist for over 40 years and I've always been *stunned* by the sublime sophistication and accuracy of the cave paintings. It amazes me.
If you haven’t seen it yet, look up the moving cave paintings. They were animating things too.
You’re not giving ancient humans enough credit. They’re just like you and me. Humans have remained anatomically unchanged for hundreds of thousands of years.
@@TJ-W The OP is complimenting the ancient artist, not knocking them. I too think they are amazing and better than I could do and I paint! They are incredible works of art.
@@TJ-W You are correct. We are devolving from our peak of development.
The "hood" looks much more like dreadlocks or similar. Personally I think that a lot of academics underestimate what humans will do to kill boredom if it's raining or snowing outside the cave for a while.
There's the theory that some of those "Venus" carvings were made by women as self portraits. So they were basically looking down at their body and carving, hence the no face. I find that quite the art concept, a true self-portrait without mirrors. And seeing that possibly more women did not go out hunting they might have had more calm time to spend in self reflection and art. Saying these were objectification without context of this time does not fit.
really well said. i was looking for this comment and i agree completely. thank you for bringing this up!!
I'm sad this isn't getting more attention. This is the theory I've seen about these carvings and I love it because it makes complete sense to me.
I appreciate you adding the "I was wrong segment" to the video.
3:45 i actually have a problem with this being brushed off as objectification. many ancient cultures have abundant evidence of phallic symbolism; yonic symbolism (a term not used as widely as ‘phallic’- it means ‘of the vulva/vagina’) shouldn’t be treated any differently. a modern myth is that patriarchy has been entrenched in every human culture since before power structures emerged, but, ironically, these interpretations of archeological findings- eg. warriors’ burials only being given to men- are often the result of our modern patriarchal preconceptions. for example, those long-time assumptions that any warriors’ burials we found were ‘male skeletons’ was recently disproven with a re-examination from female archaeologists, who found that where they could get a probable sex, the ratio of men to women in these burials was pretty equal. to immediately assume this artwork to be objectification of women, by men, is, once again, imposing modern patriarchy onto the past. who is to say that a man drew this? or even only one person did? a renaissance depiction of christ on the cross is unlikely to be called fetishisation of the male body, because we are aware of the context in which the art was created. (not that that can’t be argued, but that’s a matter for another time!) just because we have little-to-no context on _the venus and the sorcerer_ doesn’t mean we should supplement it with our own cultural context. it’s bad practice, in my opinion. furthermore, there have been, and continue to be, many matriarchal societies across the world.
bearing in mind that i don’t want my comment to be an attack, simply constructive criticism- the sentiment of critiquing objectification of women is always appreciated, but it’s important to apply it critically. after all, feminist critical theory is _critical_ theory, haha.
edit: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abd0310 is the study i believe i was remembering. (many of the researchers were actually male, so that’s my slip-up/assumption, oops) cordis.europa.eu/article/id/423198-trending-science-prehistoric-women-warriors-move-over-man-big-game-hunter is an article about it i just started reading which seems like it’s going to break it down nicely!
edit again: i encourage everyone to research this too! www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2021/research/gendered-roles-for-neolithic-farmers/ is another article about gender and burials, showing some differences this time. with everything when it comes to (pre-)history, we have to remember that we know _so_ little, and will never know anything 100%. exciting, right?
edit again: heads up after a few people have pointed it out, one study doesn’t mean all hunter-gatherer societies had no gendered division of labour. while yes archaeology and anthropology began as essentially colonial pseudo-science (see the grave-robbing in egypt, for example), today the field has moved far from that, and the implications of the study i referenced are heavily debated. i don’t want this mistake to take over my point on culturally anachronistic hypotheses, but it’s super important to correct! while ‘man-the-hunter’ has ideological roots in patriarchal systems, that doesn’t discount empirical evidence of such a thing. the assumptions we need to correct are probably the ones that see this as placing men at the top of a social hierarchy, and that whatever the women did wasn’t respected. and hunter-gatherer cultures were, and are, incredibly varied; we shouldn’t generalise our conclusions to every “caveman” society.
Jeez. Don't take everything so seriously
I am assuming it was a joke, but I think the point is worth making: Art is not Objectification in the way that people mean it, it is an expression.
I agree! Its so important to use historical thinking and put the evidence into the context of the past, not the present. They may not have depicted genitalia for any sexual or objectifying reason, but simply because it existed on the body. Especially if these were symbols of fertility, it makes sense to emphasize the stomach, breast, and genitals. This also wasn't exclusive to women. This is a separate part of history, but I remember going to an Egyptian history museum and there was a drawing/carving, I believe on a coffin. It depicted men who were all naked except for something on their head. It stuck with me because during Victorian times, they literally scratched over the carving of their genitals, which ironically just emphasized it more. I think we generally need to get rid of the idea, especially in historical context, that the existence of a naked body, large breasts, or genitals is inherently sexual.
