Why did Paleolithic people cut off their fingers?

Hello everyone, welcome back to By Amara. This is a weekly news show where we'll discuss some of the weird, strange, and downright odd things that have happened in the art and history fields. I'm your host and personal curator, Amara Andrew, and yes, it has been quite a long time.

This week we're talking about Midjourney's list of artists that they used to train their AI, art sales plummeted in 2023, what entered the public domain in 2024, and did Paleolithic people cut their fingers off for art or religion or neither or both or something? I don't know. Anywho, hi, welcome back to the show.

Oh, let's get to it. I am so rusty, holy shit. As you know, if you are a loy- sorry, my headphones are really fucking loud.

Hi! It has been quite a long time, I'm so sorry. Also, new mic!

Who dis? No. Shh…

Shh… Yeah, what up, bitches? It's- sorry, that was aggressive.

It's been a really long time since I've done my podcast. I mean, it's only been like- well, no, it's been like two months, I think. Actually, I should have looked this up.

When was the last time I recorded? That's not my YouTube channel, who am I? That is not me.

It has been a very long time since I've recorded an episode of By Amara, and as you can already tell, I am very rusty, but rusty, but. Oh my god, yeah, it has been December 28th was the last episode of By Amara, so it has been over a month and we're just gonna see how this goes. I haven't done the show just because we've been so, so busy.

Sorry, I'm starting off on all these different trains of thought. I'm just so excited to see you again. It's been so long.

But yeah, anyway, I have not posted By Amara for a very long time just because we have been crazy busy. Like within the last month, I calculated it. We have been to- okay, so in the past month, we've been to- well, we've been here, we went to Dallas, and then Buffalo, New York, and then San Jose, and then we came back, and then we went to a baby shower, and then next week we're going to Orlando, and then right after that we're going to Miami, and then after that we're going to various other- we're going everywhere basically because of my business.

Almost said By Amara. That's the name of this show. Duh.

But my business is MAVEN, so it's videography for Realtors, neat, simple. But basically we are traveling across the country to film with our top bananas and stuff like that, and it's been so much fucking fun. I love it!

It's just been so much travel. So anyway, TL;DR, it's also been a lot of editing, so I have just been focused on that specifically, not really on this show, just because it's something extra that I'm doing just kind of for fun. So, which who thinks art and history is fun?

I do. Sorry, I have like calluses on my hands. I do a lot of kettlebell stuff for like workouts, and it's not great for the hands.

Anywho, so it has been quite a long time, I'm so sorry, but that's just how it's gonna go, and I'm trying to figure out how to do the show like with minimal editing because it does take a lot of time adding all the graphics and edits and stuff like that, and if I curse too much for YouTube or for my parents who don't watch this, but anyway, but blah, I'm just trying to make this as easy and straightforward as possible.

So, sorry. I'm also just- you can zoom ahead if you don't give a shit, cuz like I don't blame you, I'm just fucking rambling. But yeah, anyway, so Happy New Year, also.

I know it's been a New Year for like a whole month, but whatever, better late than never. New Year's is very fun. I was thinking about there's a story that I've been telling and to people, and I cannot get through it without laughing like an absolute lunatic.

So, I told it on New Year's Eve, and it was the hardest I think I've ever laughed in my entire life. Like, tears were streaming down, I almost passed out cuz I couldn't breathe, but anyway, maybe I'll tell you one day, probably not. But yeah, like I said, we've been traveling a bunch.

We went to a baby shower for one of my friends here, which was really fun. It was like a baby shower like I've never been to, which was awesome. I mean, I've only been to one other baby shower.

As you could probably tell, I'm not really like a baby kind of person, so I don't like babies. I'm not fond of babies. So I'm not really into that kind of world, but this was very fun.

Like, this was my style of baby shower, and I loved it. It was awesome. But yeah, like we said, we're going to- we said, like I said, we're going to Orlando and then Miami next week, next weekend, so that'll be really fun, and then it'll be my birthday.

I'm officially going to be in my 30s. Like I'm already 30, but I'll be 31, so that'll be like in my 30s, you know? And that's a little scary.

