A History of the World in 100 Objects - Dr Neil MacGregor [22]
So another change in climate, like the one that around 10,000 years ago brought us agriculture in the first place, may now be threatening our survival as a global species.
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Ain Sakhri Lovers Figurine
Stone sculpture, found at Wadi Khareitoun, Judea, near Bethlehem
9000 BC
As the latest Ice Age came to an end, somebody picked a pebble out of a small river not far from Bethlehem. It’s a pebble that must have tumbled downstream and been banged and smoothed against other stones as it went, in the process that geologists poetically describe as ‘chattering’. But about 11,000 years ago, a human hand then shaped and chipped this beautifully chattered, rounded pebble into one of the most moving objects in the British Museum. It shows two naked people literally wrapped up in each other. It’s the oldest known representation of a couple having sex.
In the Manuscripts Saloon at the British Museum, most people walk straight past the case that contains the carving of the lovers. Perhaps it’s because from a distance it doesn’t look like very much; it’s a small, muted, greyish stone about the size of a clenched fist. But when you get nearer to it, you can see that it’s a couple, seated, their arms and legs wrapped around each other in the closest of embraces. There are no clear facial features, but you can tell that these two people are looking into each other’s eyes. I think it’s one of the tenderest expressions of love that I know, comparable to the great kissing couples of Brancusi and Rodin.
At the time this pebble was shaped by human hands, human society was changing. As the climate warmed up across the world and people gradually shifted from hunting and gathering to a more settled way of life based on farming, our relationship to the natural world was transformed. From living as a minor part of a balanced ecosystem, we began trying to shape our environment, to control nature. In the Middle East the warmer weather brought a spread of rich grasslands. Until then people had been moving around, hunting gazelle and gathering the seeds of lentils, chickpeas and wild grasses. But in the new, lusher savannah, gazelle were plentiful and tended to stay in one place throughout the year, so the humans settled down with them. Once they were settled, they started gathering grass grains that were still on the stalk, and, by collecting and sowing these seeds, they inadvertently carried out a very early kind of genetic engineering. Most wild grass seeds fall off the plant and are spread easily by the wind or eaten by birds, but these people selected seeds which stayed on the stalk – a very important characteristic if a grass is to be worth cultivating. They stripped these seeds, removed the husks and ground the grains to flour. Later, they would go on to sow the surplus seeds. Farming had begun – and for over 10,000 years we’ve been breaking and sharing bread.
These early farmers slowly created two of the world’s great staple crops – wheat and barley. With this more stable life, our ancestors had time to reflect and to create. They made images that show and celebrate key elements in their changing universe: food and power, sex and love. The maker of the ‘lovers’ sculpture was one of these people. I asked the British sculptor Marc Quinn what he thought of it:
We always imagine that we discovered sex, and that all other ages before us were rather prudish and simple, whereas in fact – obviously – human beings have been emotionally sophisticated since at least 10,000 BC, when this sculpture was made, and I’m sure just as sophisticated as us.
What’s incredible about this sculpture is that when you move it and look at it in different ways, it changes completely. From the side, you have the long shot of the embrace, you