See the evidence in our gallery: “The reality and the fantasy of ‘palaeo-porn’“

The idea that curvaceous figurines are prehistoric pornography is an excuse to legitimise modern behaviour as having ancient roots, says archaeologist April Nowell

Which Palaeolithic images and artefacts have been described as pornography?
The Venus figurines of women, some with exaggerated anatomical features, and ancient rock art, like site in France that is supposedly of female genitalia.

You take issue with this interpretation. Who is responsible for spreading it, journalists or scientists?
People are fascinated by prehistory, and the media want to write stories that attract readers – to use a clichĂ©, sex sells. But when a New York Times headline reads “A Precursor to Playboy: Graphic Images in Rock”, and Discover magazine asserts that man’s obsession with pornography dates back to “Cro-Magnon days” based on “the famous 26,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf statuette
[with] GG-cup breasts and a hippopotamal butt”, I think a line is crossed. To be fair, archaeologists are partially responsible – we need to choose our words carefully.

Having studied Upper Palaeolithic figurines closely, what did you find?
They are incredibly varied beyond the few figurines seen over and over again: the Venus of Hohle Fels, the Venus of Willendorf and the Venus of Dolní Veˇstonice. Some are male, some are female; some are human, some are animals or fantastical creatures; some wear items of clothing, others do not. A recent study by my doctoral student Allison Tripp and her colleague Naomi Schmidt demonstrated that the body shapes of female figurines from around 25,000 years ago correspond to women at many different stages of life; they’re a variety of shapes and sizes. All of this suggests that there are multiple interpretations.

Aren’t other interpretations of palaeo-art just as speculative as calling them pornographic?
Yes, but when we interpret Palaeolithic art more broadly, we talk about “hunting magic” or “religion” or “fertility magic.” I don’t think these interpretations have the same social ramifications as pornography. When respected journals – Nature for example – use terms such as “Prehistoric pin-up” and “35,000-year-old sex object”, and a German museum proclaims that a figurine is either an “earth mother or pin-up girl” (as if no other roles for women could have existed in prehistory), they carry weight and authority. This allows journalists and researchers, evolutionary psychologists in particular, to legitimise and naturalise contemporary western values and behaviours by tracing them back to the “mist of prehistory”.

Will we ever understand what ancient art really means?
The French, in particular, are doing incredible work analysing paint recipes and tracing the movement of the ancient artists as they painted. We may never have the knowledge to say, “This painting of a bison meant this”, but I am confident that a detailed study of the corpus of ice age imagery, including the figurines, will give us a window on to the “lived life” in the Palaeolithic.

On Canada’s west coast, the most common year-round resident bird in the forest, the Pacific wren, might owe salmon a thank you for its ecological success.

Earlier this year, at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, launched a three-year study in the coastal forest to track songbird pairs and record their reproductive success near 14 different streams. She chose streams known to differ in the level of spawning biomass they carry.

The Pacific wren () often nests near such streams. Wagner tracked the male wrens as they built nests to attract a female. She then monitored breeding pairs over months, monitoring each nest every three to five days to record the number of eggs, chicks and, eventually fledglings.

“I could get a measure of the daily survival rate of the nests,” Wagner said. “[The birds] nest more densely on streams with more salmon, which could be a fitness benefit.”

While the wrens do not feed directly on salmon, the spawning fish may indirectly increase numbers of the insects and spiders that the birds consume.

More salmon, more birds

The study is the latest to suggest that the salmon have an influence on forest life. Last year, and , both also at Simon Fraser University, found that the size of the salmon run in the autumn months correlated with the diversity and density of bird life in the forest the following summer.

The salmon, they point out, spend several years at sea, and it is the marine ecosystem that provides them with the energy to grow. When they return to freshwater rivers, they transport these nutrients with them. Any salmon that die or are eaten by predators add extra nutrients to the forests (, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2010.2731).

“This research explores the potentially wide-reaching impacts of salmon on ecosystems,” says Reynolds. “They even impact the soundscape – thanks to their high-pitched roller coaster songs, Pacific wrens embody the sounds of temperate rainforests.”

Wagner will present the latest results from the study – Fishes in the forest: Impacts of salmon on songbirds – at the on 15 October in Portland, Oregon.

Biologist and philanthropist Eric Peterson explains why the best way to do coherent, long-term research was to create his own institute on a Canadian island

What drove you to create your own privately funded research centre, the Hakai Institute?
I believe our independence, focus and long-term commitment will produce great science in a part of the world that deserves attention. I lament that so much science seems episodic and fragmented. I saw in Hakai an opportunity to do definitive work rooted in a specific landscape, over a timescale of decades and across a broad range of disciplines.

You set up Hakai on an island off the coast of British Columbia. Why there?
I know this coast well – my grandparents travelled up and down it by steamer 100 years ago – so I had long known what a jewel Hakai was, an exotic place, a wild place with spectacular beaches, halfway between Vancouver and Alaska. At Hakai we sit on the only deeded land on an uninhabited island, Calvert. The island is 161 square kilometres and is in turn in the middle of an uninhabited 1200-square-kilometre marine conservation area. Thanks to our great working partnership with BC Parks, this huge and incredibly diverse natural laboratory is at our disposal.

