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When Homo sapiens hit upon the power of art

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Dekator
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« on: December 17, 2012, 12:22:45 am »

"This show has been tens of thousand of years in the making and it will give visitors a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the cream of Europe's ice age art," says exhibition organiser, Jill Cook, the British Museum's curator of European prehistory. "This show marks the beginning of the modern world. For the first time, humans were displaying the full imagination of modern humanity and externalising thoughts. They are making objects not just for practical value but to express ideas in a symbolic, highly skilful manner."

Consider the Montastruc reindeer. The slightly smaller of the two animals has got six little nipples while the larger, behind it, has male genitalia. "Both animals have antlers, however, which indicates we are dealing with reindeer, the only deer species whose females grow antlers," says Cook. "Crucially, males lose theirs in December but females keep theirs. So this is not a winter scene though the female's flank, beautifully shaded by the sculptor, shows she has grown a thick coat. So winter must be close. In other words, this is an autumnal scene, a time of migration. Hence the swim across a river. It is all beautifully observed."

The carving was made by a member of the Cro-Magnons, hunter-gatherer descendants of the first modern humans to occupy Europe around 45,000 years ago, and who lived there through the last ice age, which began 40,000 years ago and endured until 10,000 years before present. Reindeer, with their rich meat and thick pelts, would have been vital to tribes' survival and the Montastruc sculpture, with its delicate rib cages, antlers and coats, show how carefully the Cro-Magnons must have observed them. As Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, says: "This work was created by someone who had spent a long time watching reindeer."

Objects such as these demonstrate more than craftsmanship, however. They show that Homo sapiens, uniquely among species, was demonstrating a sense of imagination. These craftsmen were not merely attempting to mimic nature. They were embellishing it.

Take the Lion Man of Hohlenstein Stadel, which is being loaned by the Ulm Museum in southern Germany. At least, 40,000 years old, this 1ft high figure, also carved from a mammoth tusk, depicts a figure with a human body and a lion's head. It is remarkable for several reasons.

For a start, it was made by a sculptor with incredible knowledge of his or her materials. Mammoth ivory is extremely hard to carve, but the artist who made the Lion Man knew that all tusks have a pulp cavity and took advantage of that to create two lengths of ivory on either side of the cavity. These became the Lion Man's legs. The work shows great skill and imagination. A half-man, half-lion does not exist in nature, after all.
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