Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id XAA05795 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 13 Apr 2000 23:15:29 +0100 Message-Id: <200004132214.SAA25136@mail6.lig.bellsouth.net> From: "Joe E. Dees" <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2000 17:17:43 -0500 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Ice Age Fashion In-reply-to: <4.3.1.0.20000413172258.00dbe8b0@pop3.htcomp.net> References: <20000411171409.AAA24613@camailp.harvard.edu@[128.103.125.2 15]> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12b) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Date sent: Thu, 13 Apr 2000 17:48:39 -0400
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: "Mark M. Mills" <mmills@htcomp.net>
Subject: Ice Age Fashion
Send reply to: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> I ran across an article in my local paper describing evidence of ice age
> binding patterns. Since Gatherer has used the 'Windsor knot" as an example
> of the Gatherer-meme, the article can be used to infer Gatherer-memes have
> been around much longer than 25,000 years.
>
> The complete article is in Current Anthropology. The article should be
> current, but I don't know which issue.
>
> In brief, the article reports discovery of elaborate textile designs in
> Venus figurines (27,000 to 20,000 BC). The famous Venus of Willendorf
> figurine wears an intricate fiber-woven cap that has been misinterpreted as
> a hairdo, says Dr. Olga Soffer of U of Illinois at Urbana. Details of
> other figurines show string skirts, woven belts, necklaces, bracelets and
> other fine textiles. The authors argue this fits with ice age textile
> patterns found in ice age Czech clay fragments.
>
> Since elaborate binding patterns in string appear in the earliest durable
> artifacts, it is highly likely they 'evolved' over a long period prior to
> the ice age.... thus, the age of Gatherer memes starts much earlier than
> 27,000 BC.
>
Tool-memes, of which knot-tying styles are one, have been around
much longer than language memes; in fact, although open-ended
and large-vocabulary phonetic speech "broke out" in our species
less than a quarter-millenium ago, and perhaps less than a
hundred thousand years ago (when homo sapiens, with a larnyx
and palate that would allow same arrived on the scene), artifacts
dating to more than a million years ago are not uncommon.
>
> Mark
>
>
> ===============================================================
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>
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
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