Luigi Chiapparoli identifies Italian elephant sculpture interpreted as a male baby mammoth with human and wisent forms on its side by Jan van Es

Luigi Chiapparoli find and identification of an elephant sculpture in Italy

Jan van Es made these comments and interpretation of this sculpture: "The corpse is in fact of a baby elephant (mammoth of the child). In many sculptures of animals (bear, elephant, bison, etc..) is a portrait by the legs visible. Here I see a man's face by the hind legs. On the side of the belly I see a female form of a symbol of fertility. That's why I think it's a young male animal."

Interpretive drawing by Jan van Es. A depiction of a wisent is illustrated in top part of the drawing here linked to the contemporary male symbol.

Interpretive drawing by Jan van Es

 

Photo by rock art investigator Luigi Chiapparoli

 

These animal combinations and arrangements as interpreted by Jan van Es may also be seen in North America but continue to be ignored by a field too comfortable to dismiss them as "cloud watching" by hopelessly naïve people. Too many lay persons and amateur archaeologists have noticed these portable rock art forms but have received the "Boucher de Perthes" treatment from a field which claims to operate as a science but has no mechanism or desire to handle anomalous material.

 

Jacques Boucher de Crèvecœur de Perthes was vindicated in his observation of stone tools in association with extinct Pleistocene fauna and with proper science he will be vindicated that pierre-figures, or figure stones, may be found right alongside the tools. 

Tennessee laughing pebble identified by Sherry Hill is similar to Italian example described by pre-sculpture and paleoart author Pietro Gaietto

Tennessee laughing pebble identified by Sherry Hill is similar to an Italian example identified by Pietro Gaietto of Museum of the Origins of Man

Evidence of the artist's grinding is present to make two eyes and a nose on the face.  The mouth may have a natural feature of a pebble but it now shows evidence of expansion by excavation and carving to create an ironic, laughing, expression.  A second, small, eyes, nose and mouth composing a face may be seen in micro detail in the circle highlighting the work on the left eye of the figure stone.

Sherry Hill has found and identified several art pieces among the typical flint knives and points she finds on the surface in the Doe River valley, Carter County, Tennessee.  In this view, the laugh expression could also be read as a giant scream or even a yawn.

American entertainer Jimmy Durante and his famous trademark "got'cha" facial expression (1893-1980)

Here, the artifact is shown on a 1 centimeter (cm) grid for scale

Carter County, Tennessee

Allesandra, Italy

"Fig. 4.22) Lithic sculpture. It represents a human head without the neck. Strong stylistic deformation in ironic sense, deduced from the large nose.

Size: Height cm. 12.

Place of origin: Tortona, Alessandria, Italy.

Material culture: Mousterian, but perhaps previous.

It comes from an ancient alluvium of the Scrivia Torrent; it is damaged, as there are no more external traces of working. But the traces are present in the recess that constitute the orbitale zone and the mouth. The human type seems an archaic Homo sapiens, but it does not have chin, and the forehead is little. The style lengthens the head vertically.

Collection Museum of the Origins of Man."

Human head in Paleolithic sculpture, Pietro Gaietto, Museum of the Origins of Man

Museum of the Origins of Man identifies Paleolithic human head sculptures similar to Oregon examples

Paleolithic human head sculpture from Savona, Italy, identified by Museum of the Origins of Man, Pietro Gaietto

"Fig. 4.14) Lithic sculpture. It represents a head of Homo sapiens neanderthalensis with neck, and look upwards .

Size: Height cm. 15. It is worked in both the sides, almost full-relief. It has a pointed nape. It is a classic Neanderthalian.

Place of origin: Valle del Vero, Toirano, Savona, Italy.

Material culture: Mousterian.

Collection Museum of the Origins of Man."

Sight line of eyes on human face depicted in this illustration by Pietro Gaietto

Irrigon, Oregon, sculpture standing in anthropomorphic position.  This sculpture has been the subject of an earlier posting with focus on its fish imagery when sitting on another of its flat, narrow, edges.

Side 2 of Irrigon, Oregon, sculpture

Portland, Oregon, anthropomorphic piece identified by Nona A.  It was found in the context of suspected crude stone tools and other art pieces.

Side 2 from Portland, Oregon, collection of  Nona A.

 

 

Portland, Oregon, from Nona A. collection

(click photos to expand)

 

Portland, Oregon, from Nona A. collection

(click to expand)

Savona, Italy, Museum of the Origins of Man

"Fig. 4.29) Lithic Sculpture. It represents a head of Homo sapiens sapiens with neck.

Size: Height cm. 27.

Place of origin: S.Pietro d'Olba, Savona, Italy.

Material culture: upper Paleolithc.

Worked from two sides, it is nearly a frontal representation. This type of sculpture, with high and robust neck, is present in several anthropomorphic menhirs at Carnac, with several types of Homo sapiens sapiens.

Collection Museum of the Origins of Man."

Museum of the Origins of Man, Pietro Gaietto founder and curator, Genova, Italy

Sculptures of the human head in Paleolithic sculpture

Phylogenesis of Beauty, Pietro Gaietto

The work of Pietro Gaietto of Genova, Italy, predicted the motif and location of a carved human head with a beard on one of the seven Ohio flint sculptures found together in a "hoard."  Please see the "Subtle Artifacts" link to read the article and see photos of these seven associated sculptures found in Licking County, Ohio.  

One of the seven Ohio sculptures was a stunning visual match to one of Gaietto's Italian sculptures and only after reading Gaietto I detected a man's head profile in the place on the Ohio sculpture where he said it would be on this type of artifact. Any person in a room with this sculpture can see the human head profile once it is brought to their attention, just as Gaietto brought it to my attention and helped me to understand what had been a strangely amorphous but obviously worked flint cobble until then.  This kind of "replication" of Gaietto's work has led me to conclude it might be very instructive on the subject of pre-sculpture and early sculpture- even in the Americas.  As crude, rough and strange as they seem, the forms and general aesthetic sense invoked by the sculptures identified and documented by Gaietto have also been independently detected by others as suspected artifacts in Eurasia and the United States.

 

Gaietto is author of "Phylogenesis of Beauty - A Unified Theory of Evolution" E.N.Z.A., 2008, Genova.

Subtle Artifacts: Seven Ohio Paleolithic flint sculptures   One of the seven Ohio sculptures is a morphological "match" to an Italian sculpture identified by Gaietto and has a human face profile where Gaietto's typology predicted.