Oh, and this is super exciting. So, shockingly, I know, I have never been out of the United States, which shame on me, but just a lot of different reasons why, not- that sounds nefarious, but just genuinely just busy with other things. But I'm super excited because we're actually finally going out of the country.

We are going to go to Rome, Italy for my dad's 80th birthday in April, and I'm very excited. Especially obviously with degrees in art history, it's like perfect for me. So, I've been brushing up on my Italian and French for no reason.

I'm much better with French than I am with Italian, so that's gonna be interesting. But sorry, I thought Jeff was looking at me, but he's just standing in the closet, doing whatever he's doing. I don't even know, he didn't even hear me.

Anyway, so I'm very excited to be going. I have a lot of travel stuff to book, but I also need to figure out how to sleep on an airplane because I just- I cannot ever sleep on an airplane. I can't nap and I can't sleep on an airplane, so I need to figure that out, me problems.

Anyway, what the fuck else? So much has happened, I don't even know what to say. It's just like life.

Oh, I got a new coffee grinder! That was very exciting. Fellow has this one, it's called the Ode grinder, and you can- it's like variable setting and it's a- a burr grinder, I don't know, blah, blah, blah, coffee nerd, I love coffee.

But as you can tell, I'm like, blah. But it has been so much fun. It's like so stupid because it brings me a lot of joy just because I love coffee in the morning, it's like one of my favorite things, but anyway, I digress.

Oh, and I got a Fitbit! So, it's dumb because now I'm like tracking everything, but I find it really interesting to have all that data. I really wanted to get it to track my sleep and see how certain things like alcohol or m- marijuana, how certain things affected my sleep and see if it's okay for me to have them or if I have something like important coming up, does it really affect it and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And also, I wanted to track my workouts, like, excuse me, I'm so s- salivating. But like when I lift weights and when I walk around the neighborhood, or wherever, I walk wherever, I like walking. But I wanted to track all of that and kind of see how it all correlates.

I don't know. I- there's really no purpose for me to tell you this, but it was just exciting. So anyway, when I put it on, I feel so stupid, cuz like I would always make fun of people who would make wear Fitbits, just because the type of person who I think wears a Fitbit is not who I want to be, essentially is what I'm trying to get at.

So I was like looking at getting the Oura Ring, but then I was like, I don't really know if that's like right for me. So, TL;DR, oh, and I got it also, so then the- I hate alarms in the morning. It is like the worst fucking thing in the world, like it's so jarring and it just pisses me off for the rest of the day.

So, I forgot the- one of the main reasons why I got it was because it actually has like a vibrate function to it. So when you set the alarm, it actually vibrates- vibrates on your wrist, which I know Apple Watches do that, too, but that feels so cumbersome to sleep in, and I just needed something like small, tiny. Oh, and I got a new bracelet, it says, "be happy," it's really cute.

Anyway, blah, blah, blah, I am just fucking rambling, holy shit. But it's been so long. Anyway, so excited about a Fitbit.

I think that's basically it. So, I'm already hungry, it's like almost dinner time, so let's just get rolling with the show. These stories are a little bit older just because I meant to record the first week of January, and here we are, it is mid-February.

Oh, it's actually Valentine's Day today, Happy Valentine's Day. So I just wanted to get this rollin' and going, so I already found these stories, and I thought they were still really interesting, so I just wanted to share them with you, so I just need to swallow my spit. All right, well, let's just get into the show.

My hair just got trapped in the mic, and I just- that was- I am a hot mess today. Anyway, a list of artists that were purportedly used to train the Midjourney AI has been released. Ooh, or rather leaked, I guess.

So, Midjourney is a generative AI program where you type text prompts into a box and then you can get images, blah, blah, blah. It's really fun, you should try it. Just like drugs, kids.

So, so anyway, a spreadsheet called the Midjourney Stylelist began circulating at the end of last year, and it contains over 16,000 artist names that are alleged to have been used to train the AI. So, this has been something that a lot of people have been wondering cuz like if you type in a prompt like, "Oh, I want a plate of spaghetti that looks like Salvador Dalí made it," or whatever, then you can get something that looks like Salvador Dalí.

