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I don't know why art historians are being so naive, but the venus figurines are obviously prehistoric porn. Dat rear end, dem tittays
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Jul 12, 2017 01:08
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Mad Hamish posted:I don't know why art historians are being so naive, but the venus figurines are obviously prehistoric porn. That was the original assumption about them.
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Jul 12, 2017 01:33
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My first instinct would be to think she was a representation of some sort of goddess of plenty--cf the laughing buddha e: though there's obviously no reason religious art can't be porn too cheetah7071 fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Jul 12, 2017 |
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Jul 12, 2017 01:37
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cheetah7071 posted:My first instinct would be to think she was a representation of some sort of goddess of plenty--cf the laughing buddha Doubles as a dildo for the laaay-dies.
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Jul 12, 2017 02:30
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Mad Hamish posted:I don't know why art historians are being so naive, but the venus figurines are obviously prehistoric porn.  I have to think that even with something like the fascinus, where we know its religious significance, that there was also an understanding that penises are just funny. You can't make a penis with its own smaller penis and not at least have some sense of humor about it.
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Jul 12, 2017 02:31
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Arglebargle III posted:Yeah. Court Historian was an official post. Right, but it was a literate society so I'm asking what other kinds of texts we have from the era. e: Doesn't have to be a straight up history, to have historical value.
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Jul 12, 2017 02:37
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LingcodKilla posted:Doubles as a dildo for the laaay-dies. That seems sort of a stretch for the venus figures. . . although archeologists have found plenty of uh, ambiguous artifacts.  From the BBC: "The siltstone phallus is highly polished. It is 19.2cm tall and has a width of 2.8cm. It was reassembled from 14 fragments found in the Hohle Fels Cave [dated to circa 28,000 ya]. The close-ups of opposite sides show etched rings around the head, and markings that may have come from knapping flint. (Image: J. Liptak)"
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Jul 12, 2017 04:37
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Squalid posted:That seems sort of a stretch for the venus figures. . . although archeologists have found plenty of uh, ambiguous artifacts.  like I imagine it wasn't all chipped up when, uh, in circulation, but that there is a dildo made of rock.
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Jul 12, 2017 04:47
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hailthefish posted:That was the original assumption about them. People have always been the same, and we will always be amused / titillated by dicks and boobs. It's the human condition. We can read ancient Greek joke books and they're still funny today, because 95% of them are variations on 'people from Shelbyville are SOOO DUMB' 'HOW DUMB ARE THEY?'. Some of them are amazing, though: quote:Someone needled a jokester: "I had your wife, without paying a dime." He replied: "It's my duty as a husband to couple with such a monstrosity. What made you do it?'  quote:A man, just back from a trip abroad, went to an incompetent fortune-teller. He asked about his family, and the fortune-teller replied: "Everyone is fine, especially your father." When the man objected that his father had been dead for ten years, the reply came: "You have no clue who your real father is."
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Jul 12, 2017 04:47
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FAUXTON posted:
Where is the stone fleshlight?
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Jul 12, 2017 04:57
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FAUXTON posted:
Eh. I know a person who used a sufficient variety of church candles to develop a preference (Catholic ones, if you're curious). Besides, it has been, uh, empirically proven that vaginal secretions are capable of dissolving some forms of stalagmites if given enough, uh, time. Do not underestimate how desperately horny people get.
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Jul 12, 2017 04:58
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Human beings are degenerate.
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Jul 12, 2017 05:15
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Oh, the times! Oh, the customs!
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Jul 12, 2017 05:22
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my dad posted:Besides, it has been, uh, empirically proven that vaginal secretions are capable of dissolving some forms of stalagmites if given enough, uh, time. Please tell me this is a joke, and if it isn't please link the abstract.
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Jul 12, 2017 05:24
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Please tell me this is a joke, and if it isn't please link the abstract. i think they might be misremembering this post that was going around tumblr awhile ago it's a matter of chemistry slight acidity + water solubility = shenanigans
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Jul 12, 2017 05:43
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Please tell me this is a joke, and if it isn't please link the abstract. Partially a joke, therefore the uhs, there wasn't an actual paper or anything, it's basically this: AriadneThread posted:i think they might be misremembering this post that was going around tumblr awhile ago + I remember hearing somewhere about an actual stalagmite that was vaguely dick shaped and ended up visibly damaged by repeated use. Though that could just be my memory playing tricks on me and actually just be me misremembering the above.
