Sunday, December 15, 2019

A very modern style of artwork from Minoan Greece (circa 1700 BC) depicts langurs, monkeys native to the Indus Valley thousands of miles away.


No monkeys are native to Greece, so this, first of all, speaks to the extended trade routes that must have existed so long ago.  That in and of itself is impressive, given the travel tech of the day was basic at best.  Nevertheless, the Bronze Age Minoans managed to procure themselves some live Langur monkeys, who in turn inspired this wall painting of unsurpassed artistic merit.

The fresco decorates the north and west walls in a room of a building dubbed Beta 6. The monkeys climb and frolic above undulating bands of blue that likely represent water, using the rocks that emerge from the waves as jumping off points for their simian games. Its composition, dynamism and bold lines convey a natural setting with an almost abstract restraint. It is known as the Blue Monkey fresco 

The artwork is one of several wall paintings in a building at Akrotiri on the Greek island of Thera (Santorini) in the Aegean Sea. Akrotiri was a settlement of the Minoan civilisation in Bronze Age Greece that was buried by ash from a volcanic eruption in around 1600 BC.


Marie Nicole Pareja at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia teamed up with primatologists to re-examine the mystery monkey paintings. One stood out. “When they looked at this wall painting, they all straight away unambiguously said ‘that’s a langur’,” says Pareja.
The team has identified the monkey as a grey langur (Semnopithecus). As well as its distinctive fur, the monkey was depicted holding its tail in a characteristic S shape.
Grey langurs live in southern Asia in what is now Nepal, Bhutan and India – and particularly in the Indus Valley. During the Bronze Age, the region was home to the Indus Valley Civilisation, one of the most important societies of that time. Although it was past its peak, the Indus Valley Civilisation was still advanced for its time, with large cities and elaborate water supply systems.
Still, the quality of the art, and its resemblance to modern styles of the last century, is uncanny.  There's so, so much we'll never know about civilizations like this that came to an end long ago, but what we do uncover shows the creativity of the human spirit, as active and incandescent 3700 years ago as it is today.



1 comment:

  1. Maybe examining the background of the depiction may help in determining where the artist saw these Langurs; the animals are seemingly depicted 'cavorting' in a wild setting. Perhaps the artist actually witnessed them in the wild? I know we still apply Eurocentric perspective to these kind of events/depictions, but perhaps the artist was actually from where these Langurs are endemic...

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