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Tuesday, July 26, 2005

So Many Uses!

BBC News carries a story about a pre-historic phallus that was used to knapp flint. For some reason they seem to regard the flint-knapping as a secondary function:
A sculpted and polished phallus found in a German cave is among the earliest representations of male sexuality ever uncovered, researchers say.

The 20cm-long, 3cm-wide stone object, which is dated to be about 28,000 years old, was buried in the famous Hohle Fels Cave near Ulm in the Swabian Jura.

"In addition to being a symbolic representation of male genitalia, it was also at times used for knapping flints," explained Professor Nicholas Conard, from the department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology, at Tübingen University.

Yeah, most cultures used their "sympolic representations of male genitalia" to pound nails or dig coal or the like. Frankly I think it was both a bawdy joke and an expression of the idea that it was a male function to make "tools". Repressing a very unladylike and almost irrestible impulse to make a series of extremely risque jokes, I'll merely observe that it is wonderful that our modern culture has overcome its mystical impulses and is now based on science and medical understandings. Or maybe not?


Comments:
I saw that this morning. I wondered who would be first to comment on the article.

That said, as an attention grabber, it beats the weather post, hands down.
 
Flint knapping does beat the weather....
 
That was good- really.
 
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