And I've always been curious, like, who do they actually use and how do they identify or figure out who they want to include or what kind of art movements and stuff like that? So this stylelist was actually very interesting to me. What's interesting, too, is that most of these names are modern or like contemporary artist names.

So, for example, well, I guess I should back up. There are a lot of different styles on this list. So they go very deep into very specific things.

There are a lot of different punk styles, which I'm a huge fan of punk, but it's like art punk. It's very interesting. Anyway, there are a shit ton of artist names.

There are also a shit ton of people who are on the proposed additions list, but we'll talk about that in a second. So anyway, the spreadsheet itself was made inaccessible after it was leaked, but you can still find a copy of it on the Internet Archive, which is where I'm looking at it right now. And then there are also lists of the artists in court documents from November 2023 because Midjourney was under fire in legal trouble, blah, blah, blah.

Like I said, I'm trying to do this show without edits, so I'm just gonna keep rambling and fill the space because it is a show of one. Anyway, so Midjourney in the lawsuit, so this is what it is. I should have read ahead in my notes.

So, Midjourney alongside DeviantArt, Stability AI, and Runway AI are part of a class action lawsuit accusing them of copyright infringement for allegedly using their work without their permission to train AI. So, that has been a huge grumbling within the art sphere is that like if you put your art out on DeviantArt or something like that, and then it's like, "Oh, well, now AI can- like Midjourney, you could type, 'Make this in the style of blah, blah, blah,'" and then presumably it would pop up.

So they are having to scrape certain repositories and resources to figure out, "Oh, okay, we should actually like- this is where we can train our AI," for lack of a better term.

So, court documents detail that the list was first published to a Discord server in February 2022 by Midjourney CEO David Holz, who's quoted in a series of messages explaining how the names can be used as text prompts to generate images. He stated quote, "I should be clear. It's not just genres, it's also artist names.

It's mostly artist names. 4,000 artist names, 1,000 styles." Man of few words. No.

But if you look through the stylelist, it is a shit ton of artists. There are very minimal types of styles actually. There are a lot of blank core, so like there's twee-core, urban-core, wizard-core, honey-core, I don't even know honey-core.

What the fuck is that? Goth-core. Ooh, that'd be a fun band name.

Anyway, but there are a wide variety of different genres in there. There are also a lot of different what are called genes apparently, and it's like visual quality. So if you say you want something blurry, or black and white, or optic, or color gradient, or grid, there's a whole fucking list.

Oh, there's a lot. Oh, and this is where they also have all of the different like art schools. So like traditional what you'd learn in art history class.

So like abstract expression- abstract expressionism, minimalism, Afrofuturism, Chicano art, photography, like all these various different things. So this is actually very interesting to see. But it makes sense because you need to have all of these things accessible in here.

So, like I said, there's also a whole slew of artists. It's kind of interesting to see what artists have actually been included and then what are in what I mentioned earlier, the proposed additions. So I basically went through and I was trying to look for some of like the top artists, like Da Vinci, not on the list, which is really weird.

But Da Vinci was actually in the proposed additions. So, some of the artists on this list that are actually have already been used by Midjourney to train their AI are like Courbet, Warhol, obviously, Frida Kahlo, Damien Hirst, Twombly, Basquiat, Shepard Fairey, Dalí, Duchamp, Van Gogh, like basically everybody. But it was weird because there's like seemingly kind of a cutoff almost where it's like pre-1800s artists, I don't know, it was weird because I was trying to figure out, cuz like Courbet is 1800s, so we'll just nix that.

But like, well, and so was Van Gogh. Okay, so a lot of people are 1800s, but like pre-1800s. So like Da Vinci, like I said, wasn't on the list, but he's on the proposed additions list.

But also what's weird, too, is like Delacroix also is, but he was 1800s as well. So, I don't know, I was just trying to kind of figure out like where's that cutoff? Cuz also then if you were like, "Well, what about the most googled art-" I don't know.

I really want to know what decisions were made and how it was figured out. Like, "Oh, okay, we should like use these artists," or "Maybe we can't touch certain artists." It's like really weird, cuz then like does somebody copyright Da Vinci? I have I literally have no fucking idea.

I just thought it was really cool. So anyway, if you want to look through the stylelist, it's very interesting. I could definitely look through it for like forever.

