Not a flattering reconstruction is it? And, yes, I've spent some time in Sicily too. As everywhere it was just a range of appearance.

The reason I posted the picture is that steatopygia was a common feature among the San and related peoples. It appears to be an adaptation to allow women to store extra fat - perhaps moisture too - to get them through times of shortage. And since this group are the most likely group for the most recent common ancestor, and most likely to represent Palaeolithic peoples prior to racial differentiation, it shows an interesting adaptation for fat storage that may have parallels in the palaeolithic.

Ian, the steatopygia thing is very interesting. I had never heard of it before. Thanks for the link.

That chick with the steatopygia looks like just about every fat black woman I've ever seen, including myself. Seems to be peculiar to our particular genes. Personally, I call it Black Butt.

M, who is her own Venus of Willendorf ~sniff~

I'd rather have a big butt than even a little bit of extra fat on my abdomen/hips. That sucks major..at least you can hide the fat on the butt with underwear/pants/and any extra fat wouldn't be so apparent as a little bit of extra fat on the lower abdomen would be.

The strange thing is, when I gained weight from eating low carb high fat and about 60g carbs a day, but eating too much, which caused the weight gain, I gained fat in my butt and thighs and probably a significant amount in my torso/over the muscle. But I think when I get down to losing fat, most of the fat just goes right to my lower abdomen/hip (as in just below the waist around the circumference of the trunk..a lot of people think the hips are the thighs for some reason), which sucks TBH.

So..be happy, if you can, that you don't have my genes, or the majority of womens' genes, for fat storage location on the body.

I remember it clearly from my biology classes, the teacher showed us the pictures of steatopygous sheep intimidating: “See, girls, if you eat fatty meat, you will look that inflated”. And like others, I went low-fat, which eventually made my butt high-fat. I would call it ‘J.Lo advanced version’
.....and have it insured

Eos,
Good question!

I think the simplest answer is that most anthropologists are men, and when they think of prehistoric "men," they envision males. There is perhaps also a slight bias in the archaeological record, since in most historically-documented hunting-fishing-gathering societies, men more often made tools of hard materials (stone, bone) and women more often of softer materials that are less likely to be preserved (plant fiber, skins, etc.).

Roy

Yes, Roy, (in)voluntary bias is obvious, males outnumber. I lay my hopes on more contemporary female anthropologists. Even though I have some trust in passionary development theory, Olga Soffer will hardly make this breakthrough alone.

You know, all that prejudice talk has brought another idea: when looking carefully at male human line one can definitely notice that the closer the man is to modern times, the whiter he becomes:/ Hmm, who funds these studies, the Hitlerians or what?

--------
...and I’m still failing to find any adequate pictures tracing evolution of the average female. Dang it, I don’t ask for much, neither for Latin nor Greek goddesses, gimme just a plain female being!
Shall I express my concern to Ms Soffer in person?

We all tend to think that the universe revolves around us. I see no reason why color, gender or race should be able to transcend that tendency. I do believe that the brain's way of categorizing often jumps out onto inconclusive ideas as being "common sense," and thus racism, sexism and all sorts of other -isms and phobias are born.

I too would like to see a best-guess representation of the Paleo female form and appearance. Hey, I'm a man!

(And I haven't even eaten any figgies...)

Reading through this thread, Eos, I don't think anyone mentioned this interpretation of the Upper Paleolithic female figurines. Essentially, the author argues that 1) without mirrors and 2) without formal "perspective" in art, female artists created these images of themselves in a very realistic manner.

Here's the link to the first page of "Self-Representation in Upper Paleolithic Female Figurines" which I first read in :
http://cmsu2.cmsu.edu/~ldm4683/1.htm


And here's the link to the amazing comparative photos which seem to "clinch" the argument: http://cmsu2.cmsu.edu/~ldm4683/6.htm

AlaskaRoy, that is really interesting -- I'd never have thought of it that way, but it makes perfect sense. Thanks for the links.

I'd never seen that. Interesting. A palaeolithic 'does my bum look big in this?'

huh, life without a mirror, you spend your whole life without knowing what your own face looks like (except for rippley reflections in water). an odd paleo fact.

Roy, thanx indeed for letting see this in a different light. I knew by intuition it had nothing to do with corpulence but couldn’t substantiate it enough, while this optical illusion hypothesis has made it somewhat clear. (It also demonstrates high flexibility and stretching properties of prehistoric females )

On the other hand,
-it seems at odds with generally accepted ‘primitive mentality’ theory, according to which females (here) unconsciously subjected to collected self, didn’t perceive themselves as individuals so they naturally and easily would rather choose the other cave mate as a sitter; no?
-also if the autogenous hypothesis is valid, then why are foremales never represented at such foreshortened configurations:?

I didn't read the link so perhaps I'm missing the point but...
I could buy that if women didn't have any other women to look at. And the pictures Ian posted of the art look incredibly similar to extremely obese women as they look today, down to the cottage cheesey saddlebags.