@@nerfherder4284 i actually take a slightly different perspective on this, but i agree with your point! art is an expression of the artist, of the world around them, of anything- art criticism, of course, debates every aspect of this, and it’s wonderful. but the fact that art is a mode of expression doesn’t exempt it from being objectifying. film, for example, is a form of art; hitchcock’s _vertigo_ is definitely expressing things. but that doesn’t mean that the cinematography in the ‘ernie’s restaurant’ scene isn’t extremely objectifying. and that objectification exists to show the beginnings of jimmy stewart’s character’s obsession over ‘madeline’, but that doesn’t mean we can’t critically examine _vertigo_ and identify the objectification of women- it’s still art. (a more petty example, that is definitely specific to me, and possibly only me, is the art of dante gabriel rossetti. i feel like it’s 19th century porn. but that’s just me, hahah)
@@Mwamayaelle absolutely, all of this! our western preoccupation with the naked body as inherently sexual definitely stems in large part from victorian ideas about ‘human progress’- the ideology that held up the british empire by arguing that the british were superior to all other peoples, and therefore were right to subjugate and colonise them. ‘modesty’ as a sign of a ‘civilised people’ was completely a part of that. it reminds me of sauna culture in finland- my family over there don’t see the body as inherently sexual; it’s normal to go in the sauna with your family, naked. the english-speaking ‘western world’ sees that as gross.
My favourite theory when I was taking visual arts/art history in college was that the faces were lacking *because* of pareidolia; either because our ancient ancestors believed giving the works actual faces would somehow give the subject the ability to watch them or it would imbue the image with the subject's life essence.
This theory made sense to me because one of the ways OCD first manifested in me as a wee child was an irrational fear that the author portraits on the back of the books my father would leave in the bathroom somehow gave the subject the ability to "see" me using the toilet. I felt so guilty and embarassed that Stephen King or Dean Koontz were somehow being broadcast a mental image of some random kid peeing or pooing and would have a sense of impending doom for hours afterward.
(The solution, if anyone is curious, was to turn the books so the portrait was facing away from me. That later evolved to putting the books in the cupboard whilst apologising to the photo for the inconvenience before I used the loo and afterward apologising again as I tried to place the books back in the exact same place they'd been lying before I entered the room. Idk when I grew out of that, but I still don't use my phone on the toilet because of a similar OCD compulsion... so it may have just evolved. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )
**Edit: Formatting to break up the giant block of text.
I never thought that anyone would have an urge to do such a ritual.
@@josephpostma1787 Yeah, OCD can lead to some pretty absurd and/or far-out rituals. 😅 I suppose there's some level of irony in it living up to the "disorder" part of it's name.
I like it.
That makes sense to me. Probably because I am always apologizing to "inanimate" objects.
I don't have OCD (officially), but I get how when you're little you're more likely to come up with the he's looking at me sensation. If you can sense your dolls or stuffed toys looking at you or feeling uncomfortable cuz you just tossed them on a pile in the corner, why not sense the gaze from the head shot on the back of a book? (Pun not intended.)
People or animals frequently look at a face (photo or reflection) and initially react with fear or wonder. BTW, after 60+ years, I have finally realized the so-called Normies don't always get it or understand, and that's OK. (I haven't learned how not to be sad they don't though.)
Idk about giving the subject the ability to see you, specifically, but rather inviting life, like a spirt or god, into it, thus allowing it too see and hear whatever is around it. Its a concept that's still around today with religious idols, like statues, that people believe to be holy. Someday, way off in the future, people are going to have the same wonder and confusion, the same questions about us and the art and objects we have in daily life as we do about people from way back then. I wonder what they'll come up with to explain our posters of actors and famous musicians? Or our kids toys? Or video games? We'll never know the answer to that because we'll all be long gone by then, but I wonder if these people from ages past wondered what we would think of their stuff and way of life when they were still around.
Also, the thing you did with the books makes sense to me. I don't think I've ever experienced exactly what you're talking about, but I can understand to a degree what you mean. It's unsettling for me to think that someone could see me through an object or image that is facing me, but obviously they can't. Still an unsettling thought. I do hope it isn't causing you any undue distress now.
One thing I love about Joe Scott videos is that he is open to make mistakes, and also willing to provide an update. Ether withing the same video like with this one, or a few videos latter like with the video about the body that was found on Sumerton Beach, Adelaide, Australia .
One thing we often forget is that the only reason we see prehistoric paintings in caves is that any paintings made outside weathered away quickly. So, maybe only the best artists were allowed to paint in caves. As for why there are no human faces, I figure human faces weren’t as important - or important enough to go on scarce cave walls.
Animals were pretty important in prehistoric times, and virtually ALL animals were strong and dangerous, but necessary for a decent human diet.
Who knows?
Hey Joe, just wanted to point out that around the 7:00 mark you mention cave paintings in a cave called "Sulawesi", actually the island is called Sulawesi, the cave is called "Leang Tedongnge" which roughly translates to "the hole of Buffalo" or "cave of the buffalo"
Wanted to say this
This needs to be pinned. Joe's mistake is like calling Yellowstone as United States. 😅
Where’s he going with that gun in his hand?
Nastly name for a cave
@@noticiasinmundicias probably hole where wandering buffaloes often get stuck or hide. They raise buffalo there as livestock
I'm definitely Team Hairstyle. Ever since art school I've read that particular Venus as wearing a hairstyle, not a hood or wig.
Why do they say the sculpture head is wearing a hood? Isn't that just her hair in braids.
maybe because we dont see the ears
He maybe going off researchers calling it a hood, I think
He didn’t think of it like that.
@@kakaerikoWe... Don't see ears of almost all women wearing their hair down..
Yep
This was good. Lots of ideas to consider. Thanks, Joe.
