Purgatorius, Great Grandmother Primate

Purgatorius, our earliest primate grandmother.

Purgatorius, Great Grandmother Primate, original painting by Echoing Multiverse available via Saatchi Art. Stickers and other merch available via RedBubble or Fine Art America.

Purgatorius fossils were first found by scientists in the 1960s on Montana's Purgatory Hill. Her teeth were specialized for both crunchy bugs and squishy fruits. Unlike her earlier ancestors, Purgatorius had hinged, rotating ankles, which were especially good for climbing trees and skittering along branches. Life in the trees also selected for differences in sensory organs, compared to life on the ground. Gradually, our sound sensors evolved. Interestingly, they evolved differently in male and female primates.

Today's primates are able to hear much lower frequencies than many other mammals. Consider the dog whistle. Or hearing range is low enough that we can't hear it. The best theory for this difference is our move to the canopy. According to Bohannon, "It's actually a physics problem: when you're at ground level, you can bounce your sound waves off the earth, doubling your signal strength. When you're in the trees, the ground is too far away to amplify your vocalizations." Additionally, the leaves, fruits, etc., dampen sounds. "Animals generally adapt to a soundscape in one of two ways: they tweak their pitch range or they boost their volume. Primates did both: they evolved to both hear and produce lower pitches, and they found ways to get louder. By lowering the pitch, they automatically gave themselves more distance, since the lower the pitch of a sound, the longer the sound wave, and the longer the sound wave, the farther it travels." This is why you can hear the bass of a car stereo from further away than the lyrics of the song. Because male and female primates have different needs, male and female hearing evolved slightly differently. Generally speaking, men's ears are better tuned to lower pitches while women's ears are more sensitive to higher pitches -- usually those above 2 kHz. "That just so happens to correspond to the standard pitch of a baby's cries."

"Now, if you're a female primate, there are obvious evolutionary advantages to being able to hear your baby well. So, while the entire primate line might have shifted the bottom end of their hearing downward--presumably to correspond to long-distance, low-band communication through the forest canopy--being the primary caretakers, females would particularly need to retain their ability to hear their higher pitched offspring. Via pathways that are still mysterious, female-typical hearing became tuned to these higher pitches. Most women can hear them better than men even in noisy places. And while typical masculine ears tend to lose their higher range as they age, women's ears are better at hanging on to those pitches. Importantly, our better ability to hear the very upper end of the human register is also tied to hardwired emotional response: baby cries alarm women more than men. It's not that men can't hear the kid crying, but that for many adult men, their ears snip off the upper end."

This difference in ranges of hearing has consequences beyond response time to baby's cries. In the UK, sonic anti-loitering devices, called Mosquitos, began to be installed about 15 years ago. These devices produce a high pitched sound that can't be heard by adult men, but is meant to drive away teenagers. These devices can often also be heard by women, and as well as children and babies. The high pitched buzz is painful, resulting in headaches, vertigo, and other symptoms. Some cities have gone so far as to install them in subway stations. That's a problem. There are also numerous accounts online of private citizens installing them to torment the neighbors' "noisy" children.

There have been many calls to ban the devices, but thus far, no country has. I just learned that my city, Philadelphia, has even installed them in parks and turns them on each evening. Apparently, 7-11s also have them. No wonder I have a headache every time we leave the city.

The City of Spokane has banned the devices. They have also been banned in ScotRail stations in Scotland.

These differences are also an issue in design of products and public spaces not intended to to be painful.

In addition to our higher range of hearing, women's ears also tend to amplify sounds more than man's ears, by way of movements of hair cells that respond to sounds in the environment and boost the signal, creating otoacoustic emissions. Women's otoacoustic emissions tend to be both stronger and more frequent that men's. So we hear more things, we hear them more loudly, and we continue to hear them as we age.

Comments

Sophia and the Apocryphon of John

In 1945, thirteen leather-bound papyrus codices buried in a sealed jar were found by an Egyptian farmer near the town of Nag Hammadi, Egypt. These early Christian texts date from the 3rd century CE, and include writings attributed to John the Baptist. The writings of John became known as the Secret Book of John, or the Apocryphon of John. A translation by Frederik Wisse can be read online . In the Apocryphon, there is a female counterpart to the Father - the holy Mother, Barbelo. "She is the forethought of the All - her light shines like his light - the perfect power... The first power, the glory of Barbelo, the perfect glory in the aeons, the glory of the revelation... she became the womb of everything, for it is she who is prior to them all, the Mother-Father." I became aware of the Apocryphon of John after reading a graphic novel by Marisa Acocella, The Big She-Bang, The Herstory of the Universe According to God the Mother (highly recommended, by ...

