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Lion-man
- andsoitis 18d agoBetween 35,000 and 41,000 years old. Germany.
- orsenthil 16d agoTIL that Humans have been around for more than 40,000 years! I thought we started around 1000s of BC.
- Carrok 16d agoMore than 300,000 years.
- wewewedxfgdf 16d agoA 67,800-year-old hand stencil was discovered in a limestone cave on Muna Island in Sulawesi, Indonesia The Madjedbebe rock shelter in the Australian Northern Territory show that people lived in Australia at least 65,000 years ago where stone tools, ground ochre for paint, and food remains were found.
- andai 16d agoThe Neanderthals were still around, until a few tens of thousands of years ago. We lived in the same time and place as them, and occasionally had kids together.
- ahazred8ta 16d agoThere are stone tools half a million years old. Who do you think made them?
- jaapz 16d agoI was curious so I looked around a little bit Apparently the oldest stone tools found that can be attributed to hominids, are around 3 million years old: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldowan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldowan. When only counting Homo sapiens, they have found tools that are around 315.000 years old: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jebel_Irhoud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jebel_Irhoud. And that's just what we have actually found :)
- 317070 16d agoAlso, while we don't have made statues that old, we do have manuports from 2-3 million years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuport Manuports are natural rocks in "funny" shapes, like faces or falluses, which are found back (far) out of place and often in the neighbourhood of other human remnants.
- sususizisi 16d agoOh no, sir, you are definitely right and these infidels and their heretical ways will soon learn the wrath of the one true God. Which is Zeus.
- thisisauserid 16d agoThe Eurasian Cave Lion was around there back then and was probably the direct model for the Lion-man sculpture. It was roughly 20% larger than modern African lions. Paleolithic cave paintings (e.g., Chauvet) show the male cave lions lacked the heavy neck manes of modern lions.
- comrade1234 16d agoI had a project at the Smithsonian's conservation analytical laboratory in the later 90s and made friends with a girl working in the lab that was working on these: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/251028779_Three_late_eighth_millennium_plastered_faces_from_'Ain_Ghazal_Jordan https://www.researchgate.net/publication/251028779_Three_lat... (The timing is right at least and the lead author is from the Smithsonian) She probably shouldn't have but she let me hold them in my hands. You could see that they were made by stuffing a skull with grass then putting the clay over the skull - you could see the grass imprints on the inside. I think they were from 9000 BC, Syria region. Pretty much brand new compared to this lion.
- harrylove 16d ago40k years from now, a hominid excavates a computer and materializes a login page in the ether. "We think they used this for ritual sacrifice or to brush their teeth or both."
- clickety_clack 16d agoIt appears to be a primitive game where the user tries to guess which of 9 images contains “traffic lights” or “motorcycles” (whatever they are).
- doginasuit 16d agoAn ancient ritual they believed would prove their humanity and worthiness of access to arcane engines of search.
- wpollock 16d agoYou might enjoy the book "The Weans" by Robert Nathans, <https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2664067-the-weans https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2664067-the-weans>
- WalterGR 16d agoAnd Motel of the Mysteries by David Macaulay, published in 1979. I read it as a child and recall enjoying it.
- tejtm 16d agoAhh the good old Nacirema https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nacirema https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nacirema
- walrus01 16d ago40k years from now archaeologists explore a former landfill, find an adult toy and enter into endless academic debate about whether it was really a dildo
- user00005 16d ago[flagged]
- ebbi 16d agoBox disintegrated in the rain, but product is in fair used condition for its age.
- deleted 16d ago[deleted]
- wpollock 16d ago> ... so why would a community living on the edge of subsistence, whose primary concerns were finding food, keeping that fire going, protecting children from predators, allow someone to spend so much time away from those tasks? One possibility that occurs to me is the carving was done by the elderly, the injured, or possibility the young, who would not have such duties. A carving by a shaman is another possibility.
- edelbitter 16d agoThat question does not require any greater explanation than "there was little else to be done, besides waiting for the storm to subside".
- chmod775 16d agoThe idea that our hunter-gatherer ancestors were running around 16 hours a day with no downtime is a fantasy to begin with. They had more leisure time than early farmers and many Americans[1] [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0614-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0614-6
- godwinson__4-8 16d agoJust as animals in the wild - especially other apex predators - spend a lot of time sleeping/lounging. A famous example - the lion.
- phainopepla2 16d agoNot a great example. All felines sleep a lot, it's part of their physiology. It has no bearing on pre-historic humans.
