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If you read the "Manufacture" section you will find this: > Wulf Hein and Kurt Wehrberger conducted an experimental replication with the kinds of stone tools a
by doctoboggan 16d ago
If 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.
- Nition 16d agoI can also imagine that someone with a lot of practice might be significantly faster than some unskilled researchers. I also don't think it rules out it being something for a child. It's not so rare to do big projects for you kids even today, over many evenings and weekends. And when you don't have any books to read or screens to watch...
- pinkmuffinere 16d agoYa, I tend to agree. I think I personally have spent 9 weeks of effort on gifts for 2-3 people in my lifetime, and I don't even have kids yet.
- samudrijan 16d agoThat’s because you don’t have kids yet.
- broken-kebab 15d agoNot being a hunter-gatherer also helps, I imagine.
- thayne 16d agoIt could also be passed down through multiple siblings and possibly generations. And possibly the creation of it was itself a pasttime.
- doctoboggan 16d agoYes you are right not sure how I flubbed that one. Made an edit in my comment.
- samudrijan 16d agoToo busy thinking about sex and religion.
- nofriend 16d ago>Nearly a year of "full time" work at 40hrs/week went into this You uh, missed a decimal point there. A year at 40 hours/week would be 2000 hours, not 200. The quote "unless the sculpture was created slowly at odd moments over several months" seems accurate in light of that, but rather odd: why wouldn't it be created slowly at odd moments over several months, or even years? Was prehistoric man lacking in free time? The article eventually continues: "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?" Keeping a fire going or protecting from predators are tasks with rather a lot of down time. I can easily imagine a person doing either of those while also whittling on a piece of bone. It's also just ridiculous to assume that subsistence living meant being constantly on the verge of starvation. Sometimes times were bad, and many people died. Then later, times were good, food could be obtained easily, and plenty of time would be left over for leisure tasks.
- IsTom 15d agoI can imagine them not having a lot to do during winter nights, besides sitting by the fire. That's a lot of time for carving.
- broken-kebab 15d agoThey had a lot to do during winter, though, cause it was a society with subsistence economy.
- IsTom 15d agoIf 30-40k timelines are right that's way before agriculture and any kind of "economy". It's firmly hunter-gatherers and there's not much of that to do when it's after sunset.
- broken-kebab 15d ago"Economy" by merits of its definition is an applicable term for hunter-gathering societies. And is used widely in this quality, in fact. Nobody says they couldn't find a time to do carving (existence of the artifact shows they could). The issue in question is comparative value of the time spent on it. Hunting, gathering and concomitant works were certainly both physically and mentally very demanding activities, and their way of life required thoughtful spending of energy. Consequently, whatever irregular pastime they had should have to be extremely valuable. It makes 'toy theory' somewhat unconvincing.
- harpiaharpyja 15d agoPastimes are in fact incredibly valuable. And it's possible the motivations that led to the creation of this artifact wasn't just all about the end product.
- rayiner 15d agoSubsistence economy as a hunter gatherer is much easier than as a farmer.