Does this go here or in the comedy thread? Where is the comedy thread? That settles it. Here it is, then.
This is fabulously entertaining. And the article that Nizhal Yoddha is referring to is even more so, particularly its conclusions on how the uhhh... voluptuous... figurines could mean that language and mental leaps were "therefore" also taken at that time (without providing any further evidence of relation to that effect; mere speculation).
http://rajeev2004.blogspot.com/2009/05/ear...as-done-by.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>earliest pornography was done by european 'aryans'</b>
may 16th, 2009
i see i have to embellish the 'Aryan' Tourist Theory (copyright) with the 'Aryan' Big Boobs Theory.
see, even though humans evolved in africa, it took the white 'Aryans' to invent pornography. yeah, and white 'Aryan' women were the first to invent big boobs. after all, even today the biggest boobs belong to white 'Aryan' women -- see pamela anderson and other surgically-enhanced hollywood starlets displaying their talents. yeah, white 'Aryans' are superior in so many ways, i have lost count!
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/0...sculpture/
Posted by nizhal yoddha at 5/16/2009 10:50:00 PM 0 comments <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
From the above link
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Oldest Known Sculpture Is Busty Clue to Brain Boom</b>
(Title makes the linkage already.)
  * By Brandon Keim
<img src='http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2009/05/firstfigurine.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />
From a cave in southwestern Germany, archaeologists have unearthed the oldest known piece of figurative art. More than an ancient artistic impulse, it may signify a profound change in modern human brains.
Carved from ivory and depicting a woman with exaggerated sexual features, the pinkie-sized sculpture is 36,000 years old, or about 5,000 years older than the next-earliest piece of figurative art.
Though 77,000-year-old carvings have been found in South Africa, they consist of cross-hatched lines. Such abstractions are relatively simple compared to representational art, which requires high levels of cognition to both conceive and make.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the rise of figurine-carving modern human cultures in Europe coincided with the decline of Neanderthals. Some anthropologists suspect that humans of the era experienced a leap in mental abilities, fueled by random genetic mutation or the neurological nourishment of language and culture.
âThe advent of fully representational, âfigurativeâ art seems at present to be a European phenomenon, without any documented parallels in Africa or elsewhere earlier than about 30,000 years ago,â writes University of Cambridge archaeologist Paul Mellars in a commentary accompanying the discovery, published Wednesday in Nature.
<b>âHow far this âsymbolic explosionâ associated with the origins and dispersal of our species reflects</b> a major, mutation-driven reorganization in the cognitive capacities of the human brain â <b><span style='color:red'>perhaps associated with a similar leap forward in the complexity of language</b> â remains a fascinating and contentious issue,â he wrote.</span><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Artwork supposedly depicting humans (I'm still trying to see the resemblance here) implies that the humans who made it were clever? If they were so clever why does the artwork look further from reality than say early cave paintings. But I suppose it's insensitive of me to criticise art. Let's assume it is realistic - since the humans who made it, we're told, were so clever.
Then ancient hominids in Germany didn't look very human... Are we to conclude that the - oryans was it? - were malformed... The heads are so puny, how do we know their brains were large enough to give rise to this amazing, unique 'leap forward' in 'language' and other things arising from the hypothesised increased 'cognitive capabilities' that are supposedly implied by these figures? Does this mean the heads of other early humans were even punier? "No no, you Indoo. It's abstraction, don't you see - and *that* is what proves that these hominids were clever: they've abstracted certain aspects of the human form to present a piece that summarises their idea, their take - if you will - on those essentials that they wish to convey. They have gone beyond mere creativity and replication, they've gone on to conveying *indirect concepts*." (Or some such cheese.)
Hmmm yeah, that's umm ... uhh .... really profound. One question. If they were capable of abstraction and hence also, one may suppose, capable of conceiving of art for art's sake, why did they then choose to make UGLY images? Yeah? Where's the aesthetics? Abstraction and yet no appreciation for beauty. Wow. Clever bunch. Meh.