What are you studying at Hakai?
We have a feast of opportunities in marine and terrestrial ecology. We are drawn to phenomena that cross the boundary between those domains, for example the interaction between the bog forests and the food webs in channels and inlets, or our sand ecosystem that links dunes, beaches and underwater sediments.

Is it just ecology that you focus on?
We have come to realise that during the millennia since the ice sheets receded, the sheltered bays and channels near Hakai were home to villages and other sites that are among the oldest and most important on the British Columbia coast. We never expected archaeology to be part of our research, but it turns out to be an essential part of the ecological history of the island.

How about climate and earth sciences?
It goes without saying that, over the coming years, we will monitor how climate change is affecting our ecosystems. We have recently demonstrated our commitment to the earth sciences by commissioning airborne imaging of Calvert and adjacent islands.

What is your day-to-day role?
I am effectively the mayor of a small town – peak population 100 – that must create, manage and maintain its own services: electricity, water, sewers, networks, telecoms, transport and a supply chain for food and other goods.

In years to come the Alberta tar sands project could pipe oil to the coast of British Columbia for export. Will that pose a challenge to Hakai?
We’ll still be here whichever way that issue goes.Personally I think shipping unprocessed tar sands product overseas is bad economic policy and worse environmental policy.

Efforts to reform fisheries in the present just got a boost from the past. Two quantitative studies of prehistoric fisheries show that some early cultures figured out how to get high yields without overexploitation.

of the University of Hawaii in Honolulu and of Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Vancouver, Canada, studied the reef fisheries in Hawaii since the islands were first colonised 700 years ago.

With little archaeological evidence of farming, the earliest Hawaiians were reliant on the sea for much of their food. Previous estimates suggest they each consumed about 182.5 kilograms of seafood per year – similar to levels in Pacific island countries which rely on seafood today. Kittinger and McClenachan worked out the total annual catch, assuming a conservative estimate that Hawaiian population reached 160,000 before contact with European settlers. It is thought that the population was probably more like 250,000 at its pre-settler peak.

“The coral reef fisheries yielded three to four times what people think is the sustainable yield for reef fisheries today,” Kittinger says. “And we were very conservative in our yield estimates – it’s crazy.”

Historical accounts and ethnographic studies suggest why the Hawaiian fishing operations were so successful. The pre-European society had a complex set of rules that saw reefs regularly closed to fishing, strict regulations on fishing gear, and restrictions on eating vulnerable species – all remarkably prescient of modern regulations.

There is also archaeological evidence that they built extensive fish ponds stocked with juvenile mullet and milkfish as insurance against famine. The regulations make sense, given that Hawaii is at the mercy of tsunamis, floods, hurricanes and droughts, requiring sophisticated risk management strategies.

The Hawaiians were not the only Pacific community to fish sustainably. SFU researchers and Amy Groesbeck have been studying the ancient “clam gardens” in the territory of the Kwakwak’awakw and K’ómoks First Nations along the coast of British Columbia, Canada. Such structures were built and maintained for 2000 years, from Washington State to Alaska, until European settlers disrupted the practice.

Clam, clam and more clam

Clams are filter feeders and thrive on pebbly beaches that trap nutrients brought in with the tide. The gardens provide them with these preferred conditions. They are walled structures built in the intertidal zone of shores. As the tide rises, water cascades over the walls and washes nutrients into the beach behind, which has been artificially extended to create a clam-friendly pebbly habitat. At low tide, the area is exposed and easy to harvest.

The terraced beaches are extensive platforms that provide the clams with perfect living conditions, so in theory the shellfish there should grow faster and live longer, allowing for more sustainable cultivation. To test the claim, Salomon and Groesbeck seeded 11 walled and unwalled beaches with clams in the spring and then in the autumn dug them up to compare growth.

Their as-yet-unpublished work shows that the gardens work, says Salomon. “Our experimental data shows quantitatively that you get more clams from clam gardens, with higher survival rates and higher growth rates.” She adds that it is clear that the people heavily exploited this method – the bay under study has over 50 original clam gardens.

Salomon thinks this research could change how we cultivate shellfish. “We’re going to need to double the world’s food supply by about 2040,” she says. “We can use the technology from ancient times to feed people today. Clam gardens are a perfect example of how people can do more with less.”

Kittinger and McClenachan think their Hawaiian study also holds lessons. “They had basically the same tools in the toolbox, in terms of reef management strategies, but they used them differently and managed more effectively, with locally developed rules and regulations,” Kittinger says. “It is evidence that coral reef fisheries can be sustainable. Ancient Hawaiian societies gave us the road map for how to achieve that in today’s context.”

Not all early societies had sustainable practices, though. Kittinger and McClenachan also looked at ancient fishing in the Florida Keys. Lack of freshwater probably limited the pre-European population to around 1000 people, and so they did not face food shortages – and the locals had strong trade connections with the Caribbean. They had little need for Hawaiian-style regulations or sustainable fishing practices. Once European settlers arrived, however, an unsustainable fish export economy quickly emerged.

“Florida is a really good example of what happens when there’s a lot of focus on one or two fisheries for export,” says McClenachan. “It’s a cautionary tale of what happens when you don’t manage and don’t diversify.”

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