Artistic license? Naked white people just look nakeder - since they developed in a climate where nudity is exceptional, whereas the real first humans came into being in a climate where clothes were not a priority. The mythic quality of the scene is enhanced by the unrealistic white nudity.
It's an ancient astronauts take on creation/Eden, which, aside from the "ALIENS MADE HUMANS OMG TEH ANNUNAKI!" underpants-on-head weirdness, is similar to the actual scientific consensus. They should look like our historical ancestors--which is to say, brown-skinned--not Scandinavians. White people make no sense in the image.
I'm also not sure what to make of your "white people look nekkeder" contention, which is just bizarre.
Well, that's a long story, but I'll try to condense. Some six million years ago, the human line first split from the proto-chimpanzees. However, with the recent full analysis of the human, chimp and bonobo genomes, it turns out that each two of them share certain stretches not found in the third. This implies that between six and two million years ago, humans and chimps and bonobos would occasionally mingle and briefly interchange genes.
I believe that the factor that finally made us break out from the ape fellowship was the discovery of the buttocks. If you look at the human body, the large glutes kinda stand out, as they are needed for walking. Even on all fours, you can still easily recognize this human feature. At some point, the human male mating instinct got upgraded to look for this. Suddenly it became possible to see at a glance which of the two small, hairy, slopeheaded females was of his own species.
The females responded with an arms race of growing butts, adding a padding of fat to enhance their humanness. The girl with the biggest ass became the VIP of the tribe, the strongest and smartest males fighting over her. As a result, the butts eventually grew to the size found in today's Khoi and San peoples of South Africa. Sculptures from Ice Age Europe indicate that steatopygia was present there as well, either physically or at least in the male mind.
The use of fat as padding, originally a result of sexual selection, incidentally made it possible to sustain the long pregnancies and two years of lactation needed to produce the modern big-brained human child, despite the occasional food shortage. (The human brain consists largely of fat.)
Futanari is above my otaku level, I'm afraid. I cannot recall seeing the word before.
And yaoi is a distinctly female art form. I know it only because several of my online friends are self-described "scary yaoi fangirls". It seems to me that they treat yaoi as a way to relate to the incomprehensible male sexuality. But that is just a guess; I have never been female in real life.
Come on, the whiteness of the naked people is clearly intentional. It signals that the picture depicts an alternate mythology rather than an alternate science. The scientific "Adam" and "Eve" were quite dark, living near equator. The mythical Adam and Eve, however, are much paler.
From the utter lack of any white tribes, contemporary or historical, habitually walking around in nothing or next to nothing. (I don't think Danes count, since it's only a few days a year.) In contrast, it is more or less comme il faut (at least here in northern Europe) to portray various dark-skinned tribes in a state of severe undress on the anthropology pages of popular science mags.
You know, a horrible thought struck me while writing this - could there be places where such photo reports are not acceptable? Like, Saudi Arabia and the USA? In that case, my comment would make zero sense, I freely admit.
The USA has a long tradition of naked tribal people in the pages of National Geographic. There's sort of a running joke that this is where young boys used to get their porn, before the Internet was invented.
That said, National Geographic appears to be the only publication that can regularly get away with full frontal nudity shots, male or female. It's a strange blind spot in a society that still has occasional bouts of hysteria over nudity in art. I guess because it's too "boring" for the prudes to read.
You know, a horrible thought struck me while writing this - could there be places where such photo reports are not acceptable? Like, Saudi Arabia and the USA? In that case, my comment would make zero sense, I freely admit.
A similarly horrible thought struck me while reading your reply--is it true that the only place you ever see non-white people is in media representations of "various dark-skinned tribes?" If so, I guess I understand where you're coming from when you exoticize the mere thought of dark skin.
No, that is not the only place I see black people. It is the only place I see naked people (except the occasional "asses against Bush" etc.) Logic to the rescue: "Only people in the tropics go naked naturally" does not equal "all people from the tropics go naked all the time".
This is not a case of "omg the blacks are so primitive". It is a matter of climate, pure and simple. Actually, in today's Africa black people tend to dress more modestly than contemporary Europeans, far as I can see.
Of course, for people who grew up after the dawn of the WWW, the supply of white nekkidity may well outstrip the other colors. But I am quite a bit older than the Internet.
