Venus Puzzles.

It's the time of thew year when contradictions are commonplace - wake up in freezing cold, sweat through a day's work, maybe featuring a rainstorm in an otherwise sunny day.  And then I read another contradictory thing, in the form of this article. 

The article is unambiguous, it's about the Venus of Willendorf, a small figurine unearthed 100 years ago.  And being Austrian I live the article, it's another archaeological treasure we can use to unravel human history.  But she has - is - a contradiction. 

I'll try and explain what I mean by rabbiting on about another contradiction.  After Austria (starts with A, ends with A, which means it could have been a continent because they all end with the same letter they start with) we moved to Arabia.  And from there to Australia.  Hmmm...  That's not the contradiction, either.  The contradiction about Australia is that in school here, I was taught that the geology here is old, dating back to Gondwanaland before it broke up.  We're taught that we're guardians of the oldest land in the world.

That's an insiduous misdirection, that is.  The whole freaking world (give or take a few island chains) dates back to the breakup of Gondwanaland.  Our bit of Gondwanaland happens to be the best preserved and least buried bit of it, but everywhere else is just as old.

Okay - so what does that prove?  Well - when I came to Australia, one of the things that struck me was how thin the Australian Aboriginal people were.  Australia was a preserved slice of the kind of life that people were having when the Venus was carved.  It's a harsh living, food isn't always plentiful, and people of that era would have been thin, gaunt.  Yet dozens of Venus figurines turned up.  'Sup wit dat?  How come there were so many voluptious-figured women in those times? 

Theory One of mine has it that the Venus was a fad, like blogging.  (Stay with me on this - "traditional" blogging is alreayd being supplanted with microblogging, vlogging, podcasting, and Matrix knows what else.)  Someone made one to communicate a fantasy, or pehaps the most unusual thing they had seen in their life, and it spread just like lolcat memes do today.  So there was perhaps one such large woman, who somehow managed to command enough respect that she had food aplenty.  Or perhaps there was a spate of obesity, some kind of genetic mexican wave that went through the population. 

It's kind of the theory I favour, even though the second theory, as you'll see, would be nicer for humanity.  I mean, there could even have been aliens, the same ones who are mentioned in the Bible as the Giants who bred with humankind and created strange offspring.  It fits, in a von Daniken way.  Large voluptious men and women breed but it's not a stable or viable outcome.  But the figurines remain as silent sentinels.

Theory the second is a bit more mundane, but softer for us.  Maybe there was a time of plenty, once human life got established, in a world that had blossomed after the demise of the dinosaurs.  Maybe that's how women were, kept well fed and able to have many children over their lifespans.  The sad thing is, that they would have been like that for only a generation or two, after that there would have been too many children eating itno the resources, and things like cancers and diabetes would have been exacting a toll. 

But it means there was a Golden Time... 

One last contradiction.  I believe the signs of diabetes and many cancers leave signs in the bones.  So why does it appear that there was no diabetes and cancer back then, in what appears to have been a time of obesity?  Why are we told today that these two diseases are a result of obesity?  What has changed? 

I'm going to go out on a little limb here.  I'm going to say that the things we have in our current obesity cycle that wasn't around back then, is chemicals in our food, and unnatural processing of natural foods.  No matter where I turn to look, everything always points back to human greed and exploitation of one another as the killer.  If one food manufacturer had a conscience, and didn't process, didn't add colours and flavours and preservatives and emulsifiers and coagulants and surfactants and the whole gamut of chemical experimentation they perpetrate on us, they would quickly go broke in this economic climate.  But if the whole lot suddenly got religion, we would find that the "modern illnesses" would vanish overnight. 

Do I keep saying "keep the bastards honest" just like Don Chipp did decades ago? You betcha!  And do I believe if each person reading this did keep just one bastard honest, world health would improve overnight?  You betcha! 

Now go out there and keep the bastards honest!