Dancing Girls And The Merry Magdalenian (13,000 Y.O. Painting, UK)

The Guardian (UK) ^ | 4-15-2004 | Sean Clarke

[blam]

Dancing girls and the merry Magdalenian

Archaeologists believe that 13,000-year-old cave paintings in Nottinghamshire were part of a continent-wide culture

Sean Clarke
Thursday April 15, 2004
The Guardian (UK)

The people who created the first surviving art in Britain were committed Europeans, belonging to a common culture spanning France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, according to the man who discovered the cave art in Creswell Crags, Nottinghamshire. And the essential preoccupations of this single market in ice-age art, it seems, were hunting and naked dancing girls.

The discovery of 13,000-year-old rock paintings in Nottinghamshire last year rewrote ice-age history in Britain. Today, archaeologists from all over Europe are in Creswell to discuss how the finds form part of a continent-wide culture known as the Magdalenian.

Paul Pettitt, of Sheffield University's archaeology department, said: "The Magdalenian era was the last time that Europe was unified in a real sense and on a grand scale."

According to Mr Pettitt, the artists behind the Creswell paintings would have spent summers in the area feasting on migrating reindeer, but the winters on lowlands which now form the North sea or in the Netherlands or central Rhine areas.

They would have kept in close contact, possibly through yearly meetings, with people in the middle Rhine, the Ardennes forest and the Dordogne. At the time it was possible to walk from Nottinghamshire to the Dordogne.

"The importance of art for the Magdalenians is clear," said Mr Pettitt. "It helped to reaffirm their common cultural affiliation."

The Creswell paintings share characteristics with contemporary art at sites such as Altamira in Spain and Lascaux in France.

Of particular interest is a depiction of an ibex, an animal now only to be found in Europe in the Pyrenees. "Not one ice-age ibex bone has been found in Britain. The nearest ibex remains [from the period] were found in Belgium and mid-Germany," said Mr Pettitt. He said the most likely explanation is that Magdalenians saw ibexes elsewhere and painted them in Creswell as a reminder.

Other shapes found at Creswell were initially thought to be long-necked birds. "Looked at another way," said Mr Pettitt, "You see a naked women in profile, with jutting out buttocks and raised arms. It appears to be a picture of women doing a dance in which they thrust out their derrières. It's stylistically very similar to continental examples, and seems to demonstrate that Creswellians are singing and dancing in the same way as on the continent."

Modern Europeans do not normally have access to Creswell's Church Hole cave, partly in an effort to protect a colony of bats which lives there.

Modern Creswellians, though, have special reason to thank their arty predecessors. The cave complex and attendant museum - where visitors can see iron-age stone tools found in the caves - now attract 28,000 visitors a year, bringing much needed income to the former mining village. The museum trust has submitted a £4m bid to the lottery heritage fund to improve access to the site.

Jon Humble, inspector of ancient monuments for English Heritage, called it "the best and most successful example of an archaeology-led project for social and economic regeneration anywhere in the UK".

For Mr Pettitt, its significance is simpler. "It settles an old argument about whether ice-age Britons were isolated on the periphery or in contact with the rest of Europe," he said.

[EggsAckley]

I looked for pics but came up empty handed. What is the connection to the Magdalenians?

[colorado tanker]

I wonder if the joint allowed lap dances.

[Andyman]

Only their branch in northern Finland.

[blam]

"What is the connection to the Magdalenians?"

Who are the Magdalenians?

[concentric circles]

Creswell Crags
Archaeologists made a remarkable discovery at Creswell Crags in April 2003. They found the first and only example of rock art from the Ice Age. All of the pictures found were engraved into the rock and as far as is known colour was not applied to the figures.

Close to the entrance in Church Hole, on a flat surface of rock, is this engraving of an ibex, a goat-like animal. Beneath the figure Ice Age hunters have engraved a series of vertical lines.

This engraving of a bison lies on the same rock surface as the ibex. The artist appears to have used the natural shape of the rock to emphasise the head.

Deeper within Church Hole these engraved figures were found and are believed to be birds with long necks.

[blam]

Thanks for the pictures CC.

[blam]

"And the essential preoccupations of this single market in ice-age art, it seems, were hunting and naked dancing girls."

Okay, where are the pictures of the naked dancing girls?

[SunkenCiv]

[SunkenCiv]

Original topic, 2004. This is an update.

Experts search for Ice Age man
in excavation at cave beauty spot
by Lucy Harvey
8 August 2006

The engravings of animals were found at Church Hole cave, Creswell Crags, at Welbeck near Worksop three years ago and are evidence the limestone gorge near Worksop is one of the most northerly areas explored by man in the Ice Age... Dr Paul Pettit from Sheffield University's Department of Archaeology, who is leading the dig, said: "This is a fantastic opportunity to work at such and important site. We know that Church Hole was excavated very rapidly by the Victorians in the 1870s and very little is known about the animals and people who inhabited this cave during the Ice Age. Many of the bones and stone tools would have been thrown away and now lie within the Victorian spoil heap directly outside the cave's entrance. Our plan is to excavate this spoil heap and find the original Ice Age sediments below which contain bones and other artefacts from the period."

[Redcloak]

Cave Girls Gone Wild?

[nopardons]

bttt

[ApplegateRanch]

Thank you!

Modern Creswellians, though, have special reason to thank their arty predecessors.

They must mean my relatives, on my mother's Grandpa's wife, Harriet Creswell's, side of the family. Of course she was from Lancashire, not Nottinghamshire....

Still, that is a lot closer than my Grandma's Cornish roots.

Might explain why my brother is named art, and was always called "Arty", too.LOL

[Renfield]

"...And the essential preoccupations of this single market in ice-age art, it seems, were hunting and naked dancing girls...." Hunting and naked girls. Come to think of it, Those have occupied most of my thought for the last 30 years. By the way, I had 6 nice bucks in the side yard yesterday afternoon, including a couple of long-tined 8-pointers. Come on, bow season!!

[wildbill]

Everyone in the academic world has assumed over the years that the drawings were somehow religious representations.

However, I think our Freepers, being normal males instead of academics, are much closer to the truth about the culture of cave men. I have no doubt that the caves were for RECREATIONAL use, perhaps the first porno houses where drunken hunters watched the naked girl images seem to move in the flickering firelight.

Or staff these caves with appropriately attired Oonas and they become brothels or gentlemen's clubs. Unfortunately, the archeological record of these activities is long gone.

[Renfield]

Why do you fly the Albanian flag on your personal page?

[colorado tanker]

Beer, hunting, naked dancing girls and European vacations. The GGG list is off to a great start today!

[Lloyd227]

"And the essential preoccupations of this single market in ice-age art, it seems, were hunting and naked dancing girls"

Sounds like my construction buddies....

[Thombo2]

"The essential preoccupations it seems,were hunting and naked dancing girls..."The more things change,the more they remain the same.

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

Other shapes found at Creswell were initially thought to be long-necked birds.

They couldn't tell the difference between birds and girls???

[Ptarmigan]

Interesting. Sounds like a Cro-Magnon painting. I wouldn't be surprised if they got assimilated became the Irish, Scots, Welsh, Manx, and English today. Cro-Magnon today is Basque, Berber, Guanche, Dal, and possibly Incas, Mayans, and Aztecs.