%20(1).png)
Stone and the human mind
The stones are very durable. Unlike other materials that have been used throughout human history, such as wood, natural fibers for fabrics and baskets, clay, or leather, stone is not easily destroyed. Thanks to that, we can find and study stones that were carved by human beings thousands of years ago.
The earliest known stones modified by human-like animals are from 3.3 million years ago. They were found in Lomekwi, in Kenya, on the eastern side of the African continent. These simple tools were formed only by a few blows or percussions to sharpen one side of the stone. But just over a million years later, our ancestors were fashioning smaller, more precise tools, and 1.7 million years ago they began using hand axes and other carefully shaped multiple-percussion tools.
About 40,000 years ago, human beings began to carve stones to form sculptures.
These ancient stone artifacts are evidence of the evolution of the human mind and culture. Although the people who created and used them are gone and only a few bones remain of them, we can see and touch the stones they carved into utensils, statues and ornaments.
The cultures of ancient Mexico were expert stone carvers. They used stone to build temples and important buildings, to make utensils such as molcajetes and metates, and weapons such as axes, knives, and arrowheads. In addition, they carved sculptures of all sizes in many different types of stones. Among the stones that Mesoamerican cultures used the most are basalts, volcanic stones that were later covered with colored stucco, but their favorites were green and blue stones, such as jade or turquoise.
The hill that we can see from Dilao is called Chalchitépetl, which means "Hill of the precious stone" or Treasure Hill in Nahuatl.
On the problematic future of stone sculpture
of e. olbes
Dedicated to all the stoners of the world
Carving stone is undoubtedly one of the oldest tasks of Homo, since long before being sapiens: there are stones with traces of manipulation from 3 million years ago, long before we even knew or could define ourselves as humans. The learning we had manipulating stones in the past --choosing them, sharpening them, pointing them or flattening them, according to the need-- it was key, according to established theories, for the development of the brain that we possess. Those agile hands, which used to be feet, are like a brainiac with five fingers. In short, perhaps we would not be reading this text without extensive training in transforming lithic material in that distant past.
The paleoanthropologist G. Von Petzingerx explains it this way: “What do stone tools have to do with art? They are an important key to understanding the long development of cognitive thought and the origins of artistic prowess. In fact, one might well be a byproduct of the other… Tool making seems to have given rise to new cognitive abilities, the kind that will later lead to the development of mathematics and physics, as well as imagination and memory, both of which integral to the creation of art”.
The current tendency to separate the hands from the production of culture, in addition to being very pretentious and coincides with despicable attitudes that insult what is made by hand and what is accumulated in tradition, and offer in exchange "outdated" art, the pure brain product; although it is business and beneficial for those who are involved, it is detrimental for humanity. If the future of the hands is to slide across a screen and the role of the brain and heart is to capture knowledge in the form of memes, we can conclude that the situation is truly catastrophic for the traditional arts.
What one looks for in sculpture is to be able to invent a unique piece that has the strength to arouse passion in the viewpoint. What I say is not cliché. But history tells us that since the Chalcolithic, with the casting of copper and bronze, we learned to make a certain number of copies of each original. Today breeding/multiplication methods are the norm. Many experts say that the idea of the unique piece in contemporary art production is outdated. Today there is a contempt for manual labor along with an overestimation of the brain (sometimes by those who barely use it). Undoubtedly our intelligence is linked to the hands - the hands are capable of continuing to teach us.
The tradition of stone sculpture faces an extreme situation in the twenty-first century. Noguchi said that one advantage of working with stone is the ability to compare the work through the centuries thanks to the durable material, a comparison that is necessarily humbling, since fantastic things have been done in the past. This is why you will never find stonework at the forefront of any artistic movement: they depend on the technical tradition of the material, and the possibilities inherent in stone are endless. That is why I find the situation whose development I have witnessed throughout my professional life worrying: stone sculpture is becoming more and more difficult to maintain as a living and thriving tradition for reasons of a diverse nature but overall, I fear, fateful. .
Be careful, in an evolutionary sense what we do or don't do with our hands now will take millions before it causes, if it does, a physical change in our species. But the change is already here in the culture and it is a significant loss. Well, art does not end. It is renewed in each craftsman/artist who is capable of taking tradition and adding a vision born of particular experience: the culture of a people is founded on the accumulation of these contributions.
Image credits:
Carved edge, (1.7 million years old) private collection in Original Melka Kunture, Ethiopia: photo by Didier Descouens, on Wikimedia.
Acheulean hand ax, (500-300 thousand years old) from Saint-Acheul, France: photo by Didier Descouens, on Wikimedia.
Venus of Willendorf, (30-25 thousand years BP) Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria: photo by Thirunavukkarasye-Raveendran, on Wikimedia.
Coatlicue, (1521) National Museum of Anthropology, CDMX. Photo from: Los Puntuales, on Wikimedia.
Green Head, (ca. 350 BP) native to Egypt; Neues Museum Berlin, Germany
Anthropomorphic plaque, Olmec (800-400 AP). Photo by Daderot on Wikimedia.