Robert Benten, Univ. of Missouri. Oldest known North American happy "frowny" face. I love archeology. One never knows what those anthropologists of antiquity will uncover next, extending further back in time our understanding of modern man's ancestry. I dug this up over at Nona's Fish Wars on Cars.
Unearthed by Robert Benten from the University of Missouri is this remarkably well preserved sculpture which, from radiocarbon dating of "stuff" found in an offering pit nearby, dates it back to 2200 BC. It adorns a temple used as celestial observatory. The remarkable thing about this discovery is it pushs back--by thousands of years--the first known evidence of the "happy face"!
Originally the happy face was thought to originate at the hands of graphic designer Harvey Ball, who after his death in 2001 was radiocarbon dated back to 1922. But his actual creation didn't occur until an early 1960's session to which he devoted a total of about 10 minutes. It was meant to improve morale of the State Mutual Life Insurance Company employees after a particularly nasty merger had left many with a bitter company aftertaste in their mouths . And while the infectious image didn't catch on publicly for another ten years, by the early 70's an estimated 50 million happy face buttons had been stamped out.
Happy "smiley" faced T-shirts and stickers soon followed, making testament to the rest of the world America was definitely a place to be envied by everyone everywhere as best defined by this ubiquitous icon. It also had the benefit of helping the nation through the difficult overlapping last years of the Nixon and Vietnam war eras. It's timing couldn't have better!Some years afterwards (many attribute it to Reagan's ascension and/or his ensuing Iran-Contra period) there appeared the first known "frowny" faces. It is thought these phenomena would have died then, buried by time, much as the latest one discovered in Peru from over 4,000 years ago, but with the advent of computers for the masses, smiley faces experienced a tremendous ressurection, assuming a whole gamut of expressions. From happy, to frowning, sad, angry, enamored, etc. There was an expression for every occasion. As a result, these little icons of emotions became known as "emoticons".
But with this latest discovery in Peru, we now realize Harvey Ball's creation, which netted him $45 while enriching entrepreneurs by millions, was predated by millenia. And while there exists evidence in other archeological finds of smiley faces, there is no sign the fad ever caught on in antiquity as it has today.
There are probably a number of good reasons for that. Foremost is the length of time required to manifest one's mood into reality through the medium of stone. It took a long time. Estimates are somewhere between 8-11 months.
It's difficult to be in a happy, or in this case, frowny mood for such a long, continuous period of time. Oh, there are contemporary cases that such extended anger, depression or extreme bitchiness do exist. Condoleezza Rice, Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are but three examples. But these are pathological manifestations rather than the more normal passing moods experienced by the majority of mentally healthy people.
But it is possible whoever created this ancient frowny face was simply having a very bad year. Or maybe he sensed his society would become extinct and buried beneath the sands of time for thousands of years! (Dada suspects a revival of just such an emotion may exist in the United States today.)
And then there was the question of sending these things to others. While it is unknown if ancient man had post offices, the weight of such icons would have added significantly to the cost of postage if he did. The whole process could have saved senders much expense of time--and stamps--if persons so damned happy or upset, just walked themselves to the next village and smiled or frowned in person for the intended recipient of such emotions.
But that's not really the point. The real significance of these types of anthropological discoveries is they extend our knowledge of our past and our ancestors who delivered us here. Unlike the prevalent tendency to assign to our forebears images of naked, grunting, cave-people eating raw meat with greasy fingers in blood stained animal skins because they had no napkins, we learn they were in fact highly organized, intelligent members of rather complex societies.
Thousands of years from now, our little smiling and crying faced emoticon buttons, stickers and t-shirts will have long returned to the earth as worm food. Perhaps because of the incredible hubris of our nuclear war flirtations with self-annihilation, or maybe due to our choice to ignore the dire implications of global warming. Or perhaps because one day God, contemplating man, simply concluded, "Oh shit, I really screwed up with this one!"
But for those who follow, be they some mankind succeeding variety of slime mold of this Earth, or beings from a planet in some distant galaxy, there will likely remain a "cave-man's" frowny faced happy face because he was having a really bad year. Or, maybe, who knows, he forsaw the entire future of mankind!