- bee_rider 16d agoI think it doesn’t really need much explaining anyway. Just from their example, 2/3 of those tasks (keeping the fire going and protecting from predators) required just… being awake and reasonably alert. I mean you could spend the time sitting around the fire making arrows (or spears or whatever, not sure what they had in year 40k BC), but maybe they ran out of nice stones to sharpen. Probably most of us would not want to trade places with a substance hunter/gatherer, but their lives had downtime, right? I would expect their lives to be punctuated by good downtime (got enough food to eat and a good supply of tools, time to relax) as well as bad downtime (wasn’t successful at hunting or gathering, ran out of resources to process).
- fishfasell 16d agoBeen reading "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind", this piece is mentioned as the earliest proof of the Cognitive Revolution that we know of. It displays how humans were able to envisions things that do not exist, crafting fiction from reality. How early man was able to share stories and how religions probably came to be.
- argee 16d agoIsn't that begging the question? For one, people can wear a lion headdress, making it something that does exist in real life. Secondly, it seems to be carved from a single tusk, which might have forced some choices when it comes to anatomy, rather than being "as conceived".
- Loughla 16d agoBut that's also just ignoring the fact that humans seem inherently drawn to the fantastic, whether in religion or something else. There isn't really any reason to believe that wouldn't have existed 40k years ago, correct?
- saghm 16d agoThat's what they mean by begging the question; you don't really get much useful information from trying to cite something as evidence of what you've already assumed.
- the_gipsy 16d agoThis is the earliest evidence of such fantasy we have. It's not that this piece at this time was the earliest human fantasy, but there is a cutoff line somewhere between humans and our last common ancestor chimpanzees.
- card_zero 16d agoHeh. "What does it signify, this lion with a man's body?" - "ran out of space".
- recursivecaveat 16d ago
- tesnorindian 16d agoIn Hindu religion, lion man is called Lord Narasimha, the 4th avatar of Lord Vishnu. He is often worshiped in Ahobilam, Andhra Pradesh, India. This avatar is after Wild Bohr (Varaha) which wandered the forests before it took the avatar of Lion man and settled in caves.3rd and 4th avatars' common link was both were mammals.Second was Tortoise (Reptile) and first was Fish (Aquatic vertebrates)
- drTobiasFunke 16d ago[flagged]
- card_zero 16d agoHey look, simha/simba, check out the false cognate. Wild Niels Bohr sounds pretty dangerous.
- Alien1Being 16d agoBhai, Sanatana Dharma is ancient, but surely this statue is far older. This statue is around 35,000 years old. Hinduism is fairly young by contrast and is only around 4000 years old.
- partyficial 15d agoNah, that is Hinduism as seen through the Western lens. "Sanatana" in Sanatana Dharma means Eternal. The 4 cyclic yugas are well documented in every Sanskrit literature. We are currently in year 5127 of Kali Yug i.e. it started in 3102 BC with the departure of Bhagavan Krishna from earth after Kurukshetra war, which marked the end of previous yuga (Dwapara). Kali Yug lasts 432,000 years. After which the next cycle begins. Eventually after Brahma's lifetime is over, Pralaya occurs. Then the universe goes quiet for a long time, until Lord creates again. And this cycle of creation and destruction goes on forever.
- rayiner 16d ago> Some researchers have ascribed sexual characteristics to the object. My wife jokes that anthropologists think everything is about either sex or religion. It never occurs to them that these figurines might be toys for kids. After all, children 40,000 years ago were anatomically modern. They would have gotten bored and wanted to play, or missed their parents while the parents were out foraging or hunting.
- card_zero 16d agoWell, except for finger flutings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_fluting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_fluting some of which were made by toddlers being held aloft to reach the ceiling.
- doctoboggan 16d agoIf you read the "Manufacture" section you will find this: > Wulf Hein and Kurt Wehrberger conducted an experimental replication with the kinds of stone tools available at the time. Removing the base of the tusk took ten hours. The body was carved with a steep-fronted scraper; the burins requiring regular resharpening. Several tools were needed to separate the torso from the insides of the arms while shaping the head and shoulders, which involved difficult cutting across the grain of the ivory, often requiring two hands on the tool. The basic shaping is estimated to have taken around 200 hours, and in total the recreation likely took more than 370 hours.[d] Jill Cook, Curator of Palaeolithic collections at the British Museum, suggests that "unless the sculpture was created slowly at odd moments over several months, someone as skilled as an artist may have been excused from other subsistence tasks to work specially on this piece."[23] Nearly a year of "full time" work at 40hrs/week went into this, so I do not think it was simply a children's toy. EDIT: Not a year, actually just over 2 months.
