RENEWED WEBSITE Museum of the origins of Man

Museum of the Origins of man PALEOLITHIC ART MAGAZINE

LIGURIA

THE MUSEUM OF ORIGINS OF MAN
GENOVA (ITALY)

Pietro Gaietto

April, 11 2002 has been renewed the website of the Museum of the Origins of Man, about which I had written in December 2002 on this telematic review.

In this new version have been introduced:

1) Sculptures of the lower and middle Paleolithic collected from the most famous researchers of the the nineteenth and the the twentieth century.

2) Sculptures collected by famous researchers of the past, believed imitations, and that make part of the errors of the search, that have been made also by researchers of tools and human fossils.

3) Sculptures collected in the last two years, that have entered in the collection of the Museum.

4) Sculptures discovered in Africa and Israel, in places that have allowed the " absolute dating ".

5) A new formulation of the typology, than is based on eight artistic-religious civilizations of the Paleolithic, that have produced exclusively lithic sculpture.

6) From this typology have been excluded " the abstract " art applied to the embellishment of the lithic tools; " the figurative " art applied to the tools on bone of the upper Paleolithic, and the " abstract " recordings on bone, that is " the decorative " art of the lower and middle Paleolithic.

7) the cave paintings of the upper Paleolithic are not discussed, but analyzed marginally.

8) the lines of the artistic evolution are connected to the religions, with parameters from the beginning of the Paleolithic until our days, and comprise the entire world; that is a world-wide order of the representative art of subjects of religious use.

9) It is given a photographic documentation of eight post-paleolithic artistic-religious Civilizations of the entire world, that is from the Mesolithic until our days.
The website of the Museum of the Origins of Man originated, and pursues always the aim to diffuse the knowledge in order to promote the study of the sculpture of the lower and middle Paleolithic in scientific field.
The typology of the sculptures of the lower Paleolithic has been classified in eight artistic-religious Civilizations, in how much they allow to study the evolution of the art from the more ancient to the most recent phases, and also in parallel, in fact it has been demonstrated, that the parallels civilizations, are not only of the historical and protohistorical ages, but are also paleolithic.

This new typology is useful in order to better continue to make the studies on the art of the Paleolithic. In order to make these studies it is necessary to have a global vision of the art and the religions of all the times, and all the world, which, however, is less complex than how much it can be imagined, if one does not get lost in the particulars of the last two or three millennia of life of the humanity.
The religious representative art, in the post-paleolithic ages, has made great progresses, suffice it to see the sculptures and the paintings of the Aegyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, Michelangelo, Raffaello, Leonardo da Vinci, and so on, but this art, for beautiful that is, represents always the " divinity ".

With regard to the paleolithic and protohistorical religions, that is about the " word " (invisible), we cannot know nothing. The connection of the " word ", that is of the religion with the art, we have it from the ancient and modern writings, and from the studies of the ethnologists, that are connectable to the paleolithic art through typologic parallelisms.
That is, we know that two-faced Janus of the Romans was a " divinity "; we know that the two-faced all over the world, in historical ages, represents and symbolyzes the " divinity ", therefore, also the two-faced anthropomorphic sculptures of the Paleolithic were sure representations of " divinity ".
Birth, survival, and progress of the art, must be attributed to the religion, than is the customer of it.
The chronology is closely tied to the typology, and at the present moment is the following:

lower Paleolithic, from 2,500,000 to 200,000 = length 2.300.000 years = 92,00%

middle Paleolithic, from 200,000 to 40,000 = length 160.000 years = 6,40%

upper Paleolithic, from 40,000 to 12,000 = length 28.000 years = 1,12%

From the Mesolithic until today, from 12,000 until today = length 12.000 years = 0,48%

Total= 2.500.000 years = 100,00%

The eight artistic-religious Civilizations, in which the art is classified, are bound together to the material culture (Olduvaian, Acheulean, Clactonian, and so on) for the cultural attribution, and the consequent dating; however, when there are absolute datings, were held in consideration.

The new setting of the website allows also the adding in typological order of new discoveries and opinions.

NEW PROGRAMMED INCREASES: gradually, within the end of 2002, they will published studies with photographies on "Colossus", "Processions with sculptures", "Places of cult with sculptures", "Routes and pilgrimages".

To the Index

HOME PAGE