Link: https://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2026/research/ice-age-carvers-mammoth-tusk-patterns/

Research Article(open access)

Layman article snippet:

An analysis of 18 famous ‘Venus’ figurines found at the Mizyn campsite in Northern Ukraine shows that Ice Age craftspeople carefully observed and mimicked the natural lines of the ivory, using them to structure their artistic engravings.

The discovery was made possible using high-resolution microscopic analysis and 3D digital modelling. The artefacts were recorded as part of urgent heritage preservation efforts led by Ukrainian NGO Archaїc.

The team found that the carvers explicitly incorporated Schreger and Owen lines, which are the natural growth rings found in mammoth tusks, into the surface patterns of the figures.

[…]

The international project, published in the Nature partner journal Heritage Science,brought together experts from Ukraine, Norway, Germany, and the UK, supported by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action grant.

Dr Dmytro Kiosak, from the Leibniz Centre for Archaeology, said: “Our findings challenge the long-held assumption that ancient art simply evolved in a straight line from basic to complex forms.”

I hate how disconnected we became from art by making the Artist a job or a classification. You have countless examples from the past of people participating in the Sacred of their daily lives, reveling in Mystery and creating art, but somewhere along the line, something was lost, and art became a product just like anything else, instead of a manifestation of emotion and counciousness that anyone could part take in. We need to eliberate Art again, to discover that lost Mystery that helped create all these beautiful pieces. Somehow, I don't know...

I totally agree with this.

I think people get discouraged from participating in creativity when there is a perceived imperative to make something of high 'quality' or 'value', as they perceive those things to be defined by others.

It also makes it harder for the average person to appreciate art because it means that art is under constant pressure to become more esoteric, elitist and sophisticated. There is a powerful dynamic of social class at play in this way too.

I've seen this happening firsthand in my own life and among the people around me who classify themselves as artists, as well as in the mass-produced objects I have to interact with on a daily basis.

I think it's good to realise this and see all the more common, more intimate expressions that are possible for us.

I would add that esoterism in art is, I think, implied by default. Art as I see it is an extension of the Hidden and the Sacred, and it always has been.

We wonder in amazement at works of popular art in museums - clothes, woodwork objects, jewelry - and we consider them art. Yet they were simple objects of personal use, created by ordinary people. However, there's a second layer beneath that, and that's where the spiritual side comes into play. Most of these objects had meaning and a certain spiritual value. They were, usually, something that required huge amounts of effort, and that lead to the sense of imbuing the object with a part of the spirit of the person. There were also other hidden meanings - the symbols and decorations, usually passed on by way of tradition, without making sense of their actual meaning, contained that very mistery of a deeper... something: a message, a meaning, an invocation, a prayer.

We can now analyse and quantify that. We can isolate the sun-wheel on so many European folk dresses, we can explain its origins, we know more about it and its meaning than the very craftspeople that created them - but for us it holds no other value than purely decorative and scientific. We look at it and think its pretty, just a bunch of intresting motifs.

It's this rupture that causes that feeling of lost artistry, I think. Even when approaching art, we tend to open our critical eye first - why did the author take that certain stylistic choice? Who was the author, what inspired him, what message is he trying to send? It's a purely analytical view that lets us quantify art and place a value on it, whatever that value may be - money, cultural importance, political message etc. But this destroyed the inherent feeling of mistery as pertaining to beauty and art, and that's what's lost and has to be regained.

I think you're absolutely right. The dominance of rationalism and science (and probably other factors) have led to what you might call a 'suspension of belief'. The smaller the accepted realm of the non-rational is, the less space we have to think and feel within it.

I understand this from my experience of being a child. My ways of knowing then were less formalised. There was a sense of sanctity, wonder, character and richness in everything. It wasn't always comfortable or pleasurable but it was a much more beneficial way to be.

We've been talking specifically about art here, but I think it's a part of the over-arching loss of our connection with each other as people, and with animals, places and objects. We need a concept of mystery as you put it to bridge the gap between us and others and to have compassion/love.