Dolní Vĕstonice Portrait Head: The oldest known human portrait in the world
27 comments
·February 4, 2025inejge
0_____0
Here's those two characters together for comparison. It took me a while to figure out what you were talking about because the two render so closely in smaller text.
breve/carom
ĕ / ě
vanous
Interestingly enough, searching for ě on the page finds the ĕ as well, but so does search for e...
bradrn
At least in Firefox the search pane has a ‘Match Diacritics’ option. Turning it on causes it to match only the precise characters in the textbox. (It’s slightly misnamed, since it doesn’t just handle diacritics, but also cases like ⟨e⟩ vs ⟨ɛ⟩.)
yread
The reconstruction using modern methods
https://media.springernature.com/lw1200/springer-static/imag...
alkyon
One of the oldest representations of human face.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Brassempouy
This Wikipedia article gives an example of a similar ivory figurine from Upper Paleolite, dated 26,000 - 24,000 BC.
jajko
Yeah, 'one of the oldest' would be much more accurate title. Strong claims require strong evidence et al, maybe a bit of nationalism seeped in
flocciput
The lack of faces in most prehistoric art has always been fascinating to me, especially given the attention to detail paid to animals in cave paintings. Did people not give as much thought to individual identity before a certain milestone in our development as a species? Was it taboo or superstition to render someone's likeness? Were caves just not the place for portraiture? Why was this seemingly prevalent across cultures and geography? Etc etc; people with more to say than me have written about it at length I assume. This bust is from 24000BC, and the person depicted was 1) presumably already dead and 2) had a developmental deformity. Maybe that provides some clues about when, how, and why portraiture developed as an art form.
josefrichter
Fascinating. I live just 100km from the site.
MezzoDelCammin
Vzdušnou čarou, nebo Alfou? ; )
xero1
Tady je ale více Čechů než jsem čekal teda :)
Dansvidania
Opravdu
(nejsem Cech - ani slovak - ale bydlim v Brne... pocita se? :D)
gwervc
One diacritic in the title is wrong, and it's annoying. They obviously tried, but still failed. One google search would have shown the issue.
metalman
That they have a skelatal reconstruction of a persons face with similarities to the sculptue from the same site, it then could pehaps also be the first evidence for a comisioned work, and any evidence for industry and common curency would support that.....the first sale
Insanity
The article doesn’t mention how old the found skeleton is, or I missed it. Would be a huge coincidence imo given the large timespan, and perhaps more so an artifact of humans looking for similarities.
mc32
Isn't this a sculpture rather than portrait. Maybe "bust" sculpture. Portrait to me means a more two dimensional representation.
Pretty cool that this didn't deteriorate over thousands of years even if it was done in bone.
jermaustin1
ninalanyon
The OED and Cambridge dictionaries disagree. All the examples in both are of two dimensional representations or even one dimensional (written).
Of course if enough people decide to agree with the Wikipedia article then the dictionaries will have to be updated but just now i suspect that if you were to ask people to describe what the word meant that very few would mention sculpure.
But I don't think that sculpture really captures it either, it's more like a cameo.
mr_toad
Depends which people you ask. Art galleries certainly include sculpture with portraits.
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/portrait
https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait-list.php?...
https://www.npg.org.uk/schools-hub/art-explainer-what-is-a-p...
Insanity
TIL!
To me the word “portrait” makes me think “painting” as well.. I never would have guessed it refers just to what is being depicted rather than “how”. Thanks for sharing.
neom
Most good art colleges have portrait classes in every concentration. I went to the film school at my art college but I sat for a portrait in most other concentrations because we all modeled for each other.
null
mr_toad
Technically any artistic “portrayal” of a subject is a portrait, it’s basically a tautology.
WaitWaitWha
that is how I interpret the word "portrait" too, and the etyomology of it matches.
xqcgrek2
Mammoth meat must have delicious, as that is what they must have largely eaten during the ice age 24k years ago.
Someone should seriously consider having a startup for lab-grown patties.
(Not related to the sculpture, just a bit of pedantry.) I appreciate the attempt to render the name of the locality in the present-day local alphabet (Czech), but the diacritic above the 'e' in "Vĕstonice" is wrong: the letter is "letter e with breve", but should be "letter e with caron", giving "Věstonice".