I just saw a travel show that visited the cave and mentioned that the original paintings weren't just done in the dark by folks with no formal art training but the curvature and shape of the rocks & the cave itself was incorporated into the shape and perspective of the animals' bodies. How cool is that?!
To be fair, painting a face on a lark would be quite difficult. They're fairly small birds, and feathers make a poor surface for drawing.
The biggest thing you didn't mention is: bias in the archeological record. Maybe human faces were depicted on leather or woven into fabric or drawn on wood planks. Or on rocks around the village. And deep in caves they painted the animals. Or the few dozen paintings we do have just happen to be of animals. There's no way to know what existed that no longer does.
That's exactly my thought while watching the video. I was waiting for him to point that out, and he never did. I was like "Come on, there must be someone out there that considered the possibility that we were carving depictions of faces out of perishable materials, RIGHT? " 😅
@@fostena oh yes, it comes up fairly often in professional archaeology lectures. Part of it is also that speakers just assume you know this, but it does get mentioned often, that we simply don't know what existed that just didn't survive.
That's in interesting take!
You can really see this by the fact that so little ancient "amateur" art exists. The artists that paint these amazing paintings didn't build their skills over night and likely took many years. Heck, as far as I know we don't typically dig up any kid art very often, never mind beginner art, which, like you said, was likely done on throw-away pieces like rocks, wood, or even hide.
This is a popular theory among archaeologists on this issue. I'm surprised Joe didn't mention it because it makes the most sense. Any drawings/paintings that early humans made on rocks outside would have weathered away long ago, so the art we are seeing in caves is just a small sample of the things early humans drew. Despite the name "caveman" most of our ancestors didn't make permanent homes in caves. They took shelter in caves at times, sure, but they were mostly nomadic because they had to follow the animals they depended on for food and clothing. So perhaps the cave drawings served as a visual aid while teaching young hunters about the shape and anatomy of the animals they hunt. That would explain the painstaking attention to detail in the drawings as well.
@@phaedrus000 and perhaps the caves were used when on the hunt. And that's why the "class room" was set up there. It was a place to take shelter near the good herds. And being in a cave, it was permanently out of the elements, so the "lessons" would remain. The hand prints could be your graduation diploma! lol. Have you become a full-fledged hunter? Leave your mark!
Complete side topic. If you tried 3D sculpting, you might find it easier. When drawing, you find that you have to translate 3D space to 2D, and sometimes thats difficult to figure out. Making a sculpture, you already have a point of reference, real life. You can see when a nose is too big or the torso is too short. Perhaps thats why sculptures came around before drawings an paintings
As a person with a BFA in art you are 100% correct, even if it’s that weird bust or Lionel Richie in his Hello video.
@colin-nekritz my original degree is automotive design, so I can sketch and render, but clay modelling always felt much easier. For a time it was my career. Transport and cars aren't people, but ranslating ideas onto 3D form still applies
Tangent, I totally felt insulted when Joe said kids couldn't draw, because I became obsessed with it and that was my talent growing up.
A lot of ancient cultures believed that recording someones face was stealing their soul. I suspect there are very deep roots to that particular mythos.
Which cultures out of interest?
@@simonedwards7696 It was pretty widespread interestingly, from the Mayans and Incas, to the Cheyenne, including many of the seafaring Polynesians. It is hard to say how widespread, as we have lost much from cultures with only oral histories.
Like the modern day Amish?
@@sampatton146 I was unaware they share this belief actually, but I am not surprised. It was pretty widespread.
@vanadyan1674 when they make dolls for Amish children to play with, they never have a face.
Dude the way I cackled when you stopped that ancient aliens guy and his glorious hair from sliding in!!!!! I can't with you.
Ancient aliens, National Enquirer... Same thing!!
it was pretty hillarious, but so i have to say i fail to see how an antropomorphic depiction of a spirit don't qualify as a human face ;)
0:50 honestly, that helps prove the idea of "it's not the medium, it's how you use it" cuz you can make amazing art with really simple tools if you know how to use it effectively to get the effects you want
The first name ever recorded was Kushim - he was a Sumerian accountant and his name was on a receipt for barley.
It's the oldest name we've yet found a record of, but is surely not the first name ever recorded -- the Sumerians would surely have invented written names before inventing written barley receipts to sign with those names.
I see you stefan milo fan
Whoa, that's funny. I have only known the name "Kushim" as the name of the one bone creature in the "Threshold of Evil" stories. Did not know it used to be an ancient human name.
I remember that guy, dodgy as 😂
@@bartolomeothesatyr You're right - I should have been clearer - record of. BTW, He was from Uruk, the receipts - many found - date from the 3300 BC range, and one specifically is for "29,086 measures barley, 37 months, Kushim."
Ah, the eternal joy of accountancy
This is the kind of video I love the most from this channel. Interesting stuff.
Fascinating prehistoric smut. Qxir did this topic six months ago, but Qxir’s Irish, so it’s always good to get an English translation.
@@silverXnoiseAnd Joes wry humor!
As an artistically inclined individual, I would like to hypothesize that faces are hard as fuck to draw.
Exactly what I was thinking
If you think faces are hard, try drawing a hand😭
@@EeveetoUmbreon25now, now. don't compare. they are BOTH hard as fuck
My first thought, but I don't see why they'd let that stop them. Bison are also hard as fuck to draw, and yet.
