Like a Rock: Paleolithic Sex...or lack thereof...

I've been trying to come up with a research topic for our final presentation. I thought I had a pretty interesting idea, that is what is the origin of erotic art? But in the Cave Painters Curtis writes, "it's also surprising that the caves are very chaste. There are pictures of vulvas, penises that are occasionally erect, pregnant women, and a variety of geometric shapes that suggest male or female genitals. but the animals are never actually mating and neither are the humans...one small, flat rock has an engraving of a man and woman having sex, but that is the only such representation ever found from these prehistoric times" (17).
In an attempt at humor, Curtis later quotes Leroi-Gourhan  saying that "'there are no scenes of copulation in Paleolithic art'... about ten years later the archaeologist Jean Clottes showed Leroi-Gourhan the engraving on a flat stone of a Paleolithic couple having sex. Leroi-Gourhan looked at the engraving for a moment and said, 'Well, I have written that there are no sexual scenes in Paleolithic art. Now there is at least that one'" (162).

La Marche, France

So already the chips are stacked against me. I start looking into my topic this week and I'm becoming more and more dismayed. Despite a wealth of newspaper articles and media reports on this kind of erotic art, there is very little scholarly writing. I don't particularly understand this. If there were Venus figurines and fertility carvings coming from this time period, why no erotic cave paintings? Furthermore, there is almost no analytical writing on the few images that have been found. Frustrated with JSTOR and a few other search engines, I started to read the google articles just for fun.

WHAT A RIDICULOUS BUNCH OF CRAP!

I found out first hand the dangers of extrapolating the story way beyond archaeological evidence (method 1 from last weeks blog)...pure sensationalism. Basing his conclusions on a few phallic symbols, images of spears, and the abundance of animals, one archaeologist claims that the cave paintings were just ancient expressions of teenage graffiti wrought with gore and sex!

"'In the graffiti, there is a lot of below-the-belt-art,' Guthrie said. 'The people in the art are predominantly women, and not a single one has any clothes on.' But these weren't just any women, they were Pleistocene Pamela Andersons adorned with ludicrously huge breasts and hips. The walls were also decorated with graphic depictions of genitalia."  (http://www.livescience.com/7028-ancient-cave-art-full-teenage-graffiti.html) 

Pleistocene Pamela Andersons!!! The truth is, despite some phallic and vulvic cave art images very little is known about Paleolithic sexuality. It could all be about some kind of human-animal-sexual-magic, but we don't know why the images were put there so at this point these are just wild guesses in an attempt to attract media attention. Way to objectify female sexuality! Maybe this is why scholarly research on the subject has been lacking: we just don't know enough to postulate something without sounding ridiculous. Better to err on the quiet side I guess. 

Vulva Engraving

Chauvet, France
Image of a feline and a bull combining to form a vulva shape

Three Women: 

                                              'Angles sur l'Anglin', France                                    

Reclining Woman Engraving (top) and Interpretation (bottom) from the Dordogne, France (12, 000 BC)

Reclining Woman Engraving (top) and Interpretation (bottom) from the Magdelaine Cave, France (15, 000-10,000 BC)

*Images courtesy of Ancient Wisdom. http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/caveart.htm