I'm so curious! Has the slightest notion or the even briefest suspicion ever crossed your mind that perhaps there's the remotest possibility that you and "the anthropology pages of popular science mags" may be exoticizing and casting people with dark skin as being primitive, less "civilized," or closer to animal non-personhood by claiming or implying that "naked white people just look nakeder" (whereas, i suppose, naked is just a much more natural state of being for people of color? What?)?
Also your half-assed shot at an evolutionary explanation kind of made me lol. Wtf. Rationalize, rationalize, rationalize!
Yes indeed, comrade, nudity is a much more natural state in climate zones where one does not freeze one's ass off without clothes. If that is some kind of racism, then take it up with whoever failed to engineer the planet with an evenly distributed temperature.
If that's the most racist thing I say (and it probably is, given that I don't believe in human races and consider skin color purely an adaptation to ultraviolet radiation, not an indicator of brain or penis size) then I think you should just lay off the projections. I say enough controversial things without you inventing them for me.
Yet, somehow, naked people of color are just as naked as naked white people.
Imagine that.
I see that you've chosen to ignore my photo report of naked white tribes.
"If that's the most racist thing I say (and it probably is, given that I don't believe in human races and consider skin color purely an adaptation to ultraviolet radiation, not an indicator of brain or penis size)..."
I expressed my thoughts on why the color was chosen in a picture which is set in a certain cultural context. Pure curtesy on my part, not an attempt to impose that cultural context on people I don't even know.
WTF is with you people and picking stupid fights?
And denying that skin color is simply an adaptation to UV radiation is right up there with denying that humans existed before 6000 years ago. I could easily link to verbose web sites or recommend you books proving with tens of thousands of words that no, really, humans just showed up 6000 years ago. But those web sites and those books are stupid, and so is the fantasy that skin color somehow says something about a person except that their ancestors were living in a climate with lots of UV radiation.
Wake up. Or not - it is your life. Good luck with it.
itlandm's thesis is sound. In North America, nudity as a normal state of affairs is firmly associated with "backward", tropical tribal peoples. If Adam and Eve were dark skinned in this picture, then there's a possibility that their nudity would be sort of overlooked; the message could go missing (identified as two "primitives" rather than specifically Adam and Eve).
The other possibility, and the one that sprang to mind immediately for me, is that for very many North Americans, Jesus (and everyone else in the Bible) are Scandinavian-white - blond, blue-eyed, and pale skinned. Or at least pale skinned and with north-European features, instead of looking like middle-eastern Jews or north-Africans. Possible exception made for Pharaoh, who probably looks anachronistically Arabic.
We should probably call in an art student on this, but in my experience as a former churchgoer, Jesus is frequently depicted as having reddish brown hair and somewhat tan Caucasian features. (I assume he was working outside as a carpenter for much of his life, that is more or less the common view in the Church, I think.) Adam is, far as I remember, normally painted with darker hair than Eve.
I am not sure why, the Bible certainly holds no physical description except for the name Adam, which can be read as either "earth" or "red" if I remember correctly. Though some whites read it as "blush", a trait usually connected with the Nordic peoples, this is not official doctrine in any church I attended.
There's church doctrine, and then theres what people on the street think, and there's often a big difference between the two - especially when it comes to unvocalized mental pictures.
Pointing out that Jesus was Jewish (and probably looked a whole lot like the Mizrahim or possibly Sephardim, not the Ashkenazim) makes an irritating number of people do a little double-take. Most folks don't seem to have much trauma over being reminded about this, but it takes an explicit reminding.
On the one hand, I fully understand the appeal of all these mythological people looking "like me". It makes it feel more accessible after all.
On the other hand, my sense of historical accuracy BURNS when confronted with that kind of thing[1], and I wonder how much it springs from and/or encourages tendencies towards xenophobia.
[1] Much like my physics hurt when I watch Star Wars and the wind of space is blowing around unattached Droids.
I have been told that in some African churches, Jesus is depicted as black. I find this historically unlikely, albeit not impossible, but I don't really have a problem with it. If the octopi ever become religious, I don't mind if they portray Jesus as having tentacles either. Religious iconography, if any, should primarily serve as a mirror for the soul. That the Jewish creation myth reached most of the world through Europe is surely incidental. The Coptic church in Ethiopia was well established while the blonde nations were still fleshing out their myths about Odin and Freya.
in some African churches, Jesus is depicted as black
This is definitely true in some African-American churches so it seems like it may be plausible in African churches as well...keeping in mind that Africa is really fucking big of course.