Try drawing my soul 😮
An archeologist that came to my 5th grade class to show slides of the Lascoux Cave and talked about it got me hooked. Im retired now and I'm still hooked ❤
This video for me showcases how very good Joe is at presenting. I wasn't initially interested, watched the first couple of minutes and was hooked .
Nice work Joe and team.
with how some folks today still believe that taking their picture robs a part of their soul , I can only imagine back then they took that belief far more seriously… 🤷🏽♀️
it definitely does rob part of your soul.
Have you met people who use Instagram?
@@firedragon5602 They are offering their souls up freely.
Can confirm - have no soul
@@firedragon5602 when he said realistic photos,... my first thought was: with current filters ? Not really.
18:24 How do we know that’s a hood and not hair braiding?
The bottom has folds that look more like cloth than hair
I can see it both ways it's definitely possible
Looks like braids to me
@@visceratrocar it could be folded hair style or even just a limit of the artists skill
Looks like braids to me, but then I’m a woman who had two daughters who went through the French plait thing, so my interpretation would likely differ from a male archaeologist
Haven’t finished the video, so correct me if i’m wrong but I’m surprised you didn’t mention the theory that the reason Venus figures are proportioned like that is because that is how women’s perspective of their bodies from a top down view look. Like as a woman if you look down your body a lot of those features are exaggerated in a similar way to the statues. so some people speculate that maybe the venus figures are self-portraits of women of their own bodies. Two scholars McCoid and McDermott actually published a paper on it. and if you look it up there are some images associated with the theory comparing a top down view of a pregnant woman’s body and the venus of willendorf and it is uncanny
EDIT: I am not fully on board with the idea the theory suggests that because they are self-portraits they are not also fertility figures. I don’t think it’s mutually exclusive
Oh also, for the lady with the hood- I always interpreted that statue as being a person with braids
But, they would have a normal perspective if they watch another woman in front of them. Which makes more sense, to be drawing someone else’s body and head.
@@LucianoCantabruel But my point is that might be an explanation for why there is no head- you can’t see your own head. I agree that from a modern perspective it makes more sense to draw or sculpt someone else, but we have no idea what their culture was like. in the case of venus figures specifically, the fact they might have been self portraits explain why they would not include a head. And maybe they held cultural significance, and the fact it was your own body was the point
That's a very modern interpretation, and that's exactly the issue. It's based on modern feminist ideas, that didn't exist back then.
What we know for sure is that obesity was a sign of wealth throughout history, until around the middle of the last century. It still is in some cultures.
@@andrasbiro3007 Number 1: The idea that an ancient society would naturally be patriarchal is itself a very modern idea. In reality, the more we uncover about this time period, the more the evidence points to a much more egalitarian structure, which makes sense for a hunter gatherer society where men might be gone from the home for long periods of time on hunting expeditions and women would be gathering a lot more of the actual daily food for the group. Also, studies have shown that the genetic groups found in neolithic societies more likely suggest that women and men had equal say in important decisions like who was included in the group, where to migrate and when
Number 2: I’m a little confused on how a woman depicting herself is inherently feminist? And i’m not arguing that the fact that these statues fatness wasn’t also an important quality. In fact, if you look at the pictures I mentioned, the woman they used as a reference was herself pregnant and not slim. Multiple factors could have contributed to the look of the figures.
6:55 small correction, Sulawesi is the name of the island, not the cave itself
I showed this video to my dad (an archeologist for the past 30 years) and he said you did a really good job with keeping the facts true and straight. It's very rare for youtubers that touch on anthropology topics to not make errors in the facts. I personally just found your channel a couple weeks ago and I've been enjoying every single video I have watched! Keep it up, thank you for making this content.
There's a video of experimental archeology by a woman called Sally Pointer here on youtube where she tries recreating what the grid pattern on the figurine in the thumbnail is. It's really cool, especially for us archeology nerds. She went with the idea that it's a hairnet and i believe made it out of nettle fibers.
That was my thought. They also wore hairnet made of shells.
@@Nylon_riot if you're interested to see Sally's interpretation, you should definitely check it out! it's a really good video
Idea: maybe the uncanny valley effect put off early artists from trying to depict faces too closely. Like they were 'cursed' or something.
Also it's an "artist's lament" that still exists even with faces being depicted being super common - being able to draw people can also result in catching a lot of grief from people for various differing reasons. The easiest thing to do is NOPE.
also troxler effect( scientific explanation for bloody mary in mirror ) cause they are in dark caves.
6:15 couldn’t the “hood” just be hair…?
Yeah, looks like curly hair to me, or a bit like how Persian statues represented curly hair and beards.
Yes I agree many cultures throughout time have depicted hair like this, like the hindus @nerfherder4284
Looked like dreadlocks, to me, which I'm sure were the predominant _(see: likely only)_ hairstyle of the time. 😅
I sincerely do not see a hood. The only reason I can accept why someone *might,* is the very straight hairline across the forehead.
But yea, a hood, it ain't.
it reminds me of the dentalium shell and beaded headdresses sugpiaq yu’pik and unganax women in alaska wear as apart of dance and ceremonial regalia, maybe it was something similar(bone/horn/elk rib/mammoth ivory hair pipes? maybe porcupine quills antler fresh water shells(like olivella clam or oyster) or wing bones from birds? maybe clay wood coral amber jet or seeds?) all of these could’ve been acquired in the environment naturally or traded for
That's what I thought! A curly African like woman to be more specific.