And oh yes, somehow bringing in language to the equation. They must claim language of course. Since that is, after all, the most significant difference between the other animals and the human animals. "And if one could prove that origins of language arose in Europe, then it matters not that humanity came from Africa."
Figurines must "therefore" 'prove' oryans (since nothing else so far could). Why not. They have searched so hard and for so long, doesn't their perseverance deserve some recompense?
Now they will claim that all sculpture are an oryan innovation, similar to the claim attempted on all horse-riding and horse-training and horsey things anywhere in the world. Or the claim that all blue eyes 'must be' from the Black Sea region - or wherever they decided it was - after a too mini sampling exercise that ignored input from large swathes of concerned geography. And which also conveniently ignored blue-eyed cats and dogs. After all, if other mammals can develop blue eyes without human oryans having somehow genetically bequeathed it to them, then why can't other human populations independently have developed the same. Or so I thought. If one confined human gene pool can give rise to the phenotype at a certain time and under certain conditions/circumstances, can't others? Or are such circumstances never allowed to be repeated in the human case, since the claim is that oryans are unique, special, a one-off, a <i>miracle</i>.
Anyway, they have now claimed cultivation, domestication, language, art. What next. Origin of science and scientific thinking, I'm guessing (imagination falls under those last things as it is necessitated by art, language and science; every innovation actually). The wheel. Or did they already claim the wheel, I forget. Fire. Oh yes, fire is very important. We saw how the Orang-Utan in The Jungle Book needed fire in order to be human/compete with humanity on equal footing. So that is another thing that distinguishes man from the other monkeys. Who but the oryan could have discovered that? <- Let's not even try to prove this and just nod our heads in ready acquiescence, shall we. Since if the oryans came up with all that other stuff, can't they have latched onto fire too: they then went back in time and gave it to the earlier human ancestors who had also used it. See, and that takes care of the invention of the time machine as well.
The non-existent jeebus creepus and his Japhetic-Hamitic saga is a miracle of convenience.
The sad thing is, the find in itself is very fascinating. It would be nice if they actually investigated *that* instead of wandering into the realms of oryan fantasy. Again.
This is fabulously entertaining. And the article that Nizhal Yoddha is referring to is even more so, particularly its conclusions on how the uhhh... voluptuous... figurines could mean that language and mental leaps were "therefore" also taken at that time (without providing any further evidence of relation to that effect; mere speculation).
http://rajeev2004.blogspot.com/2009/05/ear...as-done-by.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>earliest pornography was done by european 'aryans'</b>
may 16th, 2009
i see i have to embellish the 'Aryan' Tourist Theory (copyright) with the 'Aryan' Big Boobs Theory.
see, even though humans evolved in africa, it took the white 'Aryans' to invent pornography. yeah, and white 'Aryan' women were the first to invent big boobs. after all, even today the biggest boobs belong to white 'Aryan' women -- see pamela anderson and other surgically-enhanced hollywood starlets displaying their talents. yeah, white 'Aryans' are superior in so many ways, i have lost count!
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/0...sculpture/
Posted by nizhal yoddha at 5/16/2009 10:50:00 PM 0 comments <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
From the above link
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Oldest Known Sculpture Is Busty Clue to Brain Boom</b>
(Title makes the linkage already.)
  * By Brandon Keim
<img src='http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2009/05/firstfigurine.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />
From a cave in southwestern Germany, archaeologists have unearthed the oldest known piece of figurative art. More than an ancient artistic impulse, it may signify a profound change in modern human brains.
Carved from ivory and depicting a woman with exaggerated sexual features, the pinkie-sized sculpture is 36,000 years old, or about 5,000 years older than the next-earliest piece of figurative art.
Though 77,000-year-old carvings have been found in South Africa, they consist of cross-hatched lines. Such abstractions are relatively simple compared to representational art, which requires high levels of cognition to both conceive and make.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the rise of figurine-carving modern human cultures in Europe coincided with the decline of Neanderthals. Some anthropologists suspect that humans of the era experienced a leap in mental abilities, fueled by random genetic mutation or the neurological nourishment of language and culture.