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Jul 12, 2017 08:47
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Doctor Malaver posted:Great! This topic has come up and there are opposing schools of thought without a clear answer. The one answer I can give for sure is that centurions were required to be literate. This is mentioned in documentation. One can assume all officers would be literate. Expanding that, it is reasonable to assume that the patrician and equestrian classes were overwhelmingly literate. The real question is about the general population. I am swayed by the side that says literacy was relatively common in the urban population. Relative compared to other pre-modern societies, not today. We're still probably talking less than half of city dwellers, and among the rural population literacy was likely rare. Some of the arguments for it: A) There is a significant amount of surviving written material in cities which is aimed toward the common people. We have graffiti written by average people, and extensive amounts of written advertisements and public announcement sorts of things. If literacy were rare in the cities, it seems unlikely people would spend the time having text advertisements painted, or that you'd find a bunch of "Gaius hosed Cassius' wife" scratched in the walls of bathrooms. B) Schooling was more widely available than in, say, medieval Europe. Schools also were not intended for the rich--those people hired private tutors. They aren't public schools, but if you were a pleb with a comfortable income from your bar or whatever it would not be odd for you to send your kids to school for at least a few years. We can safely assume anyone attending school learned to read. C) We have stuff like the Vindolanda tablets. Some of it may have been written by others, but the fact that ordinary soldiers and their families were exchanging letters means at least someone involved had to be literate. D) The Romans had things like rudimentary public libraries, which again would be a useless institution if reading is rare. Estimating an actual literacy rate is just guesswork. But even the people who think Roman literacy was still rare will admit that there clearly was more literacy than you find in the Middle Ages.
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Jul 12, 2017 11:02
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Grand Fromage posted:B) Schooling was more widely available than in, say, medieval Europe. Schools also were not intended for the rich--those people hired private tutors. They aren't public schools, but if you were a pleb with a comfortable income from your bar or whatever it would not be odd for you to send your kids to school for at least a few years. We can safely assume anyone attending school learned to read. So what was education like for the non patricians? Do we know anything about what or how they studied? We've read about and discussed the elites hiring greek tutors, learning rhetoric, reading plato and socrates and all the other philosphers... A lot of that was geared to prepare those kids to go into public office, but i can't imagine this same kind of education would be as useful for the butcher's kid aside from literacy.
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Jul 12, 2017 16:30
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I think generally, aside from reading and writing, it would have essentially been teaching the butcher's kid the necessary day-to-day skills that they'd need to survive. How does money work, navigating the city (or whatever), how to get different services, etc.
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Jul 12, 2017 16:51
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SeaWolf posted:So what was education like for the non patricians? Do we know anything about what or how they studied? We've read about and discussed the elites hiring greek tutors, learning rhetoric, reading plato and socrates and all the other philosphers... Extremely memorization-heavy with horribly strict discipline and competitive classroom dynamics, focused on literacy and perhaps basic numeracy. I forget which, but either Cicero or Pliny talk about how happy they are that they received the upper-class Greek style education instead of going to a school due to the atmosphere of them.
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Jul 12, 2017 16:52
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SeaWolf posted:So what was education like for the non patricians? Do we know anything about what or how they studied? We've read about and discussed the elites hiring greek tutors, learning rhetoric, reading plato and socrates and all the other philosphers... We've got a pretty good idea of how ancient Babylonian school worked. They've dug up lots of old schools with thousands of teaching tablets. These schools were mainly for professional scribes, though, not working class. Apparently learning cuneiform was difficult enough that most people were illiterate. http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/obmc/index.html http://www.sumerian.org/Frayne-ScribalEducation.htm
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Jul 12, 2017 17:35
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Jazerus posted:Extremely memorization-heavy with horribly strict discipline and competitive classroom dynamics, focused on literacy and perhaps basic numeracy. I forget which, but either Cicero or Pliny talk about how happy they are that they received the upper-class Greek style education instead of going to a school due to the atmosphere of them. I think it was Aurelius.
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Jul 12, 2017 17:59
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:True, but how much of a modern bodybuilder's musculature is useful for everyday things like cleaning stables with rivers or beating lions to death with sticks? I'm not a historian at all, but as I understand it classical Greeks considered athleticism and physical beauty (based on the ideal male form in those statues) to be a virtue basically equally as important as martial prowess or moral virtue. "Gymnasium" is a Greek word, "Plato" was the dude's wrestling nickname, Socrates is supposed to have said "“No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.” I think they were more or less like us, about equally into athletic strength and just looking good - it wasn't at all just a side effect of being good at physical labour. They 100% hung out in the gym all day polishing their pecs and considering it a civic duty, would have popped steroids if they had them and posed without the speedo
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Jul 12, 2017 19:26
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I'm imagining these guys as total dudebros and it's cracking me up "Yo wassup bruh, you ever contemplated if there's an perfect deadlift, a deadlift from which all deadlifts are derived?"