0:07 the handprints always leave me speechless. They belonged to people just like us who lived over 15,000 years ago 😮
They were nothing like us 15,000ago they were a diff species of human called Denisovans, read a book
They’re hand stencils - more sophisticated than handprints!
I have a possible motive to why a "later" artist might have added their flare to the ancient drawings. When I used to tune pianos-etched into the soundboard were the dates, and sometimes the names, of others who tuned the same piano as far back as the early 1900's. I considered it an honor to be part of history by putting my name and date next to theirs.
Maybe, in small tribes, the concept of self image did not exist. Everyone was a big family, and the concept of a person’s self identity never formed. And possibly, as societies formed and grew, that changed. And the concept of a face was given more value
This is generally my theory too!
Men's faces were hairy until they started shaving. Depicting hairy faces as individuals is/was artistically taxing.
I can think of one reason faces and human figures wouldn't have been depicted. If you slept there, having a human figure you couldn't quite make out in the dark would be a bit terrifying.
That's literally why I hated the portraits at my gran's house.
Joe: Why in the world would they not show faces?
Also Joe: wears a shirt with six figures and no faces.
😊
Mining conglomerates in Australia blew up an ancient Indigenous site containing 65,000 year old wall paintings. .. with zero repercussions.
This pisses me off so much. What is it with mining companies and violating indigenous peoples? This reminds me of the uranium mine in the Grand Canyon that was going to try and haul radioactive material right through a reservation, on coal trucks (like the kind with the big rectangular containers on the back. Aka, not enough protection from radiation AT ALL).
😢😢😢
I think it is a misconception to talk about cavemen. The fact that we mostly find remnants of ancient civilizations in caves is not because people lived there all the time. I would say in contrary. It is merely due to the isolated nature of caves, not being exposed to the elements, erosion etc, that caves are the only places where remains have not crumbled to dust and washed or blown away. I think the places where people actually lived must have been full of decorations, statues and whatnot.
Maybe having faces you might recognise staring back at you in the shadows of firelit caves was too spooky. 👁️👁️
😂😂😂
Historians: WHY DIDNT ANCIENT HUMANS DRAW FACES ON HUMAN DRAWINGS/SCULPTURES????
Me, an artist : *imagine a fellow ancient artist furiously erasing faces because faces are hard to draw/sculpt as hell.".
That's why they had no or reduced head. They were erased off
@@jackalope2302 maybe the first swear "symbol" was scribbled somewhere nearby by the artist, that we think has different significance too
yah faces are super hard in art i can see why none where made.
Shoutout Joe for not going to AI for the sketches in the intro, it's just a better look for everyone
Joe has used generative AI in the past (mostly for thumbnails, not video content) but he's seemed to ditch it as AI slop has become a phenomenon. Good move.
I couldn't care less about the use of AI art personally
@@bleb87AI art can only exist when other art gets stolen, its inherently problematic because AI inherently is not a creative medium, it relies on the theft od uncredited artwork especially as it gets bigger.
@willowway3349 it's more like fair use imo.
@@willowway3349 good, time to steal more then, gotta get that big AI growing.
I don't know if it's related but, primates avoid looking in the eyes at their peers for fear of getting their faces ripped-off. And even today, staring at a stranger is still weird in most cases.
Imagine living your whole life and never encountering a strange face or an unknown person! Compare that to our lives today.
We’ll never know, just face it.
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
touché 🗡
What figure of speech did you use?
Ba-dum-tss! 🥁
Sulawesi is one of the islands of Indonesia, and if I'm not mistaken the cave is Leang Karampuang in Maros-Pangkep, South Sulawesi.
Thank you 🙏
In Finnish sulavesi would mean "meltwater". It's not the exact same as it's not a w but a fun factoid still. Also Kamala Harris name caused a few smirks here when she first started appearing in international news because Kamala means 'horrible' in Finnish, heh.
@@SetiSupreme-d7o
That is pretty interesting as Indonesia could be considered to be at/in the "meltwaters of the Himalayas.
There are so many words, from around the world, that shouldn't be similar to eachother and yet are very similar as if, even thousands of miles apart with different climates and cultures, they actually came from the same root word &/or demonstrate a far more traveled world than we ever thought.
@aaronmontgomery1304 Yeah, I've wondered about that too! It interests me from where all finnic people came from originally. Like, in the native Sami people from northern Finland you can see in many of them those mongolian types of facial characteristics! Although Sami (Saame/Säämi) people don't speak Finnish as their main language. They have their own native one. But still they come from the same roots.
Actually their language is super interesting, I'll link a Sami rappers song here. There's a bit Finnish here and there but most of it is Sami language, the song is freaking epic!
th-cam.com/video/hWDnTspmktM/w-d-xo.html
@@SetiSupreme-d7o Haha, yes that is interesting that similar words are used in many cultures but with very different meanings. The name Sulawesi probably means 'iron island' (in their regional language) because of the rich iron deposits there. Living in a country with more than 700 local languages, some words are exactly the same but the meanings are nowhere near each other, and some people slide in their own mother tongue to describe an item that people from other region also use for a different item, usually becomes the source of giggles and laughter. It's fun.