And there are just a bunch of different tabs and stuff, so yeah, if you just look it up, you can find it. There's so many artists on here, holy shit. A lot of Oh, there's some interesting what the fuck?

So, I have not clicked on this tab. Oh, but it's like all the words that they're trying to look for and like various different- okay, so these are the words that they do not want to appear in their searches. Cuz I was like, I don't think people would search for that.

Anyway, TL;DR, it's very interesting. Spreadsheet was leaked, you can either find it on the Internet Archive or in the lawsuit. So yeah, fun fact.

Anyway, on to our next story.

So, if you've listened to this podcast before, you know that I've talked about art sales and blah, blah, blah, and I find it all very interesting for a wide variety of reasons, but mostly I find art sales interesting because it kind of gives you the current pulse on the market and where things are kind of headed. So, for me, it's almost like a canary in a coal mine because it's it can tell you a lot.

So, art is something that is a luxury or it's like an investment piece for some people. And if people are feeling comfortable and good or are looking kind of for that next investment, they will more readily invest in art and various specific luxury items like that. So anyway, what I wanted to talk about specifically for this story, excuse me, I had a lot of juice before I recorded.

During the pandemic, art sales skyrocketed. So like 2020, 2021, and then into 2022, sales just skyrocketed. Rocketed.

And this was a mixture of like NFT sales, so like crypto, blah, blah, blah, all that fun stuff, whatever you think and feel, keep it to yourself. So a mixture of that, but then also auction houses like Christie's, Sotheby's, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, the top art house in the country and world. So anyway, it makes a lot of sense though that sales skyrocketed at this time because like everybody was home, everybody was like, "I want to buy things and I'm feeling uncertain about the future, but also like kind of comfortable and I don't know." It's really weird.

It's interesting to see kind of how people choose to spend their money. Anyway, so sales skyrocketed. Well, in 2023, they plummeted severely, also, I might add.

So, according to Christie's and Sotheby's, these are the combined auction and private sales numbers from both auction houses, so combined auction and private sales amounted to $14.2 billion, still a shit ton of money, but that marks a decrease of over 13% from $16.4 billion that they reported in 2022. So, in 2022, 16.4, 2023, 14.2.

That is significant. Like that's two, just a little over $2 billion of a decrease in the art market, which is very scary for people who work, live, partake in the art market. Christie's specifically reported a 20% decline from $8.4 billion in 2022 in revenue to or sales, rather.

So 20% decline from 8.4 billion in 2022 to $6.2 billion in 2023. That's a lot. Meanwhile, Sotheby's actually stayed with a total of an even like about $8 billion for both years.

So Sotheby's didn't really fluctuate that much. Christie's did significantly. I do wonder if that's because of NFTs now that I'm thinking about it, cuz I think Christie's sold NFTs, but I'm not entirely sure.

I have no idea. So anyway, industry analyst ArtTactic though, they show an even starker decline. They state that there was actually a 19% decrease from 2022 across Christie's, Sotheby's, and then another auction house, Phillips.

What's also super noticeable, too, is that of the most expensive top 10 artworks that were sold, three artworks kind of were like the ones that fetched the highest prices out of all 10 of them. Cumulative sales, there was a significant drop, too, in the top 10 artworks sold. Cumulative sales totaled about $660 million in 2023, compared to just over $1 billion in 2022.

So, that's almost a 50% decrease. That is crazy. That's huge.

Like that's insane. It's also insane to spend that amount of money, I will just say, personally. But anyway, so throughout 2021 and 2022, in contrast, the prices for top artworks increased consistently with few works selling for less than $50 million.

In 2023 though, four out of the top 10 artworks sold for less than $50 million. So, like I said, you had this steady rising throughout 21 and 2021 and 2022, and then all of a sudden 2023, it just plummeted. Why?

I don't know, but I would really like to have some- I'm not a fucking economist, clearly, but I would be very curious to see that in relation to people's other buying patterns. Cuz even like, so I work with a lot of Realtors for my business. Obviously.

In the real estate market, housing also has been very finicky, which like, duh. But now that interest rates are actually going to be coming down this year, fun fact, significantly a few different times is what the Fed has said. Fed said?