- pinkmuffinere 16d ago> > The basic shaping is estimated to have taken around 200 hours, and in total the recreation likely took more than 370 hours. > Nearly a year of "full time" work at 40hrs/week went into this Sorry, I think you may be mistaken? From the section you quote, it looks like it's about 370 hours, or 9 weeks of full time effort. That's still a lot, but certainly not nearly a year.
- walrus01 16d agoFor those interested in very early human history, this 2010 documentary by Werner Herzog: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Forgotten_Dreams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Forgotten_Dreams It was filmed in 3D as was the hype at the time, but the 2D version is completely watchable and is the most commonly distributed format.
- yubblegum 16d agoHey, thanks for this recommendation! Just watched it and enjoyed it. Very interesting and unexpectedly spiritual. (This must be the one and only Herzog film I've managned to watch to the end.)
- kiln_ash 16d agoStill more compelling than most modern AI art. The sheer imagination and skill from that era are astounding.
- doctoboggan 16d agoA bit of a meta comment: I love when wikipedia articles are posted to HN, I always click on them as I know they will be interesting. On one of the recent wikipedia article posts (Glacier Mice I believe) someone commented that there should be a bluesky bot that collects and posts these so I (well Claude..) made one! https://bsky.app/profile/hnwiki.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/hnwiki.bsky.social Check it out! This article is the first post, and if there is 48 hours with no posts, then one from the archives is posted.
- vismit2000 15d agoRelated: https://www.orangecrumbs.com https://www.orangecrumbs.com (nice weekly summary of top wikipedia posts on HN)
- moehm 16d agoI don't want to spam, but I built this during the pandemic (pre ai). Maybe this is useful to you: https://www.mostdiscussed.com/ https://www.mostdiscussed.com/ There is also a Mastodon bridge via Mastofeed: https://mastodon.social/@MostDiscussed https://mastodon.social/@MostDiscussed
- mischief6 16d agothis is my favorite Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future
- taspeotis 16d agoI. Am. Lion. Man.
- dr_dshiv 16d agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohle_Fels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohle_Fels At Hohle Fels, they also found a similar lion man — 2 meters from a harmonically tuned flute!
- padjo 16d agoWhat always strikes me is that someone, 40,000 years ago, using a pointy stone and some ivory, can make a better looking statuette than I could manage with the best modelling clay and tools available today.
- adrianN 16d agoIt probably was not their first attempt.
- jantuss 16d agoThe sculpture was relatively safe for 40,000 years. I think we should study it, 3D scan it, replicate it, and put it back in the cave so it can stay safe for a few more Millenia. In a museum it may be bombed, burnt, or stolen, and that would be a shame.
- DoctorOetker 16d agoHow certain are we really that not the materials but the resulting figurine is authentic? From Wikipedia on the Lion-man (English): > It was not until archaeologist Joachim Hahn started an inventory and assembly of more than 200 fragments that a figurine with animal and human features began to emerge.[5] We have seen countless examples before, from the Brontosaur skull mixup mess to the heavy-handed "restoration" of the Knossos Palace, including an essential made up King-Priest frieze from real fragments by Sir Arthur Evans. For some reason the Wikipedia pages don't contain this information on Brontosaur or Evans' pages for example...
- jantuss 16d agoExactly, the reconstruction is subjective and can lead to damage. It is better to make copies of the parts and reconstruct those
- DoctorOetker 16d agoyou convinced me with this concise argument so the fragment-recombining future looks like robot archaeology: fragment collection done by careful robots documenting and keeping statistics on each grain of sand or potential fragment, those datasets will constantly be repuzzled with gradient descent and better and better loss functions, and humans go to the museum or dataset download page of reconstructed artifacts, or at least watch the funniest ones among an unlikely large cloud in likelihood space...
- benbreen 16d agoI’m currently at the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul. Was just thinking of this post ten minutes ago when I saw what the plaque described as a “humanoid-lion hybrid creature” from the Neo-Hittite empire in 9th century BCE. In fact lion-men of various sorts are everywhere in the more ancient parts of the museum. Makes me wonder about potential continuity, as distant as this is.
- newsy-combi 16d agoLion standing up makes no sense. This is supposed to be a bear. The marks on its arm denote how many people it killed. It's not religious, it's not sexual, it's educational.