I think the fact we're hardwired to see faces makes drawing those more difficult, not easier. Our brain use heuristics to make face recognition easier, so it automatically gives more importance to certain features and also transform them in symbols: the eyes, the mouth, nose and omits others like the exact shape of the ears and the forehead and the top of the head. That's why all drawings made by children or untrained people look the same: this 'homunculus' kind of sketch with huge symbolic eyes and nose (usually rendered flat and in profile even when the view is of the front), huge mouth and small chin and compressed skull (usually missing half the volume of the head). You can see these features in ancient Sumerian and Egyptian art, Chinese and Japanese Art, early Medieval Art, etc, once you know what to look for you see it everywhere. Meanwhile we're not hardwired to process animal shapes so is easier to come to the conclusion that you need to transfer your visual perceptions exactly with as little modifying as possible on the flat, 2D surface to get a likeness. Also cultural taboos might have been around, against representations of the Dead. Notice that the human figures in Egyptian art are both the Gods and dead people in a funerary context... So there might have been magical beliefs from the oldest times, linking making a likeness with contact with the Dead or spirits or something similar. Very interesting subject.
Aphrodite was the Greek equivalent of the Ronan Venus. Great work Joe.
Here’s a theory. Maybe like our modern seed vault they were preserving valuable information in a safe place like a cave. Maybe more common drawings were done elsewhere.
Those Ptolemaidan mummy portraits are so beautiful. I love them so much. They feel so close to me, as if I knew them. They are amazing💚
One helpful thing in videos like this where you're constantly jumping back and forth in the timeline would be to have an animated timeline with stamps marking what time you're currently talking about.
I moved from the US to Australia, and I heard there that first nations peoples painted animals and objects not for "decoration" but to communicate important ideas and information. For example, teaching young people how to hunt particular animals, origin stories, etc. That changed my whole understanding of what cave paintings are.
Here are some of my theories about cave paintings.
1 - they were used as part of a kind of “theatre” method of storytelling, where the actual people in the caves, or maybe their shadows cast on the walls, acted out the parts of humans in the story. Thus, there was no need to portray what the people themselves could.
2 - they were painted simply because they looked nice, and made the cave look “lived-in”. Or, simply because they could - it showed “we’ve been here”.
3 - painting animals “in life” when they aren’t docile and domesticated is actually difficult, maybe painting people who could stand in front of you and pose for you wasn’t considered an interesting subject, but painting the animals in motion from memory of how you saw them in the heat of the hunt was much more difficult.
4 - maybe it was just a pastime, to occupy your clan during the dark winter evenings. Maybe they’re just a big game of Pictionary, like “Grog, draw a Big Sharp Tusk Creature - you have twenty drum beats to complete it!”
Maybe it was a way of teaching the kids about the various animals and how they hunted them. A blizzard in the middle of winter in the ice age must have been pretty tedious, even if you semi hibernated.
That ivory bust is as far removed in time from Ayla, as this fictional character from "The Clan of the Cave Bear," set at the end of the last Ice Age some 11.000 years ago, is from our modern age.
Doesn't matter, already named "Venus of Brassempouy" or not, to me that little relic is called "Ayla."
1:24 well clearly people used to not have heads.
Many today seem to have the same condition, too,
Or it's just like those headless Barbies that are often found in old attic boxes or garage sales. It's an early example of a ball and socket joint. Wood or whatever the head was made from rotted away a long time ago. But the clay or ivory part that is the body is what was found after all that time. I'd hazard to guess that the actual head had some kind of slot opening in the back and was bound onto the figure with a good bit of string. And then that would be covered up with a glued-on hairpiece or something. So many of the totem dolls are probably incomplete in that regard.
My theory is an old saying in the art world. Don't do portraits of your friends unless you wish to lose a friend.
Faces are difficult. And I imagine especially difficult with their limited mediums.
In early Islam there was no taboo about depicting Mohammed and there is plenty of art showing his face. The taboo kicked in later for whatever reason.
Much like the rapture, which doesn’t exist in the Bible, neither does abortion, in fact, right in Genesis it’s said a life doesn’t begin until it takes its first breath, and babies don’t breath in the womb. Basically you got a bunch of men making shit up.
@@colin-nekritz
Could you please site a chapter and verse?
I know it says Adam and Eve did not have life untill GOD "breathed into them the breath of life" but I don't recall it saying anything about life, in general, not being "alive" untill first breath.
If a person (after Adam and Eve)... (or a "lesser" animal, for that matter) weren't alive before the first breath, how did said person manage to PHYSICALLY take a breath?!
Also, the rapture is specifically mentioned several places in The Holy Bible and is suggestively mentioned in several places. Many different books, not the least of which is "The Revelation to John"!
@@colin-nekritz bingo
The amazing thing is most of these artists are separated by many thousands of years yet there's a consistent style.
That’s back when people had butts for faces! South Park did an episode on it
14:23 It's also the law than any tv show/documentary/tv news clip that contains images or voices of indigenous people who've died HAS to have a disclaimer, very similar to a"PG" or "M" warning.
"Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that the following program contains images and voices of people who have died"
Pretty pathetic pandering, really.
Why is it pathetic pandering if there’s an actual cultural taboo that is being respected?
