Genuine art.
You could engrave that scene into the receiver of a hunting rifle today and it would be admired.
Besides those "strange" depictions of animals and humans, there is also plenty of medieval art that is still regarded as highly beautiful today (admittedly especially once we're leaning towards the Renaissance).
It does seem to have waxed and waned; going in and out of popularity to the point of being a lost art multiple times. Wikipedia doesn't go so far as to divide it into eras, but given the time gaps, it's possible that there were multiple "inventions" of perspective in the sense of formalized techniques and pedagogy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_(graphical)
That doesn't mean everything was flat. Other projections were used instead of perspective to create an illusion of depth. Indeed, we still sometimes use them today, like for isometric games. There were also some works that show elements of perspective prior to the Renaissance, but afaik, none that converge perfectly across the work
(I’m being sarcastic and yes, the two artists were chosen for also for the joke some of you may be thinking of).
Not all art styles throughout history valued realism.
While there is true, it's also heavily misleading wrt europes history.
The techniques really were lost in the dark ages, because the church killed everyone that was talented and didn't join their ranks, effectively wiping out a lot of knowledge (by design)
And a lot of medieval European art was clearly aimed at realism, they just weren't very good at it because they didn't know the basics.
Anything that detracted from the grandour of the church was evidence of satanism. So, if you got a painting that looks better then what's on display in church, you were gonna get executed eventually.
If anything the opposite argument would be that without relgion art has devolved has more merit than this.
Citation very much needed
So ultimately, "Church" killed everyone.
/s
It's well documented how the Church categorized everything as witchcraft that didn't strengthen their hold back then, effectively wiping out progress all over Europe back then.
The Church didn't think witchcraft worked and saw belief in its existence as heresy! Institutionally-backed witch hunts were mostly an Early Modern phenomenon, not Medieval!
In the time 1100++ the church however started to be a force for progress, and that's the time y'all seem to think about.
Since you seem allergic to sources, here's a pretty good layman-aimed overview of actual up-to-date historical view of the arrival of the "Dark Ages" (i.e. the Early Medieval).
https://acoup.blog/2022/01/14/collections-rome-decline-and-f...
https://acoup.blog/2022/01/28/collections-rome-decline-and-f...
https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-f...
(From the narrative you put forward, I suspect your likely citation would be Gibbon. Who's... um... a bit out of date.)
> In Greek and Roman texts, griffins and Arimaspians were associated with gold deposits of Central Asia. The earliest classical writings were derived from Aristeas (7th cent. BC) and preserved by Herodotus and Aeschylus (mid 5th century BC), but the physical descriptions are not very explicit. Even though they are sharp-beaked, their being likened to "unbarking hounds of Zeus" has led to the speculation they were seen as wingless.
It's most likely a simurgh/śyenaḥ/mərəγō saēnō or a Huma/Homāio/Humay, which was a very common in Indo-Iranian culture
While Central Asia is now Turkic speaking, before the Mongol and Turkic invasions, it was historically Indo-European, as was seen with the Sogdian, Bactrian, and Khwarezmian.
The Greco-Roman myth of the griffin itself appears to have it's origins in the Indo-Iranian motif.
That said, the Pazyryk burials were from an era when the Indo-European migration was still occurring, so cultural and linguistics overlaps were still significant.
He used to tell stories about the face tattoos being a very important religious and status symbols. Supposedly only the most beautiful women were allowed to have them. Altai is pretty far from the north; it's interesting to see how this tradition spread through the region.
The team worked with researcher Daniel Riday who reproduces ancient tattoo designs on his body using historical methods.
Now that's dedication to research!
On that note, I'd recommend the title scene in the Iranian movie Qeysar [0] from 1969.
A number of the same motifs from 2.5k years ago are still around in Indo-Iranian culture.
Some of the older generations of Pakhtun Hindus still tattoo in that style [1], as a number of the central tribes of the Pakhtun community were Saka [2]. A granddaughter from the community has been working on documenting the culture for a couple years now [3]
On a separate note, highly recommend watching New Age Iranian Cinema (1965-1980ish). It's good stuff.