Asherah

An inscription from Khirbet El-Qôm (near Jerusalem) dated to the 700s BCE and translated by archaeologist Judith Hadley reads, "Uriyahu the Rich wrote it. Blessed be Uriyahu by Yahweh for from his enemies by his Asherah he has saved him by Oniyahu by his Asherah and by his A[she]rah.” ( Source ) Asherah was the Great Goddess of the Ancient Near East. From this inscription and other evidence, it is surmised that Yahweh, the God of the Jews, once had a wife - Asherah. Asherah was also sometimes known as Astarte and was associated with lions and the planet Venus, like her relative, Ishtar/Inanna. Asherah's symbol was the tree of life, and her worship involved sacred groves and asherah poles. Asherah original painting available through Saatchi Art . Stickers, prints, and other merch available in shop or through RedBubble or Fine Art America. All of the Asherahs in my painting are based on figurines housed in the Isra...

Cihuateteo

Cihuateteo means "Women Goddesses". These Goddesses are native to Mesoamerica, appearing in the pantheon as mortal women who died in childbirth and then were deified. The Chihuateteo travel throughout the day, dwelling first with the stars in the western sky in the heavenly region called Cihuatlampa or "place of women". Then, from noon to sunset they accompany the sun, following it through the night as it lights the underworld. Every 52 days the Chihuateteo would descend to earth to reign for a day associated with the west. On these days, children were cautioned to stay inside and men to be careful. Only those skilled in dealing with divine possession should be outside on the days the Chihuateteo descended. In modern writings the Cihuateteo are often characterized as monsters, however this was not originally the case. Rather, they were powerful, benevolent ancestors who were honored and revered. In prayers they were...

Medusa

Who was Medusa before the invading sea god supposedly defiled her? According to Marija Gimbutas, she dates at least as far back as 6000 BCE, based on a mask found at Sesklo. More recently, Medusa appears on the pediment of Artemis's Temple at Corfu, built around 580 BCE. On the pediment, Medusa is flanked by leopards. Large cats, like those associated with Artemis of Ephesus , the Great Mother Goddess of Anatolia, are sometimes considered to be guardians between worlds. Medusa's snakes are a symbol of rebirth. I've read that she may be a chthonic aspect of Artemis, much like Ereshkiga l was the underworld aspect of Inanna. Medusa original painting available through Saatchi Art . Prints, stickers, and other merch available in shop or through RedBubble or Fine Art America . Pediment from Artemis's Temple at Corfu ( source ) Or perhaps Medusa was a Moon Goddess. Robert Graves in The Greek Myths writes, "The Gorgons' names--Sth...

The First Known Artists were Women

In 2013, Dean Snow of the University of Pennsylvania published research on sexual dimorphism of hand prints present in Upper Paleolithic cave art. His analysis showed that the overwhelming majority of hand prints present in the European cave art analyzed belonged to women ( source ). Marija Gimbutas and others write that in Old European religion caves represented the womb of the earth Goddess. Women, in the womb of the Earth Mother, creating artwork at the dawn of time. The Creator creating creators, matrilineally. The Creator original painting. Blogger Art Chester writes, "There is also an indirect argument based upon observations of modern primates. Blogger Greg Laden, who studied with Prof. Snow at Penn State, states that when you study chimpanzees, you find that the males are virtually technophobes: 'Virtually all chimp technology is used by females, invented by females, passed from female to female, and so on. Males don’t seem ...

Athena

I painted Athena in December 2020 as part of a Goddess painting challenge, at the very beginning of my deep-dive into Goddess traditions. I painted her as a mean girl, inspired by Regina George. I had never liked Athena, and the result was an unflattering portrait. Athena, the Mean Girl, original painting by Echoing Multiverse, December 2020 Inspiration: The pop culture Mean Girl, Regina George My perception of Athena was based on the story of her punishment of Medusa. I had recently seen a YouTube video from Medusa's perspective. I wasn't yet aware of the complexity of Greek mythology, especially with respect to representations of the divine feminine. Later I learned that this story of Medusa was written by Ovid, a Roman poet, around 8 AD, well after the classical period of Greek mythology. From Robert Graves, I read that Plato identified Athene with the Libyan Goddess Neith, "who belonged to an epoch when fatherhood was unrecognized...Virgin...

Echoing Multiverse

Search This Blog