March 11, 2011
Venus in Dogu - A self-body view?
Proffessor LeRoy McDermott argues that paleolithic female figures (the paleolithic venus shape) was strangely distorted, with extremities particularly small NOT because they have been made to look particularly female, sexy, as a fertility symbol, but because they are based upon the auto-genus perspective, self-views of the self.
In other words the shape of the Dogu (jomon period figure) above appears distorted since we are used to seeing and identifying with our figure in mirrors. If you are used to the mirror image of yourself, and that third person perspective is how you see yourself, then the above figure looks unrealistic. But if in addition to seeing other people, you are also used to looking at your self, and identifying with what you see then the above will be an accurate represtation of that first person perspective. Somewhere along the line we seem to have lost our first person (auto-genus) views of self.
See the previous photo, and the riddle at the end for proof that you are not used to first-person self-views of self, and the intriguing photos in professor McDermot's paper.
I am suggesting that it is not in any way an apriori that people seem themselves as that which is reflected in the mirror, animals, children and paleolithic people (who lasted on this earth for thousands of years) may not have had a third person perspective on self. I also do not believe that the mirror supplied third person perspective is necessarily any more adaptive or true. The people who built this venus may have got it right, where as I think that I am the stranger in the mirror.
Mirror image identification - which is perhaps to identify with a symbol for self - is is a riddle worthy of representation in myth, perhaps in a myth where deities rinse, chew and spit out symbols at themselves in a mirror.
LeRoy McDermott "Self-Representation in Upper Paleolithic Female Figurines"