Prehistoric lovers found locked in eternal embrace

[Don't panic]

talk about everlasting love!

It could be humanity's oldest story of doomed love.

Archaeologists have unearthed two skeletons from the Neolithic period locked in a tender embrace and buried outside Mantua. The site is just 25 miles south of Verona, the romantic city where Shakespeare set the star-crossed tale of "Romeo and Juliet."

Buried between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago, the prehistoric pair are believed to have been a man and a woman and are thought to have died young, as their teeth were found intact, said Elena Menotti, the archaeologist who led the dig.

link

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Wow, interesting. I guess this discovery proves beyond all reasonable doubt how old love is.

What happened to the legs of the skeletons? I can't see them. Are they curled up or just missing?

 

[BoyBach]

It warms your cockles.



And mine need some warming after just clearing the snow from our elderly neighbours steps and car. (That's a total of one set of steps and four cars today.)

 

[jsw]

I saw this yesterday, and also found it to be compelling and tender.

The legs are there - they're both in pseudo-fetal positions.

 

[iBlue]

that's really very sweet. I wonder how they died.

Wow, interesting. I guess this discovery proves beyond all reasonable doubt how old love is.

What happened to the legs of the skeletons? I can't see them. Are they curled up or just missing?

the smaller skeleton on the right, are curled in a shape like this < over the other's legs which are curled up the same way, in reverse. >

edit: god i'm slow.

 

[devilot]

I saw this yesterday, and also found it to be compelling and tender.

The legs are there - they're both in pseudo-fetal positions.

Same. I did see it yesterday. Are you cyber-stalking me?

And it is compelling... I would hate to die alone.

 

[kretzy]

Wow, prehistoric pr0n - definitely something you don't see everyday. I'd like to know how they died as well.

 

[jsw]

Wow, prehistoric pr0n - definitely something you don't see everyday. I'd like to know how they died as well.

It's not pr0n - she'd have to be facing the other way.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

that's really very sweet. I wonder how they died.



the smaller skeleton on the right, are curled in a shape like this < over the other's legs which are curled up the same way, in reverse. >

edit: god i'm slow.

Ah, I see now. Thanks iBlue and everyone else that pointed this out. I also wonder how they died, but I forgot to mention this in my original post

 

[Allotriophagy]

that's really very sweet. I wonder how they died.

From the look of the picture, they died strangling each other.

 

[Allotriophagy]

It reminded me of Larkin's "An Arundel Tomb".

Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd -
The little dogs under their feet.

Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor's sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.

They would not guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly, they

Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the glass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,

Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

Though I recently read that Larkin was not being true to himself with that last line; he didn't believe it at all but was aware by that point of how people were reading his works and how he was becoming famous and popular. So he pandered. The manuscript notes for the piece are full of scribbled "Utter bollocks!" and "Pure ****!".

 

[swiftaw]

It reminded me of Larkin's "An Arundel Tomb".



Though I recently read that Larkin was not being true to himself with that last line; he didn't believe it at all but was aware by that point of how people were reading his works and how he was becoming famous and popular. So he pandered. The manuscript notes for the piece are full of scribbled "Utter bollocks!" and "Pure ****!".

Don't you just hate it when poets sell out.

 

[Allotriophagy]

Don't you just hate it when poets sell out.

Not especially. It shows another side of him, concerned with the impact he might be having on other people with his work. The important thing is he was still his belligerent misanthropic old self in the margins.

 

[Abstract]

From the look of the picture, they died strangling each other.

That's your Valentines cheer coming through, isn't it.

 

[Phobophobia]

No news about Britney and K-Fed getting back together...?!