Post by archaeologist on Oct 14, 2024 9:35:28 GMT -5
Wall paintings of monkeys from Akrotiri in the Aegean suggest contact with India.
Painted Bronze Age Monkeys Hint at the Interconnectedness of the Ancient World
The scientific article:
A new identification of the monkeys depicted in a Bronze Age wall painting from Akrotiri, Thera - PRIMATES 2019
Monkeys fresco on the north wall of Room 6 of Building Complex Beta at Akrotiri, Thera.
Painted Bronze Age Monkeys Hint at the Interconnectedness of the Ancient World
The fascinating “tail” of how Indian monkeys might have ended up in a Minoan painting
As far as archaeologists know, Asian monkeys weren’t trotting the globe during the Bronze Age. That’s why a millennia-old Greek painting of a gray langur—a primate native to the Indian subcontinent—was surprising enough to stop researchers dead in their tracks.
Archaeologists and primatologists re-analyzing wall paintings found in Akrotiri, a Minoan settlement on Thera (modern-day Santorini) buried by volcanic ash around 1600 B.C., have uncovered evidence that Bronze Age Greek artists knew of—and may have even seen—monkeys whose native habitat was thousands of miles away. Their findings, newly published in the journal Primates, hint that ancient cultures were more intertwined than previously thought. Eager to exchange ideas, artists or merchants may have journeyed far from home; eventually, the fruits of these wanderers’ travels were immortalized in paint.
Previous researchers have already noted that some of the Bronze Age artworks unearthed on the Greek islands of Crete and Thera depict monkeys of all shapes and sizes. Based on the animals’ features, as well as close trade relations between the Minoans and the Egyptians, some have been pinpointed as olive baboons, which are native to the forests and savannas of the African continent.
Other painted primates, however, were more mysterious. For instance, sprawled across one of the Akrotiri building’s walls is a fresco populated by blue, rock-climbing monkeys with buoyant, S-shaped tails. The primates remained unidentified until recently, when Marie Nicole Pareja, an archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania, recruited a group of primatologists to re-examine the painting.
“It felt really silly to examine an image of these animals as an archaeologist and art historian without asking for the input of people who look at them every day,” she tells Tom Whipple at the Times.
After snapping photos of the fresco and several other Aegean artworks, Pareja sent them to colleagues around the world. Several confirmed the Egyptian nature of the majority of the monkeys but reported that the Akrotiri painting “unambiguously” contained gray langurs, says Pareja to New Scientist’s Michael Marshall.
The fascinating “tail” of how Indian monkeys might have ended up in a Minoan painting
As far as archaeologists know, Asian monkeys weren’t trotting the globe during the Bronze Age. That’s why a millennia-old Greek painting of a gray langur—a primate native to the Indian subcontinent—was surprising enough to stop researchers dead in their tracks.
Archaeologists and primatologists re-analyzing wall paintings found in Akrotiri, a Minoan settlement on Thera (modern-day Santorini) buried by volcanic ash around 1600 B.C., have uncovered evidence that Bronze Age Greek artists knew of—and may have even seen—monkeys whose native habitat was thousands of miles away. Their findings, newly published in the journal Primates, hint that ancient cultures were more intertwined than previously thought. Eager to exchange ideas, artists or merchants may have journeyed far from home; eventually, the fruits of these wanderers’ travels were immortalized in paint.
Previous researchers have already noted that some of the Bronze Age artworks unearthed on the Greek islands of Crete and Thera depict monkeys of all shapes and sizes. Based on the animals’ features, as well as close trade relations between the Minoans and the Egyptians, some have been pinpointed as olive baboons, which are native to the forests and savannas of the African continent.
Other painted primates, however, were more mysterious. For instance, sprawled across one of the Akrotiri building’s walls is a fresco populated by blue, rock-climbing monkeys with buoyant, S-shaped tails. The primates remained unidentified until recently, when Marie Nicole Pareja, an archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania, recruited a group of primatologists to re-examine the painting.
“It felt really silly to examine an image of these animals as an archaeologist and art historian without asking for the input of people who look at them every day,” she tells Tom Whipple at the Times.
After snapping photos of the fresco and several other Aegean artworks, Pareja sent them to colleagues around the world. Several confirmed the Egyptian nature of the majority of the monkeys but reported that the Akrotiri painting “unambiguously” contained gray langurs, says Pareja to New Scientist’s Michael Marshall.
The scientific article:
A new identification of the monkeys depicted in a Bronze Age wall painting from Akrotiri, Thera - PRIMATES 2019
Monkeys fresco on the north wall of Room 6 of Building Complex Beta at Akrotiri, Thera.