Kevin Federline? No. But now that's going to be fluctuating and going down, all the different interest rates, Jesus, the housing market is supposed to have this other big boom, which'll be really interesting to see if that actually happens.

I wonder then, too, if the auction houses will also see that big boom going into the this year? I don't know if they will, honestly. I feel like 2023 was kind of the year that the pandemic and everything sort of caught up to all of us.

It was a very interesting, weird sort of year. But anyway, I digress. So specifically, well, I've been talking about the major auction, sorry, that was very loud.

I've been talking about the major auction houses, but it's also smaller galleries that are really tightening their purse strings and kind of feeling the effects of all of this happening. It's trickle-down economics. I didn't pay attention much in economics, but I know a couple of words.

Smaller galleries that feature early and mid-career artists are noticing a significant pullback in buying, particularly from US-based collectors, which is also very interesting. A couple of years ago, I don't quite remember, I should have looked it up, but that was my bad. I was just like, "I'm going to record today!" And now I'm like, "What the fuck was I even talking about?" I remember specifically in '21 and '22, most of the collectors were from Asia and Europe who were buying all of these various different artworks and things.

Some US-based collectors, but I remember it not being a significant amount of money or a significant number of people buying them. So that's also very interesting. It's very telling of kind of where the country is headed.

And also now, since it's an election year, as I'm talking, I'm thinking about this, that's going to be very interesting, too, cuz I didn't keep up with the art market at that time, so I'm very curious to see how an election year will influence the art market, if people are going to be more gung-ho to buy these different things.

Cuz it can kind of go either way where it's like, "Oh, I view this as an investment piece, so I want to buy it," or "I'm scared shitless, I don't know if I'm gonna have money, job, career, future, wife, child, dog, whatever." in a year. So then it's like, "Okay, do I save all my shekels, or do I spend them on investments?

Like what the fuck do I do?" And the art market is very odd. It's very subjective, which just like anything that you can basically invest in, but art even more so just because of the aura around it and how people talk about it, I don't know. Blah, blah, blah.

So, I know it's definitely a sign of privilege to be able to afford artworks and to be able to buy them. I personally have some artworks that I would like to buy, but again, it's like a gajillion bill- billion dollars, and to me that's not a safe investment even though I love art and I like think the world of it, clearly.

But I just think it's very interesting seeing how people are choosing to invest their money in certain assets, and if then maybe that money, if that money isn't going into the art market, then where else is it going? I don't know, it's just something to pay attention to, I guess. So, fair warning.

I, again, not financial advice. I didn't even say that, but not financial advice, I guess that's what you're supposed to say. But I just found that very interesting.

So anyway, on to our next story.

So, every year, new works That was a hard cut, sorry. Every year, new works from the arts, so like literature, music, visual arts, like basically anything you think of as art, blah, blah, blah, various different things enter the public domain. I love the public domain.

It is so very exciting. When I was an archivist, too, we would have like a review- well, you're supposed to. You'd have a review of certain materials and then you would either be like, "Oh, okay, cool, I can unrestrict this," meaning basically everybody who is involved in this should be dead by now, or it's been x amount of years, we can bring it out to the public.

So like, we had a whole abortion fund s- or fund, we had the records from an entire abortion collective, so like a lot of those had to be restricted, names redacted, things like that, just because it's a very sensitive thing, clearly. So, we could not show a lot of it to the public, or we had to have them sign something, and blah, blah, blah, and they couldn't take photos.

Eventually, in the future, enough people from those records should theoretically be gone, so it'll it'll be open common knowledge. Probably a lot of the names will still be redacted just because it's health records, but I digress. Anyway, I love the public domain.

I find it so interesting and it's very fun, and you can have access to all these different things for free. So, the public domain refers to anything that is free from intellectual property rights, so you can basically use the works however you'd like without needing permission. So obviously, one of the main things, if you haven't heard of it by now, Steamboat Willie entered the public domain this year and that is very exciting for many different people, many artists.

