Eternal embrace? Couple still hugging 5,000 years on

[Guest guest]

Hello All -

 

This article was posted on news this morning. It shows the

skeletons of a couple in an embrace. The scientist think the skeletons

are 5,000 to 6,000 years old. The site has a picture of the pair

together. It is beautiful.

 

If go to the link below picture, it will show you more photos. In one

of the photos it appears that the couple are in a yabyum position.

 

What I like about this photo is that it goes against the Western

scientific point of view that portrays all of our forbears as barely

human and better than animals. Here you see in their embrace a more

sophisticated emotion in play other than mere fear and survival. It

suggests that who and what we are as humans is far greater and more

wonderful than we have been taught.

 

Eric

 

=========================================================

 

 

Eternal embrace? Couple still hugging 5,000 years on

 

Story Link:

 

http://news./s/nm/oukoe_uk_italy_embrace

 

Additional picture link:

 

http://news./photos/ss/events/sc/020607skeletonshug;_ylt=AjnKICiDX.O.oOgbOxfrDheek3QF

 

Tue Feb 6, 1:39 PM ET

 

ROME (Reuters) - Call it the eternal embrace.

 

 

Archaeologists in Italy have discovered a couple buried 5,000 to 6,000

years ago, hugging each other.

 

"It's an extraordinary case," said Elena Menotti, who led the team on

their dig near the northern city of Mantova.

 

"There has not been a double burial found in the Neolithic period,

much less two people hugging -- and they really are hugging."

 

Menotti said she believed the two, almost certainly a man and a woman

although that needs to be confirmed, died young because their teeth

were mostly intact and not worn down.

 

"I must say that when we discovered it, we all became very excited.

I've been doing this job for 25 years. I've done digs at Pompeii, all

the famous sites," she told Reuters.

 

"But I've never been so moved because this is the discovery of

something special."

 

A laboratory will now try to determine the couple's age at the time of

death and how long they had been buried.

[Guest guest]

Hi Eric:

 

You wrote: "It shows the skeletons of a couple in an embrace. The

scientist think the skeletons are 5,000 to 6,000 years old. The site

has a picture of the pair together. It is beautiful. [...] Here you

see in their embrace a more sophisticated emotion in play other than

mere fear and survival. It suggests that who and what we are as humans

is far greater and more wonderful than we have been taught."

 

I sure hope so, but some of the more detailed articles quickly

dispense with romance:

 

"An initial examination of the couple [...] revealed the man has an

arrow in his spinal column while the woman has an arrow in her side

[i.e. straight into her heart]. ... One theory being examined by

experts is that the man was killed and the woman then sacrificed so

his soul would be accompanied in the afterlife."

 

I am all for the "Valentine skeletons" theory, and I agree that this

sure looks like love. I am also a strong believer in the antiquity of

complex human emotion. Anyone who fails to see the sophistication and

delicacy of the Chauvet Cave paintings in France (c. 30,000-40,000 BC)

isn't paying attention. And Lewis-Williams' "The Mind in the Cave" is

an extraordinary argument that what we consider "human history" is

barely a 1% fraction of actual human civilization.

 

By comparison, these two are real moderns -- living almost on the

verge of Vedic and Biblical times. We are not talking "Clan of the

Cave Bears" people by any means. And though their posture may look

like yabyum to a sensitive modern eye, the arrows thru heart and spine

suggest that even Marvin Gaye couldn't have helped them much. This

isn't a case of coitus interruptus Pompei-style, but at best a young,

slain couple arranged in this manner by caring and grieving relatives;

and at worst a dead warrior accompanied by a human sacrifice.

 

Still a nice story ... but perhaps not quite as pretty as we'd like to

imagine.

 

Sheesh, what a downer I am tonight! Sorry :-p

 

DB