5 comments:
Love your emoticon history lesson, dada, although I understood the smile-turned-upside-down in south american art generally meant FEAR & the attempt to understand & control that fear! Who can say, maybe the future will interpret the bright yellow smiley face as our gloating over having plundered the last of the good earth.
Gotta go back a lot further than 4K yrs to get to original cave art, though.
Altamira (spain) = 14K-18K at least. Lascaux originally dated 16-20K, some now think may be 25K !!! Such fine, sensitive art being produced right at the dawn of european modern man would naturally imply an even older art history (so much for the classic grunting cave man image). No smiley or frowny faces in those caves, man when he appears at all, is confined to anonymous little stick jabs, much like north american indian portrayals, perhaps due to fear of confining an actual human's spirit in stone. No, they confined their amazing abilities to capturing the very essence of the rich animal life surrounding them. One notable exception is the ocher-outlined human palm-prints which say to me "I was here, this was my world".
If only OUR legacy could be so kind to the earth, instead of unceasing war, global warming & eradication of any species that got in our way. What monuments will the future dig up to represent our times, if they find time to dig at all instead of cursing us for making their lives hell as they eke out a miserable existence on a dying planet. Perhaps the best we could hope for would be a dig yielding some old metal road signs like "Dangerous curves ahead" or "Deer x-ing". What were deer, mommy? Shut up & eat your soylent green. -- D.K.
You are so far to the left, can you even see the middle or just the center line between the far left and the middle?
Thanks Anonymous for the comment. Not sure if it was intended as a response to 'anonymous'--D.K. or myself.
But if intended for me, I thank you but must confess, sadly, I am on the far right of the extreme left(at least here on this blog site).
And I'd be just guessing, but if you feel the opinions expressed here are 'so far left', then you might be so far right as to be blinded to the total dismantling of America that has taken place in the name of 'security.'
If not, then you might be one of those profiting obscenely via the bankruptcy of the nation both economically and morally. And to that all I can say is, sadly, "Congratulations."
DK - Thanks for clarifying what was an oversimplification by me in an effort to compress time. Obviously, 4200 yrs ago we weren't all sitting around in caves grunting.
My underlying indictment (probably way, way to subtle) was one of the hubris of modern man often over his predecessors of the recent past as well as his contemporaries, i.e., members of the animal kingdom of which you, as animal lover, are no doubt very aware.
I'm speaking of people's dismissal of animals as being intelligent, sentient beings. It makes them easier to enslave or eat if they're just dumb insensitive creatures here to serve us or be served to us.
As for Homo sapiens who have only been around 150,000--that's like being born yesterday--we spent the first 100,000 years eating seeds and anything else we could stick in our mouths that didn't kill us in the wake of the ice age that was winding down. The next 40,000 or so we spent 'spreading out' around the world as the environment became friendlier. Finally, about 10,000 years ago, with the advent of agriculture, we began building cities to where today we are now capable of blowing it all up and taking most everything with us.
That's a hell of an accomplishment in record time for an aberrant species. Of course, I didn't quite squeeze that all into this blog, but it was kind of what I was thinking when I wrote it. (grin)
dada, yes, naked insane apes 'r us! and in the ultimate pursuit of controlling our environment, we seem to be now firmly on the road to removing the recurrent ice age cycles of the past. thinking about how much we've accomplished since the last ice age retreated, perhaps it is fitting this cycle should end in a sweating hothouse. but just like the dinosaurs took little notice of the small shrew-like mammals who would one day replace them as the dominant life form on the planet, I wonder what seemingly insignificant specks we are overlooking today that will replace us? my bet is ants.
and to "anonymous": you must be a member of the flat-earth society, or you would see that the further left one goes, the more right-wing philosophies one embraces (totalitarianism, fascism). Sadly, traveling to the extreme right seems to end up in those very same places. Living on a global earth demands walking the middle path, leaning left where choices of social & environmental compassion are involved, leaning right in defence of individual liberties. only on a flat earth could one be so far left, they could not even see the middle. D.K.
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