They've had a lot of fun with it. But other noticeable, sorry, other notable characters like Tigger from Winnie-the-Pooh, I guess, and Peter Pan from, you guessed it, Peter Pan, have also entered. There were also a bunch of different films and one from like Charlie Chaplin, a few different books, like Dark Princess by W.

E. B. Du Bois, The Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead, which is a very dicey book just FYI.

If you haven't read it, it's interesting. And then there's also Nadja by surrealist artist André Breton. I think that's like It's weird, I haven't read it in a very long time, but I think that's honestly one of my favorite books because it's so odd.

I'm not a big fiction person, I really tend toward non-fiction, just because I like to learn something, but it's a very odd, wonderful little book. It's very surrealist. Basically, it's telling the tale of this guy's love affair, I think it was like a what, a 10-day I think it was like a 10-day affair with a woman named Nadja, and she's very specific, and just like odd.

But the thing that I adopted from the book specifically was the idea of the dérive, and like dérive, and just wandering aimlessly throughout the city and just kind of seeing where it's going to take you and where you're going to go and blah, blah, blah. And it's very fun, I don't know. I very much enjoy that, just like wandering.

That doesn't sound great. Anyway, so it's really interesting, too, to look at like the ideas of love and crushes and blah, blah, blah. It's a- it's a really interesting read.

It's really short, too. I don't remember how many pages it is, but I definitely recommend reading it, so go check it out. That would actually be really interesting if somebody made a film on it.

Maybe I will. It's just a really strange read, so anyway, I digress. So that's in the public domain now, so you can do whatever you'd like with it.

A bunch of other artworks also are included in the public domain. So, work by Picasso, Bertolt Brecht, and Francis Picabia. And then a few different music compositions, I don't really have a ton of things, but you can just Google, "What's in the public domain in this year?" and you can see a bunch of things if you haven't already.

But like Cole Porter song, Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love, that is one of my favorite songs, I love it. I don't know, it's just like cute. But then also Pickpocket Blues by Bessie Smith, which is a classic song, you should definitely listen to it, which you can now for free in the public domain.

You also could before with YouTube, but I digress. So then also other musicians like Hank Williams and the whole music catalog of Django Reinhardt, who is one of my favorite jazz musicians of all time. I didn't even think that it would be time for his stuff to enter the public domain, but he died really young, so we're basically at the time where his catalog is just free and open.

I love, love, love, love his music. It is just there's something about it. Oh, and it was even more sorry, I'm trying to read through my notes.

It's even more amazing, too, because I forgot his pinky and ring fingers were actually damaged in a fire, so he couldn't use them to play. So, he literally You need to listen to his music and when you hear it thinking about that also, it's just fascinating. Like, I don't know, I love it.

It's very, very, very catchy, I love it. So, oh, and then finally, the oldest American picture book, which was the cutest thing. I don't know, I don't know how I had never heard of this book.

It was like the perfect fucking book for me. The oldest American picture book called Millions of Cats by Wanda Gág, and it's spelled G-A-G, A with a little accent over it, G-A-G, but it's pronounced Gág, allegedly. This book has now been entered into the public domain.

It was created in 1928 and it was written and illustrated by Gág. The cats in it are so fucking cute. I like You know when something's so cute you just want to like punch something?

Or maybe that's just I don't actually want to. But it's just something where it's just so cute you're just like, "Agh!" You just have like so many feelings. I have lots of feelings.

But anyway, the cats in it are the cutest fucking cats, I love them so much. Like, I love cats also cuz we used to have a little kitty-but, and they're just the cutest things. You need to look them up or if you're watching this, I'll have a photo somewhere, so you can see them.

They're so fucking cute, but the whole book is about allegedly an elderly couple who realize they're lonely, and then the husband goes out to find a cat and bring it home to his wife. That was so cute. Oh my god.

But essentially I guess he gets decision fatigue and he returns home with like literally a million millions of cats, so anyway, that sounds like a dream fucking come true. Jeff, get on it. No.

But yeah, anyway, so those are just some of the things that are in the public domain right now, so if you're an artist and you want to have happy creative fun time, go look! All right, on to our last final story.

