Neolithic beauty
from http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/265460.html
Some commenters questioned whether Neolithic men liked pear-shaped women, given that quite a few Venus figurines are apple-shaped.
I have relied on Singh's classic paper where she measured frontal waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) from the Paleolithic onwards and concluded that the historical average was 0.6 to 0.7. She believes that men's tastes in female shape have not changed in 15,000 years. Most of the other sources can be traced to Sarah Hrdy's book ("Mother Nature: A history of mothers, infants and Natural Selection", 1999) that I've cited previously in an essay on infanticide. She made the specific claim about the upper Paleolithic and Low Neolithic. I do not have the book and so I do not know her methology, but she estimated the WHR average of 0.7. The figurines could be fat, but the mean WHR was still quite low.
Here are a couple of shapely Neolithic ladies to prove the point.
-- and, of course, the female consort of the Thinker
However, there is no reason to believe that the figurines are either realistic depictions of Neolithic women or idealized representations of feminine beauty. Why? --- Because...
...these pear-shaped figurines could be fusions of male genitals and female bodies into a single fertility symbol. They do have narrow waist but for all the wrong reasons. See http://arheologija.ff.uni-lj.si/documenta/pdf34/DPbecker34.pdf
I do not have rock-solid proof that Neolithic men liked pear-shaped women. In principle, the frontal WHR of 0.6-0.7 is the Eurasian gold standard of attractiveness, in parts of Africa and South America male have preference for male proportions in women (0.8-0.9). It is said that when the WHR ratio is of circumference (which is more physiologically significant), it is 0.7 universally. To be geographically uniform this preference must be very old. I think Singh was right: men liked pear-shaped women from the time immemorial. I totally approve of them.
I think my explanation of pear-shaped pears is fine. In the West, the Greeks were first to record domesticated pears (1000 BC) and these pears were sacred to Venus, of all fruit. So I am not making things up.
Incidentally, even as late as in the Roman times, no one was eating pears fresh: the fruit was stewed in honey or cooked otherwise. For the hardened skeptics, I have the alternative explanation of the pear shape: it was easier to dip fruit into boiling water or honey when it was pear shaped holding it by the tip. After light cooking, the fruit was pulled out and the cooked spherical part was consumed; the tip was discarded. You can think of a pear as a kind of an icecream cone.
Some commenters questioned whether Neolithic men liked pear-shaped women, given that quite a few Venus figurines are apple-shaped.
I have relied on Singh's classic paper where she measured frontal waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) from the Paleolithic onwards and concluded that the historical average was 0.6 to 0.7. She believes that men's tastes in female shape have not changed in 15,000 years. Most of the other sources can be traced to Sarah Hrdy's book ("Mother Nature: A history of mothers, infants and Natural Selection", 1999) that I've cited previously in an essay on infanticide. She made the specific claim about the upper Paleolithic and Low Neolithic. I do not have the book and so I do not know her methology, but she estimated the WHR average of 0.7. The figurines could be fat, but the mean WHR was still quite low.
Here are a couple of shapely Neolithic ladies to prove the point.
-- and, of course, the female consort of the Thinker
However, there is no reason to believe that the figurines are either realistic depictions of Neolithic women or idealized representations of feminine beauty. Why? --- Because...
...these pear-shaped figurines could be fusions of male genitals and female bodies into a single fertility symbol. They do have narrow waist but for all the wrong reasons. See http://arheologija.ff.uni-lj.si/documenta/pdf34/DPbecker34.pdf
I do not have rock-solid proof that Neolithic men liked pear-shaped women. In principle, the frontal WHR of 0.6-0.7 is the Eurasian gold standard of attractiveness, in parts of Africa and South America male have preference for male proportions in women (0.8-0.9). It is said that when the WHR ratio is of circumference (which is more physiologically significant), it is 0.7 universally. To be geographically uniform this preference must be very old. I think Singh was right: men liked pear-shaped women from the time immemorial. I totally approve of them.
I think my explanation of pear-shaped pears is fine. In the West, the Greeks were first to record domesticated pears (1000 BC) and these pears were sacred to Venus, of all fruit. So I am not making things up.
Incidentally, even as late as in the Roman times, no one was eating pears fresh: the fruit was stewed in honey or cooked otherwise. For the hardened skeptics, I have the alternative explanation of the pear shape: it was easier to dip fruit into boiling water or honey when it was pear shaped holding it by the tip. After light cooking, the fruit was pulled out and the cooked spherical part was consumed; the tip was discarded. You can think of a pear as a kind of an icecream cone.