Drishtikone
Anorexic thin females may be the in thing in Hollywood and the fashion industry.. but they wouldnt have inspired our ancestors – the cavemen. They liked their women.. well.. full-bodied! Voluptuous women have been loved through the ages as depicted on the temples of Khajuraho or the Ajanta and Ellora or European art of the caveman:
In the paper, Schild and colleagues Bodil Bratlund, Else Kolstrup and Jan Fiedorczuk describe the carvings as "stylized voluptuous female outlines" that "are cut out of flint flakes."
The same symbolic representations of women displayed in the artifacts extend across Europe, added Schild, a researcher in the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology at the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Because the site, near the Polish village of Wilczyce, served as a late autumn/early winter hunting camp, it is likely men created the figurines when they were taking breaks from hunting arctic foxes, woolly rhinoceros and other game.
Most of the carvings show a slight curve in the breast area. Very exaggerated curves depict the buttocks, while tiny rounded tops served as heads. One figure’s head was, at one point, polished and retouched.
Examination of the flint artifacts under high magnification revealed they were in "mint" condition with no signs of use as tools.
The book The Nature of Paleolithic Art by R. Dale Guthrie contains images of nearly identical renderings. It seems shapely women also inspired stone carvings and cave art, some of which date to 35,000 years ago.
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