@@tadcastertory1087Is it considered “pandering” to not show a persons dead body on the news without giving a warning? No, it’s our cultural taboo to not show the dead, so it’s not a big step to say that it’s taboo to not mention their name during a mourning period. The audacity of thinking that your way is the only way and that honoring the wishes of other cultures is pandering says a lot about you, and frankly, none of it good.
@@tadcastertory1087 It's not "pandering." It's being respectful of people's cultures.
@@tadcastertory1087do you even know what pandering means?
This is easily one of the best channels on TH-cam.
Thanks for all the great work over the years, folks.
All the best.
*Should be noted all the 'hoods' and 'baskets' on the head could be depictions of braids, dreads, pleated and braided hairstyles, or other ornate hairstyles that would've been very recognizable to the people say, 20,000 years ago, that have just been lost to time. It's a bit strange that most people today assume anything that isn't "straight Caucasian hair" must be some kind of hat or hood. It uh, it could even just be depicting curls. Edit for more examples: Otjize by the Himba tribe; these people use clay in their hair to make hairstyles that look absolutely alien. And it's beautiful. Please look these up if this comment intrigues you! Who's to say what kinds of things these are depicting; they may not be hats. : )
Looked up Otjize and was not disappointed. That's so cool and beautiful!
Yeah, after doing further research, I really wonder if it was some kind of braids or something in their hair that made them create that pattern when carving it. Especially looking at the Venus of Willendorf. I recommend looking at the Wikipedia of the Venus de Brassempouy. There's an image of someone's drawing of what they believed the woman could have looked like, but its obviously inaccurate, almost laughable.
Some native peoples believed that realistically portraying a face was tantamount to stealing a person soul. That feeling could’ve been universal in prehistoric times.
Hey Joe! Found a mistake in your intro: the cave painting with all the hands is actually from an Argentinian cave called Cueva de las Manos
19:08 you have a beautiful way of putting things
Agreed. Best outlook of the entire thing
The figure with the headdress I always thought was a hairstyle, braids or cornrows or something.
Yes, I’m surprised they are considering this as proof of clothing. I would think a hairstyle is also possibility.
those little thumbnail sketches ARE you drawing your way out of a paper bag! you understood the composition you wanted and articulated what you needed the artist to recreate for you! drawing 'bad' is better than not drawing at all!
The way Joe talks about thr Venus of Brassempouy at about 18:00 mark is touching. Pure beauty of a reflection about who she was.
I feel like humans didn't paint faces back then because there weren't enough reflective surfaces to make them obsessed with their own face. Once humans started staring at their own faces, they started obsessing over them, and representing them more?
Thats a good point, though theres still the thing that people, at least modern people, also hold value in the faces or depictions of other people, specifically those close to them. Like an artist might paint his wife, a parent might take pictures of their child, etc. I definitely feel like mirrors could have contributed to having more faces drawn. Like some people would probably want to have pictures of themselves drawn to look at it.
yeah, I did wonder why they didn't depict other people too.. maybe they were too busy surviving, and just depicted animals because they seen them the most. Maybe they DID depict others but those artifacts weren't made of stone or ivory and so didn't stand the test of time. if I whittled someone out of wood, I don't think that would make it thousands of years? It's so interesting to think about.
I just also said that 3D sculptures are actually probably easier. There's no translating 3D to 2D
fair point but I would like to imagine ancient people would be as appreciative of the beauty of others as we are today . not everything has to be a self portrait. hell I avoid looking at myself as much as possible but I draw my friends and idols a lot
I agree. Possibly before the more common reflective surfaces eye-contact was seen as rude/aggressive/taboo (have you ever made eye-contact with a primate?)
Maybe it's the other way around - it's that we STARTED to be so hyper focused on faces just recently, approximately when we started to paint them?
Otherwise - how do you prove that we actually were hyper focused before, without all those face paintings?
100% this.
Yeah, he shared that sentiment toward the end of the video
According to Jean Auel (Clan of the Cave Bear/Earth's Children series) the Venus of Brassempouy was a portrait of Ayla. She later visited Dolni Vestonice, an artist there happened to see that sculpture and was inspired to depict her friend, the wonky-faced shaman. Apart from the dating of the two pieces, it all checks out.
I was wondering if any would refer to this!
That sounds like the most fictional explanation possible. Sounds about right coming from an author of fictional books.
@@LeNomEstYves You say that like it's a bad thing.
Bob Ross never put people in his paintings and never did portraits. He said he wasnt good at it. Maybe, they weren't either.
Fr. Maybe we’re just overthinking and then people way back then just don’t want to draw a face lol
What a nice guy. Who doesn't want to just chill with this guy in the video? With his sense of humor and everything? You know, he's contagiously focused on his goals and future. He looks at these figurines all day. What a guy. You don't come across such a specimen outside of China
Prosopagnosia (face blindness). Maybe humans had to develop the ability to recognize faces first. It was just not relevant enough to be drawn for a long time.
doesn’t look like anything to me - like a more psychological/evolutionary explanation for this.
Drawing faces is hard and badly drawn faces are creepy, no one wants themselves depicted in the uncanny valley. That's my guess as to why they didn't draw faces. You can't do something well unless you do it badly first and if doing it badly makes the subjects angry then you'll never get enough practice to do it well.
We can also state, with absolute certainty, that the ice age head is not British from the fact that it is in the British museum. Context is everything!
You should make a video on " open individualism".
Maybe people didn't paint faces because no one knew what they looked like. So when reflections were discovered, maybe then people allowed their faces to be sketched.
