Is the Lion a Lioness After All???

Thank you, Der Spiegel, so much, for this article!  I can't believe how blind these researchers are!

12/09/2011

Is the Lion Man a Woman?

Solving the Mystery of a 35,000-Year-Old Statue

By Matthias Schulz

Using a hand hoe and working in dim light, geologist Otto Völzing burrowed into the earth deep inside the Stadel cave in the Schwäbische Alb mountains of southwestern Germany. His finds were interesting to be sure, but nothing world-shaking: flints and the remnants of food eaten by prehistoric human beings.

Suddenly he struck a hard object -- and splintered a small statuette.

It was 1939 and Völzing didn't have much time. He had just been called up to serve in the military and World War II was about to begin. He quickly packed the pieces into a box and the excavation, which was being financed by the SS, was terminated on the same day.

The Lion Man found in the Stadel cave. The Paleolithic figurine, carved out of mammoth ivory, was found on the eve of World War I. Archeologists have been puzzling over its meaning ever since. Indeed, they haven't even decided on its gender. But new pieces found recently may help researchers solve the mystery.

For the next 30 years, little heed was paid to the pieces. But then, they were reassembled to create one of the most impressive sculptures of the Paleolithic Age.

Called the Lion Man, it is fashioned from the tusk of a mammoth and stands about 30 centimeters (12 inches) tall. Its creator polished it with saliva and leather -- and an experiment showed that it likely took the sculptor about 320 hours to carve the figure.

Copies of the famous ice age treasure are now on display in New York and Tokyo. The original, however, is heavily damaged -- and no one knows exactly what it looks like. Many fragments were overlooked in the cave when the prewar dig was so abruptly terminated. The figure achieved its current form in 1988. It consists of 220 parts, but about 30 percent of the body is still missing. Large segments of the surface have broken off.

The poor condition of the figurine has only made it more mysterious. Is it meant to represent a mythical creature, or a shaman hiding under an animal hide? Are the six stripes on the left upper arm meant to depict scarification marks or something else? And what was on the right arm, which is missing?

The genitalia are also unrecognizable. German archeologist and Upper Paleolithic expert Joachim Hahn has interpreted the small plate on the abdomen as a "penis in a hanging position." Elisabeth Schmid, a paleontologist, classified it as a pubic triangle.

It was the beginning of a bitter dispute over the gender of the small idol that erupted in the 1980s and continues to this day. The statue has been made into an "icon of the women's movement," says Kurt Wehrberger of the Ulm Museum, the owner of the precious object.

Those who believe that the Lion Man is in fact a woman are convinced that primitive societies were matriarchal. They contend that women of the period, instead of standing obediently by the cooking fire and watching over the children, hunted mammoths and set the tone when it came to rituals and the priesthood. But is this true?

The debate remains undecided today. But that could soon change, now that new fragments of the Lion Man have turned up.

The new discoveries came after archeologists once again turned their attention to the Stadel cave. They sifted through all of the rubble from 1939, explains excavator Claus-Joachim Kind -- and the results were sensational. "We found about 1,000 pieces, which presumably belong to the statue," Kind says.

Some of the fragments are tiny, only a few square millimeters in size, but the cache also includes pieces as long as a finger.

The figurine will be taken to the State Conservation Office in Esslingen, near Stuttgart, where it will be completely taken apart. The old glue joints will be dissolved and the filler made of beeswax and chalk, which was used as a placeholder, will be removed.

Then the statue will be reassembled piece by piece, a task that those involved await with great anticipation. "We will soon be able to view the most mysterious work of art from (the southwestern German state of) Baden-Württemberg in its original form," Kind hopes.

Already it is clear that the figurine will become a few centimeters taller due to new neck pieces that have been found. Furthermore, the gaping hole in the back can now be plugged, and the right arm has been found in its entirety. Additional decorations, including raised dots and strange-looking lines, have come to light.

These new revelations offer a greater insight into the mind of the prehistoric sculptor, who created the figure about 35,000 years ago. His ancestors had migrated to Europe, which had been controlled by the Neanderthals, shortly before.

The statue was found near traces of a fire site in a niche 27 meters (89 feet) from the mouth of the cave. When Kind was working at the site, he also found a decorated deer's tooth, the incisors of an arctic fox and ivory beads. The items could have been pieces from a decorative robe. Perhaps the niche served as a shaman's changing room.

It is considered likely that prehistoric sorcerers wore furs as costumes when they celebrated rituals around the campfire. Hybrid creatures -- half-man, half-beast -- also appear in cave drawings in France.