As Jerill said, it helps if the people in your myth look like you.
In the case of America, having a White Jesus was used to perpetuate the notion that Black people were cursed by God, unworthy of God's love, their only right place was serving White people, etc. etc.
I completely agree, although I believe the problem was that society already sorted people by skin color. Nobody cares about the shape of Jesus' earlobes*, because we don't sort people that way.
(* Easter Island was supposedly devastated by a civil war between long-ears and short-ears. Hey, it could happen.)
Well, they certainly stick out more in the context of the picture, which is probably part of what the artist was going for. It wouldn't have worked as well if the humans had been dirt brown and blended into the hill...
Because brown is a color of clothes (especially privative clothes and not fur). Also, lighter skin makes them stand out from the background more. Probably the same reason her hair's blond. I suspect brown hair made it look like her head was one of those little copses of trees in the background. Accurately brown people would have vanished pretty easily.
It is, but white is a pretty uncommon color of clothes for primative humans. And, as i said elsewhere, I think the people wouldn't have stood out nearly as well in a dark skin tone.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 03:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 03:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 03:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 04:00 pm (UTC)I'm also not sure what to make of your "white people look nekkeder" contention, which is just bizarre.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 04:04 pm (UTC)You'll get used to that if you read enough of Magnus' stuff.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 04:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 04:19 pm (UTC)so, uh,
Date: 2008-10-21 12:28 am (UTC)Re: so, uh,
Date: 2008-10-21 10:38 am (UTC)I believe that the factor that finally made us break out from the ape fellowship was the discovery of the buttocks. If you look at the human body, the large glutes kinda stand out, as they are needed for walking. Even on all fours, you can still easily recognize this human feature. At some point, the human male mating instinct got upgraded to look for this. Suddenly it became possible to see at a glance which of the two small, hairy, slopeheaded females was of his own species.
The females responded with an arms race of growing butts, adding a padding of fat to enhance their humanness. The girl with the biggest ass became the VIP of the tribe, the strongest and smartest males fighting over her. As a result, the butts eventually grew to the size found in today's Khoi and San peoples of South Africa. Sculptures from Ice Age Europe indicate that steatopygia was present there as well, either physically or at least in the male mind.
The use of fat as padding, originally a result of sexual selection, incidentally made it possible to sustain the long pregnancies and two years of lactation needed to produce the modern big-brained human child, despite the occasional food shortage. (The human brain consists largely of fat.)
so, uh
Date: 2008-10-21 02:10 pm (UTC)Re: so, uh
Date: 2008-10-21 03:25 pm (UTC)Re: so, uh
Date: 2008-10-21 03:30 pm (UTC)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaoi
what r your thoughts
Re: so, uh
Date: 2008-10-21 04:21 pm (UTC)And yaoi is a distinctly female art form. I know it only because several of my online friends are self-described "scary yaoi fangirls". It seems to me that they treat yaoi as a way to relate to the incomprehensible male sexuality. But that is just a guess; I have never been female in real life.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 04:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 04:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 05:16 pm (UTC)You know, a horrible thought struck me while writing this - could there be places where such photo reports are not acceptable? Like, Saudi Arabia and the USA? In that case, my comment would make zero sense, I freely admit.
[edited to pardon my French]
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 05:37 pm (UTC)That said, National Geographic appears to be the only publication that can regularly get away with full frontal nudity shots, male or female. It's a strange blind spot in a society that still has occasional bouts of hysteria over nudity in art. I guess because it's too "boring" for the prudes to read.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 06:22 pm (UTC)A similarly horrible thought struck me while reading your reply--is it true that the only place you ever see non-white people is in media representations of "various dark-skinned tribes?" If so, I guess I understand where you're coming from when you exoticize the mere thought of dark skin.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 07:01 pm (UTC)This is not a case of "omg the blacks are so primitive". It is a matter of climate, pure and simple. Actually, in today's Africa black people tend to dress more modestly than contemporary Europeans, far as I can see.
Of course, for people who grew up after the dawn of the WWW, the supply of white nekkidity may well outstrip the other colors. But I am quite a bit older than the Internet.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 06:39 pm (UTC)I've screened your comment. Can you re-make it with links instead of embedded images, and be sure to mention the nudity for clickers?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 06:47 pm (UTC)I'm so curious! Has the slightest notion or the even briefest suspicion ever crossed your mind that perhaps there's the remotest possibility that you and "the anthropology pages of popular science mags" may be exoticizing and casting people with dark skin as being primitive, less "civilized," or closer to animal non-personhood by claiming or implying that "naked white people just look nakeder" (whereas, i suppose, naked is just a much more natural state of being for people of color? What?)?
