Provider: Moravian Museum, Brno, Czech Republic

TY  - JOUR
JO  - Anthropologie (Brno)
TI  - The Adiposity Paradox in the Middle Danubian Gravettian
AU  - Trinkaus E
Y1  - 2005
VL  - 43
IS  - 2-3
PB  - Moravian Museum, Brno, Czech Republic
SN  - 0323-1119
SP  - 263
EP  - 271
KW  - Upper Paleolithic
KW  - Europe
KW  - Gravettian
KW  - Paleolithic art
KW  - Human paleontology
KW  - Mobility
N2  - 
N2  - Two of the best-known Gravettian female figurines, those from Willendorf II and Dolní Vìstonice I, are anatomically accurate depictions of obese women. Given the human paleontological evidence for the musculoskeletal hypertrophy of these populations, inferred high activity levels throughout the life cycle, burden carrying, and periods of stress, as well as the archaeological evidence for considerable human movement and raw material transport across the landscape, it is unclear how the artists involved could have become so familiar with normal human patterns of corpulence (the adiposity paradox). Seasonal semi-sedentism and short term high caloric input, as is suggested by archaeological evidence, may explain the occasional presence of such obesity, sufficiently frequently to permit accurate artistic renditions of the resultant human form.
ER  -