1:53 My money is on Keith Richards.
probably depicted buy an already old Queen Elizabeth...
Why do they assume the figure is wearing a hood??
It looks like braided hair to me.
It does up until the forehead, there’s sort of a lifted edge, although that doesn’t preclude something like bangs, but it’s that lifted edge at the forehead why its called a hood.
But I’m with you, certainly looks more like braids or locs.
0:30 if it makes you feel better nearly every artist’s mockups look like that. If you watch videos of them working you’ll notice most of their sped up video is cleaning up their dirty af initial sketches.
The artists that created those paintings were obviously very sophisticated. The nuance and attention to detail are astonishing. The intent of the artists was to inspire wonder and awe. It worked then, and it works now. Amazing!
One of my favorite conspiracy theories is that theres a reason we are soo good at recognizing faces, theres a reason we KNOW what humans look like. The central part of this theory is the uncanny valley- why do we dislike thing that are almost human, but Very Much Not? Is it something our ancestors needed? Perhaps before, we didn't need it.
obviously commenting before I watched it since it was just posted 1 minute ago, but I really hope Joe brings up a print found in the mud made by some prehistoric dude face planting.
Me: *avoids looking at my own face and body as much as possible*
I envy those who like their face enough to take so many selfies. I have mostly cat pictures. Hardly any of myself.
Me too , especially as I’ve got older , but I had the realisation the other day that I wouldn’t want anyone else’s face .
@@sylviaalger4917 I just have so much wrong with my body in general that if having a functional body required me to have a different face, I would take it in a heartbeat.
As it stands my face is cute enough, but like, my god between a deviated septum, a mouth too small for my teeth, and constant post nasal drip and sinus infections, my face isn’t THAT cute.
I just left a rambling commercial similar to this lol. I've only been okay taking pictures of myself in the last few years. I've NEVER been comfortable with other people taking pictures of me.
Extremely well made video, thank you
18:49 man, that was so touching and beatufil
*Beautiful.
I hadn't realized that Faces are hardly ever seen in ancient art. It's definitely mysterious and worth investigation. What could be the explanation for this mystery not being mentioned when I was in school? There are lots of topics never mentioned to young students, but this is something worthy of speculation. Tell the kids about this and see if anyone's imagination goes crazy and comes up with possible explanations.
Wonderful i was moved by the Egyptian death portraits ❤
With the cave painting, some animals have dots next to them. The dots coincide with that animals birthing period. So 3 dots would be roughly march, 10 would be roughly October/November time, counted by the full moons.
great presentation. interesting way to tell the info. lots of hypothesis that i would have never thought of
Okay. I've put together some of the hypotheses and come up with this:
1) The cave paintings were in fact for storytelling and teaching. Hunters would show off to the wives and kids in the cave their hunting tall tales and teach the youngsters how to hunt as well.
2) At some point, the superstition arose that painting a face would either a) capture a soul and bind it to the cave, or b) create a spirit that could mess with you or perhaps cause a curse. So it was taboo to do so.
3) The figure of the hunter getting gored by the bison was either to demonstrate as part of a hunting lecture what not to do, or to explain what happened to Billy on the last hunt. Whoever drew it might have been somewhat chided by the other people of the cave, who feared it would bring out yet another goring. "But at least I didn't draw a face on it dear."
You were talking about humans being hardwired for faces, we are also hardwired for the silhouette of an open palm. Monkeys are too.
My theory? Uncanny valley.
You also don't see a lot of hands or other complex stuff. It could be that faces just never got enough detail (probably due to available materials) to not make the depiction evil/unholy/posessed/etc... until much later.
That actually makes sense. We still do the same, for example humanoid robots don't have faces.
Yeah drawing a good face is hard, could be the cave was reserved for the best looking art, and no one was drawing good enough faces (because of the higher standards due to the uncanny valley) to deserve space in the cave.
I think the fact we're hardwired to see faces makes drawing those more difficult, not easier. Our brain use heuristics to make face recognition easier, so it automatically gives more importance to certain features and also transform them in symbols: the eyes, the mouth, nose and omits others like the exact shape of the ears and the forehead and the top of the head. That's why all drawings made by children or untrained people look the same: this 'homunculus' kind of sketch with huge symbolic eyes and nose (usually rendered flat and in profile even when the view is of the front), huge mouth and small chin and compressed skull (usually missing half the volume of the head). You can see these features in ancient Sumerian and Egyptian art, Chinese and Japanese Art, early Medieval Art, etc, once you know what to look for you see it everywhere. Meanwhile we're not hardwired to process animal shapes so is easier to come to the conclusion that you need to transfer your visual perceptions exactly with as little modifying as possible on the flat, 2D surface to get a likeness. Also cultural taboos might have been around, against representations of the Dead. Notice that the human figures in Egyptian art are both the Gods and dead people in a funerary context... So there might have been magical beliefs from the oldest times, linking making a likeness with contact with the Dead or spirits or something similar. Very interesting subject.
@@andrasbiro3007 That's a really good point and goes to show how we really haven't changed much.
Bias in the archeological record. My theory is that they carved faces into perishable materials (wood) and outside caves, and those depictions have been lost.
Much like we tend to imagine that Ancient Romans and every ancient civilization was in a world made of stone. It's because stone lasts, wood does not.