PREAMBLE
From
40 000 to approximately 10 000 years before our era, the end of last glaciation
is the climax of the reign for hunter/gatherers societies.
One
century during, the apogee of hunters/collectors fascinated many Prehistorians.
Some transfer there, unconsciously perhaps, a kind of ultimate phase of "the
natural man". For others, it constituted a necessary stage, an experimentation
of ideas and techniques which will give to human a degree of superiors knowledge
and autonomy. Others wondered if the limits of human inventiveness had not been
reached, being given the richness of industries and splendour of the cave paintings
prevailing at the end of last glaciation in Western Europe.
Incontestably,
attraction for this period belongs partly in the fact that these cultural cast
of features were conceived by human beings who resembled to us and whom we called,
at the 20th century, "Cro-Magnon Men". This name is not applied any
more only about human beings who lived in South-West of France but it is also
covering from now on, all others prehistoric tribes of hunters/collectors having
never lived on the cliffs of Les Eyzies where we discovered in 1868, first vestiges
of "Cro-Magnon Man". (in fact the name of the shelter under which he
was discovered)
Indeed, Cro-Magnon Man is an Homo Sapiens Sapiens just like us. Specialists in Prehistory, certainly, do not know exactly when his ancestor was born and when he disappeared: on the other hand, they are sure that, approximately 40 000 years before our era, in several areas of Old World, took place numbers of cultural upheavals. The world consequently started to evolve/move in a different direction, at faster intervals, thanks to a decisive agent: the man himself.
Having inherited of a bulky brain and skilled techniques from their more primitive ancestors, these new human beings succeeded in making an extraordinary jump ahead, not easily comparable with the former achievements carried out in the same lapse of time. That it acts about their control art works, their language and symbols, their industries, their adaptation to their environment, even their modes of social organization and their relationship with others, these first modern men achieved a revolution whose repercussions will be felt in the whole world. If there had not existed, the world, without speaking about ourselves, would not be what it is today.
In the following chapters, it will be always question about Cro-Magnon Man. However, let us not forget that Cro-Magnon Woman also existed and that it is thanks to her amongst other things, that the species still exists. Remainder, her skeleton already accompanied that one of Cro-Magnon Man discovered by E. Lartet in 1868 in the Cro-Magnon Shelter.
We do not know with precision which was her role in prehistoric societies but since few years, investigations about it, are increasingly numerous. Indeed, Palaeolithic's artists created almost exclusively images of women during more than 30 000 years. First of them caused many theories concerning their significance, which, for majority turned around symbolism of fertility. These theories are called in question and are discussed nowadays.
Female examples are numerous, while starting with the skeletons of Lucy or Madam Ples (Australopithecus) while passing by those of the Quina Woman and Pierrette of St Césaire (Neandertalians) to vulvas, signs, painted or engraved figures of parietal art and statuettes of movable art during Cro-Magnon time.
Since Aurignacian period, woman appears in the foreground if we believe found statuettes of this time and that we called "Venus". From - 35 to - 30 000 years ago, when Cro-Magnon come in Europe, tools and equipment are more powerful as well as work on organic matter. From this time were also found: the Man-Lion, the Venus Dancer, the "Venus" of Chauvet cave, the block with vulvas of Castanet Shelter.
During Gravettian period, from - 28 to - 25 000 years ago, representations are more diversified: theVenus of Laussel which is a low-relief on block of rock shelter which possibly constituted an habitat, the Venus of Willendorf, engravings of female silhouettes in Cussac Cave, the Venus of Tursac, of Sireuil, of Lespugue, of Grimaldi to only quote most famous. They are often small objects made in precious substances which could be carried and which were easily communicable.
That raises two ideas:
-
at time when art explodes, woman prevails and it is the same standard which reproduces
on a broad geographical scale from Ural to South of France
- woman is the
mythological support of a spiritual life, she is in the center of the parental,
intellectual, spiritual device of the groups and their survival.
The question of the place and the role of the woman remained marginal during a long time while investigations into Prehistory. It is "the prehistoric man", craftsman, hunter, artist, conqueror, who especially fed the interest of the scientists. The woman, as for it, was often regarded as passive and reproductive, was delivered to the phantasms, the myths inspired of the Bible, or to the commonplaces hawked since the 19th century. From committed research these last decades, our glance seems to change today for an image more alive, more coloured, and perhaps more resembling, of the woman in the deep past of our species.
Thus, if comments speak only about Cro-Magnon Man, it is important to mention that it is just about a gap of our language where the male kind prevails on the female kind. Cro-Magnon Woman is unceasingly present between the lines, at the sides of Cro-Magnon Man and vice versa.
- APPEARANCE OF THE MODERN MAN