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Jul 12, 2017 21:17
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That post is in need of some qualification since none of the philosophers, from whom we gather a lot of this understanding, would have agreed that physical excellence is as important as rational pursuits. It's subservient to higher virtues. All of these men, though, including Socrates, fought as hoplites. Moreover, even if Socrates was strong, for and brave, he is also reported to have been ugly, but is nonetheless held up in the symposium as the ultimate object of love because of his intellectual and moral properties.
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Jul 12, 2017 21:41
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Disinterested posted:, he is also reported to have been ugly, but is nonetheless held up in the symposium as the ultimate object of love because of his intellectual and moral properties. The ultimate goon fantasy
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Jul 12, 2017 22:41
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Appropriate, since he was also a troll.
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Jul 12, 2017 22:43
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Also because the people who say that about him are all men.
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Jul 12, 2017 22:49
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Disinterested posted:That post is in need of some qualification since none of the philosophers, from whom we gather a lot of this understanding, would have agreed that physical excellence is as important as rational pursuits. It's subservient to higher virtues. All of these men, though, including Socrates, fought as hoplites. Not an expert at all, but my understanding of Aristotle's virtue is that moral virtue and rationality are aspects of, but not sufficient for eudaimonia*. He specifically says that someone who's ugly or has no friends is unlikely to achieve eudaimonia. So fair enough, glistening abs aren't actually equally important as rational pursuits, but they're definitely both major considerations in your life. *basically the good/successful/best possible life
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Jul 13, 2017 00:03
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Magnus Manfist posted:Not an expert at all, but my understanding of Aristotle's virtue is that moral virtue and rationality are aspects of, but not sufficient for eudaimonia*. He specifically says that someone who's ugly or has no friends is unlikely to achieve eudaimonia. So fair enough, glistening abs aren't actually equally important as rational pursuits, but they're definitely both major considerations in your life. Eudaimonia is the good in which all other goods consist - their ultimate teleological goal. So from an Aristotelian perspective, yes, you have to achieve in every area of your life to fully achieve eudaimonia, but for Aristotle the most significant part of that is participation within the life of the community, since politics (because it organises every aspect of life, therefore can organise people towards people being more eudaimone) is the highest form of human activity. Likewise, in The Republic, Socrates, before he outlines Kalipolis (his ideal city), outlines a community in which people are just appetitively satiated, but then goes on to describe a city that does more than satisfy basic physical needs - and, as above, Socrates is held up as the ideal object of love in the Symposium because of his mental gifts and despite his physical gifts. The physical is important but it is secondary.
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Jul 13, 2017 00:15
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Aw, fair enough. I'm slightly disappointed they didn't literally think bench press was as important as philosophy.
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Jul 13, 2017 00:19
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Magnus Manfist posted:Aw, fair enough. I'm slightly disappointed they didn't literally think bench press was as important as philosophy. Someone I'm sure did, just maybe not the chief nerdlingers of Greek society.
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Jul 13, 2017 00:29
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If you can bench press Diogenes in his tub then Positivism is true.
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Jul 13, 2017 02:56
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Arglebargle III posted:If you can bench press Diogenes in his tub then Positivism is true. That's a lot of Capybaras to lift
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Jul 13, 2017 03:09
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"Why would a woman make art of herself when she can just look at other women" is possibly the stupidest thing I've heard in this thread where an occasional poster literally thinks Atlantis is real.
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Jul 13, 2017 03:44
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packetmantis posted:"Why would a woman make art of herself when she can just look at other women" is possibly the stupidest thing I've heard in this thread where an occasional poster literally thinks Atlantis is real. That's not what I said (or at least what I meant). I meant that she, not being stupid, would know that her view looking down was inaccurate. She's probably seen her reflection in water too, even if it isn't as good as a mirror. The idea that her view looking down is her best guess as to her own body shape is what's implausible to me
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Jul 13, 2017 03:46
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It's weird how the gazelle woman never gets brought up in fat acceptance arguments, they're even literally right next to each other in the exhibition.
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Jul 13, 2017 04:49
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cheetah7071 posted:That's not what I said (or at least what I meant). I meant that she, not being stupid, would know that her view looking down was inaccurate. She's probably seen her reflection in water too, even if it isn't as good as a mirror. The idea that her view looking down is her best guess as to her own body shape is what's implausible to me Why would some early human care that their sculpture was inaccurate? It's not like early humans weren't drawing stick people on the walls.
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Jul 13, 2017 04:57
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Why would some early human care that their sculpture was inaccurate? It's not like early humans weren't drawing stick people on the walls. Yeah it's definitely not impossible an early woman was looking down and sculpting what she saw, I'm just listing reasons why I think it's a bit more likely other hypotheses (that the sculpture is of a fertility/abundance goddess, that it's porn) are true cheetah7071 fucked around with this message at 07:05 on Jul 13, 2017 |
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Jul 13, 2017 05:20
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I still think it's the prehistoric myspace angle.
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Jul 13, 2017 07:05
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