âThe advent of fully representational, âfigurativeâ art seems at present to be a European phenomenon, without any documented parallels in Africa or elsewhere earlier than about 30,000 years ago,â writes University of Cambridge archaeologist Paul Mellars in a commentary accompanying the discovery, published Wednesday in Nature.
<b>âHow far this âsymbolic explosionâ associated with the origins and dispersal of our species reflects</b> a major, mutation-driven reorganization in the cognitive capacities of the human brain â <b><span style='color:red'>perhaps associated with a similar leap forward in the complexity of language</b> â remains a fascinating and contentious issue,â he wrote.</span><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Artwork supposedly depicting humans (I'm still trying to see the resemblance here) implies that the humans who made it were clever? If they were so clever why does the artwork look further from reality than say early cave paintings. But I suppose it's insensitive of me to criticise art. Let's assume it is realistic - since the humans who made it, we're told, were so clever.
Then ancient hominids in Germany didn't look very human... Are we to conclude that the - oryans was it? - were malformed... The heads are so puny, how do we know their brains were large enough to give rise to this amazing, unique 'leap forward' in 'language' and other things arising from the hypothesised increased 'cognitive capabilities' that are supposedly implied by these figures? Does this mean the heads of other early humans were even punier? "No no, you Indoo. It's abstraction, don't you see - and *that* is what proves that these hominids were clever: they've abstracted certain aspects of the human form to present a piece that summarises their idea, their take - if you will - on those essentials that they wish to convey. They have gone beyond mere creativity and replication, they've gone on to conveying *indirect concepts*." (Or some such cheese.)
Hmmm yeah, that's umm ... uhh .... really profound. One question. If they were capable of abstraction and hence also, one may suppose, capable of conceiving of art for art's sake, why did they then choose to make UGLY images? Yeah? Where's the aesthetics? Abstraction and yet no appreciation for beauty. Wow. Clever bunch. Meh.
And oh yes, somehow bringing in language to the equation. They must claim language of course. Since that is, after all, the most significant difference between the other animals and the human animals. "And if one could prove that origins of language arose in Europe, then it matters not that humanity came from Africa."
Figurines must "therefore" 'prove' oryans (since nothing else so far could). Why not. They have searched so hard and for so long, doesn't their perseverance deserve some recompense?
Now they will claim that all sculpture are an oryan innovation, similar to the claim attempted on all horse-riding and horse-training and horsey things anywhere in the world. Or the claim that all blue eyes 'must be' from the Black Sea region - or wherever they decided it was - after a too mini sampling exercise that ignored input from large swathes of concerned geography. And which also conveniently ignored blue-eyed cats and dogs. After all, if other mammals can develop blue eyes without human oryans having somehow genetically bequeathed it to them, then why can't other human populations independently have developed the same. Or so I thought. If one confined human gene pool can give rise to the phenotype at a certain time and under certain conditions/circumstances, can't others? Or are such circumstances never allowed to be repeated in the human case, since the claim is that oryans are unique, special, a one-off, a <i>miracle</i>.
Anyway, they have now claimed cultivation, domestication, language, art. What next. Origin of science and scientific thinking, I'm guessing (imagination falls under those last things as it is necessitated by art, language and science; every innovation actually). The wheel. Or did they already claim the wheel, I forget. Fire. Oh yes, fire is very important. We saw how the Orang-Utan in The Jungle Book needed fire in order to be human/compete with humanity on equal footing. So that is another thing that distinguishes man from the other monkeys. Who but the oryan could have discovered that? <- Let's not even try to prove this and just nod our heads in ready acquiescence, shall we. Since if the oryans came up with all that other stuff, can't they have latched onto fire too: they then went back in time and gave it to the earlier human ancestors who had also used it. See, and that takes care of the invention of the time machine as well.
The non-existent jeebus creepus and his Japhetic-Hamitic saga is a miracle of convenience.
The sad thing is, the find in itself is very fascinating. It would be nice if they actually investigated *that* instead of wandering into the realms of oryan fantasy. Again.