The authenticity of the Paleolithic statuette Venus Pyatra Neamts has been confirmed at the international ● level. The Minoan civilization had strange marriage rules ● The brains of cephalopods and humans developed in the same way

The authenticity of the Paleolithic statuette Venus Pyatra-Neamts has been confirmed at the international level

Discovered in 2019 in a Paleolithic site near Piatra Neamt, the Paleolithic Venus-type statuette (photo) was the first of its kind ever identified in Romania, and the first anthropomorphic figurine discovered intact in Europe in more than a century.

Since then, the statuette called “Venus of Piatra Neamtsi” has been subjected to several expert analyses, and its authenticity has been confirmed by several experts from abroad. Among them is Randall White, professor of anthropology at New York University and one of the world’s leading experts on Paleolithic art. In fact, Randall White, an expert who has exposed several forgeries over time, is one of the authors of a study published in the French specialized journal L’Anthropologie, a study that presents the methods used to establish the statuette’s authenticity.

Patrick Payet, a prehistoric expert at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris and one of France’s foremost experts on Paleolithic art, also welcomed the findings, registering the figurine from Piatra Neamts as “hypersexualizing” in its forms, with Rubensian forms, fall into the scheme of the “artistic family of anthropomorphic figurines called Gravetti’s Venus”.

With an age of 17,200 years, the statuette is one of the last representative elements of the Paleolithic Gravettian culture in Eastern Europe, where this material culture was replaced by the so-called epigravett in the mentioned time interval.

The figurine was created from sandstone, is only 10 centimeters tall, and one of the original features it presents is the indented pattern of the hands, which suggests the fact that it could have been worn as an ornament or as a ritual object.

The last such find, i.e., a similar stone statuette found intact, was made in 1908 in Austria, the famous Venus of Willendorf, which meanwhile became the national symbol of that country.

Currently, Venus Piatra-Neamts is exhibited in the Museum of Human Evolution and Technology in the Paleolithic in the National Museum Complex “Curtea Domnească” in Tirgovishte.

The Minoan civilization had strange marriage rules

The largest to date DNA analysis of representatives of the Minoan civilization revealed, among other things, new aspects regarding the rules of marriage in this civilization.

This is confirmed by researchers from the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, who, in a study published in Nature Ecology&Evolution, present the results of the analysis of more than 100 genomes of characters who lived in the Bronze Age on the island of Crete. According to data obtained by Max Planck specialists, it seems that marriages in that period were mainly based on family ties.

For the population of Crete 4000 years ago, as well as other islands in Greece or even on the mainland, it was a common fact that cousins ​​married each other. Another interesting aspect is that men did not leave the parental home even in adulthood, and thus the lineage was preserved through the closest relatives.

Experts call this consanguineous endogamy, or compulsory marriage between blood relatives. At least until further discoveries, this is a unique case for the time period, especially since it concerns commoners and not princely families.

The reasons why the Minoan civilization adopted such an unusual pattern are still unknown. One hypothesis is that the families wanted the land they owned undivided, but this remains pure speculation at this point.

The brains of cephalopods and humans developed in the same way

Although separated by roughly 500 million years of evolution, the two groups of animals, primates and cephalopods, share one thing in common…the evolutionary pattern of the brain. And this means only one thing, that the process responsible for the appearance of the complex brain arose independently, but uses an almost identical template.

Analyzing the embryonic development of the squid Doryteuthis pealeii, several researchers from Harvard University noticed that the way nerve cells form and connect is similar to what is observed in humans. According to experts, this ability to develop a complex brain evolved independently in cephalopods and humans, but it is striking that the process is so similar.

The observation supports the theory that cephalopods are among the most intelligent animals on the planet. Although they are invertebrates, cephalopods are able to use tools, have long-term memory, show reactions that betray boredom, curiosity or even malice towards other animals, know how to disguise themselves and can even dream. True, they have not yet reached the level of building space shuttles, but perhaps they did not need this evolutionary step.

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Photo source: Museum of the Evolution of Man and Technology in the Paleolithic of the National Museum Complex “Curtea Domnească” in Tirgovishte