Der Spiegel runs a strange piece, complete with pictures, on the discovery of fragments of a 7200 year old male figurine in Germany. It has been titled "the Adonis from Chernitz" and interpreted as being half of a pair of figurines illustrating copulation. The article uses the find as a platform to report on a traveling exhibition making the rounds in Germany titled "100,000 years of sex."
I previously blogged this subject [here] and opined that the reconstruction seemed to be fanciful and the explanation of its significance nonsensical. Nothing in this article has changed my opinion. Read the whole thing here. For anyone with even a cursory understanding of European prehistory it is a howling hoot, and illustrates what can happen when archaeologists and prehistorians, straining for significance and PR value, talk with reporters who are scientific illiterates.
WARNING: SOME OF THE ILLUSTRATIONS ARE NOT WORK SAFE!
UPDATE
At last! Finally a reasonably sober, non-sensational discussion of the find in Discovery News Briefs here. The archaeologists' claims, at least in this forum, are actually much less extravagent and more highly qualified than the early news items suggested. Is the early misinformation the fault of the journalists or of the people they interviewed?
.
No comments:
Post a Comment