But don't forget the ladies: This essay is about textiles, and note that when the men examined the "Venus" figures they were too busy looking elsewhere to notice the skirts and other items that suggest they knew how to make rope and/or textiles.
basket headware made of palited starts and coiled basketry.
"Scholars have been looking at these things for years, but unfortunately, their minds have been elsewhere," Dr. Adovasio said....
On the Venus of Lespugue, an approximately 25,000-year-old figurine from southwestern France, the anthropologists noticed a "remarkable" degree of detail lavished on the rendering of a string skirt...
To get an idea of what such an outfit might have looked like, she said, imagine a hula dancer wrapping a 1930's-style beaded curtain around her waist...
Other anthropologists point out that string skirts, which appear in Bronze-Age artifacts and are mentioned by Homer, may have been worn at the equivalent of a debutantes ball, to advertise a girl's coming of age. In some parts of Eastern Europe, the skirts still survive as lacy elements of folk costumes....
With the invention of string and the power to weave, people could construct elaborate yet lightweight containers in which to carry, store and cook food.
They could fashion baby slings to secure an infant snugly against its mother's body, thereby freeing up the woman to work and wander.
| The front view of the Venus of Kostenki in Russia. |
They could braid nets, the better to catch prey animals without the risk of hand-to-tooth combat. They could lash together wooden logs or planks to build a boat...
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