It would seem that the shamans' preferred costumes were the hides of the more dangerous representatives of Ice Age fauna. The cave lion weighed more than 250 kilograms (550 lbs.); one swipe of its giant paw would have been enough. A human being holding what looks like a musical instrument is depicted in a cave in the foothills of the Pyrenees. The figure is wearing the hide of a bison, an 800-kilogram colossus that was not to be trifled with. Perhaps hunters hoped to acquire the animal's strength and even take possession of its soul through masquerade and dance.

Studies about primitive peoples in Siberia suggest how these rites might have proceeded. Even into the modern age, their shamans wore antlers on their heads. There are similar accounts involving the Blackfeet Indians in North America. Their healers hopped around under bearskins to the sound of drums.

The Lion Man is standing on tiptoes. He, too, seems to be dancing.

But who is hidden underneath the robe? From time immemorial, the lion has been viewed as a symbol of the masculine virtues of courage and strength. Shamans still exist today in the Amazon region and Australia. Most are men.

On the other hand, the statuette has some perplexing features. The navel, a symbol of childbirth, is especially pronounced. A horizontal crease runs across the lower abdomen, a feature that is typically female.

Paleontologist Schmid believes that the figure once had breasts, which eventually broke off. According to Schmid, the transition from the thighs to the buttocks is also indicative of a female body. She made a model out of modeling clay, which is now in a safe in Ulm. It depicts the Lion Man with an ample bosom.

Many scholars dismissed the jarring replica as nonsense at the time. Nevertheless, there is at least one piece of evidence to support Schmid's theory. An image of a 14,000-year-old human body with an animal head discovered in the Las Caldas cave in Spain is obviously female. The head looks like that of an ibex, while the lower part of the body features female genitalia.

Does this mean that female shamans did exist? Were women in charge of the religion of our ancestors? The new finds could solve the mystery once and for all. Hundreds of tiny ivory fragments will have to be pieced together to create a statue that experts estimate will contain 20 percent more of its original material.

According to one of the excavators, there is also sufficient fragmentary material to reconstruct the genitalia. "We'll figure out the gender," he says.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan.

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Oh please!  This is a lioness.  If it was a male LION, where the hell is the mane?

Yes, it is probably meant to represent a shaman's robe and yes, there were plenty of female shamans "back in the day." Those female shamans didn't spring out of nowhere!  There is archaeological evidence for female shamans and either the author of this article was unaware of that evidence or was being deliberately "coy" - which totally sucks if that's the case.

If you accept current archaeological theory about how so-called "modern human" population spread out of Africa, one of the major "arrow" of movement was across Asia from the west to the east, where people eventually ended up against the Pacific Ocean.  As those people moved, they took along with them their beliefs and customs.  Duh!  I know there is archeological evidence for female shamans in Sibera, along the western coast of Russia, northeastern China and I think in Korea and Japan, too -- I've posted about these discoveries at this blog. 

As for the article's emphasis on the figurine's "genetalia," honestly, are we so penis-focused today that we can't see a Delta for the trees?  Geez Louise! 

There are two "configurations" the experts interviewed in the Der Spiegel article did not consider:

(1)  A female shaman wearing a lioness' skin and a "jock strap" in the shape of an enlarged "delta" to signifiy both a vagina and a penis - you know - the sacred union.

(2)  A male shaman wearing a lioness' skin and a delta-shaped "jock strap" in the shape of an enlarged "delta" over his penis to signify both a vagina and a penis - you know - the sacred union. 

Come on, people, this is Archaeology 101.  Throw out your preconceptions, open up your mind, think outside the box! 

Latest on 12,000 Year Old Female Shaman Burial in Israel

Prior posts:

Earliest known shaman grave site found
Tuesday, Nov 04, 2008

More on the Female Shaman Burial
Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Isis sent me the update. Thanks, 'Sis. From Discovery Channel News iphone app:

World's First Feast: Beef, Turtles and a Dead Shaman

Anthropologists have unearthed the leftovers of the world's first known organized feast, which took place around 12,000 years ago at a burial site in Israel, according to a new study.  Based on the findings, approximately 35 guests ate meat from 71 tortoises and at least three wild cattle while attending this first known human-orchestrated event involving food.

The discovery additionally provides the earliest known compelling evidence for a shaman burial, the apparent reason for the feasting. A shaman is an individual who performs rituals and engages in other practices for healing or divination.

In this case, the shaman was a woman.