Also your half-assed shot at an evolutionary explanation kind of made me lol. Wtf.
Rationalize, rationalize, rationalize!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 07:08 pm (UTC)If that's the most racist thing I say (and it probably is, given that I don't believe in human races and consider skin color purely an adaptation to ultraviolet radiation, not an indicator of brain or penis size) then I think you should just lay off the projections. I say enough controversial things without you inventing them for me.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 07:25 pm (UTC)Imagine that.
I see that you've chosen to ignore my photo report of naked white tribes.
"If that's the most racist thing I say (and it probably is, given that I don't believe in human races and consider skin color purely an adaptation to ultraviolet radiation, not an indicator of brain or penis size)..."
http://www.rachelstavern.com/?p=395
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 07:51 pm (UTC)WTF is with you people and picking stupid fights?
And denying that skin color is simply an adaptation to UV radiation is right up there with denying that humans existed before 6000 years ago. I could easily link to verbose web sites or recommend you books proving with tens of thousands of words that no, really, humans just showed up 6000 years ago. But those web sites and those books are stupid, and so is the fantasy that skin color somehow says something about a person except that their ancestors were living in a climate with lots of UV radiation.
Wake up. Or not - it is your life. Good luck with it.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 08:00 pm (UTC)Otherwise you wouldn't have said anything about "cultural context."
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 09:07 pm (UTC)But not today. Today I just wanted to chat about the pretty picture.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-21 01:03 am (UTC)Not really. All you humans look pretty much alike to me.
-- Steve'd cheerfully refuse to open the pod bay doors regardless of creed or colour.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 05:42 pm (UTC)The other possibility, and the one that sprang to mind immediately for me, is that for very many North Americans, Jesus (and everyone else in the Bible) are Scandinavian-white - blond, blue-eyed, and pale skinned. Or at least pale skinned and with north-European features, instead of looking like middle-eastern Jews or north-Africans. Possible exception made for Pharaoh, who probably looks anachronistically Arabic.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 07:21 pm (UTC)I am not sure why, the Bible certainly holds no physical description except for the name Adam, which can be read as either "earth" or "red" if I remember correctly. Though some whites read it as "blush", a trait usually connected with the Nordic peoples, this is not official doctrine in any church I attended.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 08:23 pm (UTC)Pointing out that Jesus was Jewish (and probably looked a whole lot like the Mizrahim or possibly Sephardim, not the Ashkenazim) makes an irritating number of people do a little double-take. Most folks don't seem to have much trauma over being reminded about this, but it takes an explicit reminding.
On the one hand, I fully understand the appeal of all these mythological people looking "like me". It makes it feel more accessible after all.
On the other hand, my sense of historical accuracy BURNS when confronted with that kind of thing[1], and I wonder how much it springs from and/or encourages tendencies towards xenophobia.
[1] Much like my physics hurt when I watch Star Wars and the wind of space is blowing around unattached Droids.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 09:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-21 07:05 am (UTC)This is definitely true in some African-American churches so it seems like it may be plausible in African churches as well...keeping in mind that Africa is really fucking big of course.
As Jerill said, it helps if the people in your myth look like you.
In the case of America, having a White Jesus was used to perpetuate the notion that Black people were cursed by God, unworthy of God's love, their only right place was serving White people, etc. etc.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-21 10:04 am (UTC)(* Easter Island was supposedly devastated by a civil war between long-ears and short-ears. Hey, it could happen.)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 05:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 06:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 06:28 pm (UTC)you stay classy, ladyfox.
the hill looks pretty green to me but idk maybe i'm crazy
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-21 07:11 am (UTC)It immediately made me wince and took me half a second to figure out why.
Oh...that's right...because Black people are dirty. I swear, if I just scrubbed harder, the Black would come right off.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 09:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 09:24 pm (UTC)http://www.anivair.com/downloads/anivair_color.jpg
It was a hack job in the Gimp, but I think they stand out much less.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-21 03:28 pm (UTC)Brown is also a color of skin.
And white is also a color of clothes.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-21 08:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-21 08:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-21 04:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 03:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 04:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 05:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 09:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-21 12:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 11:13 pm (UTC)