Paleolithic people may have chopped off their fingers for ritualistic purposes, whether religious or just some other type of ritual. In a paper that was presented at a meeting of the European Society for Human Evolution, they analyzed over 200 handprints that were missing at least one finger from 25,000 year old cave paintings in France and Spain, and we've talked ad nauseam about said cave paintings before, so go listen to past episodes.

In some of these paintings, only a segment of the finger was missing, so it was just like I believe, I'm not 100% sure, but it look it seems like it was just like a little like that was taken off. And in some of these paintings, oh, sorry, and then in some of the other ones, several fingers were lost, so what the hell? Until now, it was believed that this was either artistic license, which would be really interesting, or that it was from like a wide variety of different medical or various other different reasons cuz like at the time you couldn't, well, I guess now you can't really replace your fingers, but you didn't really have medical assistance like you do now, clearly, so it could have been like frostbite, accidents, whatever.

According to this article, there's some compelling evidence now that this may have been done for specific ritualistic purposes, especially when looking at contemporary groups like the Dani women or Dani, apologies for mispronunciation, from these this group of women from the New Guinea Highlands. They, according to this article, quote, "Sometimes have one or more fingers cut off following the death of loved ones including sons or daughters.

We believe that Europeans were doing the same sort of thing in Paleolithic times," end quote. Like I said, just pushing through. The researchers believe that this was done to elicit help from supernatural entities, which I would be very curious to know more about that, if it's almost like a cleansing ritualistic sort of thing.

I'm- obviously these are theories, so like, at the end of the day, we'll never know, but speculation is kind of fun. So, put that on a T-shirt. This group of researchers though, they faced some challenges to their theories, which rightfully so, with some other people arguing that amputation of fingers would have been catastrophic for the people involved if this was a ritualistic thing because theoretically they could have bled out or whatever, or you could have gotten infected.

I guess you wouldn't bleed out from your finger, but you could have gotten really infected. Or I guess if you're anemic, whatever, blah, blah, blah. Primarily because without having functioning hands, which is what this group of researchers who are against what this other group of researchers is saying, because you would have been unable to cope with the harsh conditions prevalent all those years ago.

So, the team is currently gathering more evidence to support their claims. They in their research, they looked at both prints and stencils. So, prints are where there's pigment on the hand and then it's pressed to the cave of the wall.

The stencil was when the hand was already placed on the wall and then ink was shot over it whether like using like a little pea shooter kind of thing or whatever, however they did it, to kind of make like a little, yeah, like an outline, like a silhouette. And they looked at four cave sites: Maltravieso and Fuente del Truco in Spain, and Gargas and Cosquer in France, which is really interesting, too, is that this isn't just in these caves in France and Spain, that was purely the only caves that the researchers were looking at, and it's there are many different iterations of this throughout time, like years time.

What else? The researchers also found significant evidence in other parts of the globe, including four sites in Africa, three in Australia, nine in North America, and five in South Asia. Oh, and one in Southeast Asia.

So, while this might seem a little bit extreme, the researchers are saying that this may have been some sort of ritualistic purpose whether, like I said, religious or if it's kind of like almost like fire walking or face piercing or some other kind of rituals, something like that, where it's a way for the groups of people to bond with one another, and that showing that you can like cooperate and work within your tribe or if it is kind of like a status symbol of some sort or even just some sort of symbol, there had to be some fucking reason cuz like why the hell else would you chop off your finger?

Like there has to be something behind it. But anyway, I just thought that was really interesting, so sorry this episode was a little rambly at the beginning and throughout, but I'm trying to no- to low edits. So I hope to be talking to you again next week, but we'll see how my schedule is.

Also, I needed to talk about this book. This is So, I heard this from a recommendation from another podcast. It's called Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung.

Most disgusting, weird, fucking stories. I love this book. It's really good.

Okay, so I said I don't read a lot of fiction. I've been reading this lately and it is very good. It's called Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung.

It is wild. It's a collection of stories, I believe she's a South Korean author. I think she's from Korea.

But it's weird in the best way possible. So anyway, I definitely recommend it if you like weird shit, you will enjoy it. So anyway, that'll do it for this episode of By Amara.

Be sure to like, comment, subscribe, or don't fucking do any of that, whatever floats your little boat, and I'm Amara Andrew. Never stop creating. Bada fucking bing.