"I wasn't surprised that the shaman was a woman, because women have often taken on shamanistic roles as healers, magicians and spiritual leaders in societies across the globe," lead author Natalie Munro told Discovery News.

Munro, a University of Connecticut anthropologist, and colleague Leore Grosman of Hebrew University in Jerusalem excavated and studied the shaman's skeleton and associated feasting remains. These were found at the burial site, Hilazon Tachtit cave, located about nine miles west of the Sea of Galilee in Israel.

According to the study, published in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the grave consisted of an oval-shaped basin that was intentionally cut into the cave's floor.

"After the oval was excavated, the sides and bottom of the floor were lined with stone slabs lined and plastered with clay brought into the cave from outside," said Munro.

The 71 tortoise shells, previously butchered for meat removal, were found situated under, around and on top of the remains of the woman. The woman's skeleton indicates she suffered from deformities that would have possibly made her limp and "given her an unnatural, asymmetrical appearance." A large triangular stone slab was placed over the grave to seal it.

Bones from at least three butchered aurochs -- large ancestors of today's domestic cattle -- were unearthed in a nearby hollow. An auroch's tail, a wild boar forearm, a leopard pelvis and two marten skulls were also found.  The total amount of meat could have fed 35 people, but it is possible that many more attended the event.

"These remains attest to the unique position of this individual within her community and to her special relationship with the animal world," Munro said.

Before this discovery, other anthropologists had correctly predicted that early feasting might have occurred just prior to the dawn of agriculture.  Harvard's Ofer Bar-Yosef, for example, found that fig trees were being domesticated in the Near East about 11,400 years ago, making them the first known domesticated crop. Staples such as wheat, barley and legumes were domesticated in the region roughly a thousand years later. Full-scale agriculture occurred later, about 10,000 years ago.

As agriculture began, however, "there was a critical switch in the human mind: from exploiting the earth as it is to actively changing the environment to suit our needs," Bar-Yosef said.

Munro agrees and thinks the change could help to explain the advent of communal feasting.

"People were coming into contact with each other a lot, and that can create friction," she said. "Before, they could get up and leave when they had problems with the neighbors. Now, these public events served as community-building opportunities, which helped to relieve tensions and solidify social relationships."

Ivory 'Maskette' Uncovered at Arctic Canadian Site

Hmmmm, perhaps the cross-hatching on this beautifully preserved 5 centimeter ivory 'maskette' aren't just meant to represent "tatooes"...  What follows here is an excerpt.  For the full article, please see Archaeologists discover ancient ivory maskette on Canadian Arctic island
Submitted by owenjarus on Thu, 07/08/2010 - 22:14

The Nuvuk Islands lie off the northern tip of Quebec, close to the modern day settlement of Ivujivik. A team of archaeologists from the Avataq Cultural Institute and Laval University, including nearly a dozen local high school students learning about archaeology, have been exploring the islands.

They have uncovered two Dorset houses [the full article explains what the Dorset culture was], each of them nine meters long, that date to somewhere between 1,500 and 800 years ago. Constructed of stone and sod they were sunk partly into the ground to help insulate them.

One of the most intriguing artefacts they’ve found is a 5 centimetre long ivory maskette that may have been used by a shaman – a person who would have connected the people with the spiritual world. It’s the first complete maskette found in northern Quebec (an area also known as Nunavik) in more than 50 years.

“It’s quite possible that it had some kind of shamanic connection, there was some kind of religious or spiritual side to it,” said archaeologist Susan Lofthouse, in an interview with Heritage Key.

It has a hole near the top which means it probably would have been worn like an amulet. It was cut out of walrus ivory and crafted with great skill as shown by the small details.

Two nostrils (representing the nose) are cut into the centre. Mouth, ears and eyes were also depicted. The maskette has an “x-ray motif” – lines that run across it. It’s something commonly seen in art from this time period.

“A lady from Nunavik suggested to me that the lines represent tattoos – indicating that the face represents a woman,” wrote Lofthouse in a recent paper.

There is more evidence that this maskette represents a woman.

At the top of the mask there is a round shape that looks like a bun. “Historically Inuit women would wear top knots on top of their heads,” said Lofthouse. “Their hair would be kind of tied up into a bun on top of their head – it looks quite similar to that.”

So could this maskette have been used by a female shaman? “Traditionally shamans were more often men (however) there have been accounts of female shamans,” said Lofthouse. “It could have been related to magic that pertains to women.”

More on the Female Shaman Burial

Follow-up post (see below for initial post)

Here's an image and further explanation/description of the find.