[0] - https://www.artofthetitle.com/title/qeysar/
[1] - https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tattooed-blue-skinned...
[2] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hephthalites
[3] - https://www.instagram.com/sheenkhalaiartproject/?hl=en
Sounds like a gimmick. Doesn't mean he isn't a legit researcher, doesn't mean he is, but personally it feels more like something you'd see on history channel than actual scientific research; the whole thing seemed less credible after I read that.
https://youtu.be/_BqarmmtLwc?si=fI3Lg9RXTabOuesG&utm_source=...
As soon as I saw the title of that video I knew it would be about 9 Ötzi and I suddenly had a deep longing to get those tattoos! But It feels like instead of copying Ötzi I'd really just be copying this kid off YouTube so I won't.
However I'm still thinking: if I ever get any localized health issues, maybe I'll get an Ötzi-style tattoo there. Since it's thought that his tattoos were likely a form of medicine.
(So far the only health issue I have had was localised... To my anus. I decided to skip that one... Luckily modern fixed it nicely already!)
He is covered in tattoos, and is himself a tattooist specialising in hand-poke and non-machine tattooing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1COALTMnP-8
I decided to get the animals tattooed on my arms and I Will continue with the upper body and the legs.
Whether you consider this degenerate or high sophistication is a matter of opinion, however, as a society, we can afford such occupations, which requires some level of wealth. Until recent times you would need seven families working the land to afford one family not working the land, with bakers, potters, blacksmiths, clergy, landlords and what not being carried by those working the land.
If you have tattooed mummies, that is an indication that their society could carry people that could specialise in things such as tattooing but also other things, whether that being clergy, education or just being rentier class.
In tattoo parlance, a job stopper is a tattoo on the hands, neck or face. Getting such tattoos means that you are excluding yourself from working in some professions and trades. This works at the higher status level, for example, pop stars, but also at the lower class, the person with no intention of working.
On the individual level, tattoos say a lot about childhood trauma, and, at a society level, much about society.
In conclusion, societies from antiquity that have a culture of tattooing are far from primitive. They had people that didn't have to slave away working the land to live short, brutal lives.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3h431IBsszlEVcfUThij6B?si=9...
Tattoos are basically ink being delivered in the lower layers of skin by poking. They look vastly different depending on the healing process. I'd imagine the scientists can distinguish between pre and post mortem punctures pretty well. The amount of ink remaining in the tattoo would probably also be very different.
Cool article but this is utter nonsense. A good modern tattoo artists is _incredible_ at their craft. Not just technically but artistically.
If anything, over the last couple decades the quality of the average tattoo has hugely matured.
This is quite recent.
It was about that time the Peloponnesian War occurred, which Thucydides and Xenophon documented.
OTOH, I think Siberian peoples then were not advanced. However, here we're talking tattoo and art, which you can imagine being developed more easily, rather than more concrete stuff, such as commerce raiding, building and maintaining hundred of triremes and training the oarsmen and generals to fight them in massed combat, and developing Athens into a city of 250,000 people.
wileydragonfly•6mo ago
greggsy•6mo ago
sigwinch•6mo ago
neomantra•6mo ago
Grab photo, convert to SVG, load into 3D modeling program, clean up curves to have good surfaces, extrude color-coded heights, map colors to heights in slicer, print.
meindnoch•6mo ago
romaaeterna•6mo ago
In the Phaedo, just before Socrates' death, Crito asks him how he would like to be interred. Socrates objects to Crito's confusion between Socrates the person -- the soul that will shortly be departing -- and whatever will be left over as the corpse.
lukan•6mo ago
A dead person is dead and doesn't care anymore. The morbid taboo of not studying dead bodies lead to a looong stagnation in medicine.
Now in terms of practical gains not on the same level, true, but same principle to me.
inglor_cz•6mo ago
Scientific discoveries aside, I can see this sort of art coming back. This kind of tattooos is hauntingly attractive, a postcard from another world.