Ancient Grave May Have Belonged to Shaman By Michael BalterScience

NOW Daily News

3 November 2008

Before there were priests or doctors, people seeking solace or treatment for an illness often called in a shaman, an intermediary between the human and spirit worlds.

Archaeologists working in Israel now claim that a 12,000-year-old grave of a woman buried with various animal and human body parts is that of an early shaman. If true, it could mean that shamanism arose during a critical period in human cultural evolution.

Although largely supplanted by organized religion, shamanism is still widespread in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. For example, many Eskimo groups around the Arctic Circle practice shamanism. The roots of shamanism reach back at least to the ancient Greeks and possibly even to prehistoric times. Many archaeologists assume that shamanism preceded organized religion, and some see depictions of shamans in cave art from 15,000 years ago or earlier--although that interpretation is controversial.

But recent excavations at Hilazon Tachtit, a cave west of the Sea of Galilee in Israel, may provide new support for prehistoric shamanism. Hilazon Tachtit was occupied by the Natufians, a people who inhabited the Near East between about 15,000 and 11,500 years ago. Most archaeologists see

Natufian culture as a transition between hunting and gathering and the sedentary lifestyles of early farmers. At Hilazon Tachtit, a team led by archaeologist Leore Grosman of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has found the remains of at least 25 people, most in collective burials. But one was treated differently. A woman, about 45 years old when she died and whose pelvis and spine were deformed, was buried separately, accompanied by a menagerie of animal remains. Among her grave goods were tail bones from wild cattle, a wing bone from a golden eagle, the shells of 50 tortoises, and a large foot from another person.

The team, which reports its findings online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, notes that tortoises, cow tails, and eagle wings play a role in the ritualistic practices of many shamans today and that many societies ascribe special powers to physically disabled people. "It seems that the woman in the Natufian burial was perceived as being in a close relationship with these animal spirits," the authors write. They suggest that shamanism either sparked, or was the result of, the cultural upheavals that accompanied the agricultural revolution in the Near East.

"This is an extremely important report on a rare find at a critical time of cultural evolution," says Brian Hayden, an archaeologist at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada. Ian Kuijt, an anthropologist at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, adds that the "authors have done an excellent job of supporting their argument" for prehistoric shamanism. But Mina Evron, an archaeologist at the University of Haifa in Israel, cautions that there may be alternative explanations, though she doesn't offer one herself. Just because the team's "colorful interpretation" seems plausible, she says, "it ain't necessarily so."

Earliest known shaman grave site found

A significant and important discovery. A female shaman's burial. As I understand prior evidence, the earliest shamans were of both sexes. Tue Nov 4, 8:29 am ET LONDON (Reuters) – An ancient grave unearthed in modern-day Israel containing 50 tortoise shells, a human foot and body parts from numerous animals is likely one of the earliest known shaman burial sites, researchers said on Monday. The 12,000-year-old grave [10,000 BCE] dates back to the Natufian people who were the first society to adopt a sedentary lifestyle, Hebrew University of Jerusalem researcher Leore Grosman and colleagues said. "The interment rituals and the method used to construct and seal the grave suggest this is the burial of an ancient shaman, one of the earliest known from the archaeological record," they wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Shamans play an important role in many cultures, mediating between the human and spiritual worlds and acting as messengers, healers, magicians to serve the community, the researchers said. The Israeli team found the bones in a small cave in the lower Galilee region of present-day Israel that was a Natufian burial ground for a least 28 people. At the time of burial, more than 10 large stones were placed directly on the head, pelvis, and arms of the elderly woman whose body was laid on its side. The legs were spread apart and folded inward at the knee. The special treatment of the body and use of stones to keep it in a certain position suggests the woman held a unique position in the community, likely some sort of a shaman, the researchers said. "The burial of the woman...is unlike any burial found in the Natufian or the preceding Palaeolithic periods," Grosman's team wrote. "We argue that this burial is consistent with expectations for a shaman's grave." The woman was also interred with some unusual grave goods, including the complete tortoise shells and select body-parts of a wild boar, an eagle, a cow, a leopard, and two martens, as well as a complete human foot. The grave portrays several hallmarks that later become central in the spiritual arena of cultures worldwide, the researchers added. "Tortoises, cow tails, eagle wings, and fur-bearing animals continue to play important symbolic and shamanistic roles in the spiritual arena of human cultures worldwide today," they wrote. "It seems that the woman in the Natufian burial was perceived as being in a close relationship with these animal spirits." (Reporting by Michael Kahn, Editing by Maggie Fox and Jon Boyle)