'Human head right profile (with 'hair')
Henri Valentie collection, Île d'Oléron, France
The right edge in this view has several flake removals to affect the appearance of a human face profile. From a Lower Paleolithic site in the French Pyrenees producing art and tools.
Henri Valentie writes "I found this on the same site as the piece already published in the blog November 7, 2014. I find a resemblance with 2 heads. The first photo shows part which is dotted. Perhaps have they attempted to create a hairstyle? The stone is 23/20/15 cm."
When the sculpture is rotated the opposite side expresses the Paleolithic art motif 'human head two-faced' described by Pietro Gaietto. The two faces are in profile looking right and left.
The face looking right is composed entirely of a bird figure with a bulging breast. The breast of the bird is in an egg form and also serves as the chin of the human.
Arrows depict approximate lines of sight from the two face profiles. Illustration of a recessive, squared off chin at left and a rounded protruding chin on the face at right. Gaietto has written that the two faced sculptures may sometimes be depicting two kinds of people, more robust, archaic humans and anatomically modern humans for example. I think that is the case in this example.
This sculpture is displaying the previously described motif of a 'human face with a symbolic egg-chin.' I have hypothesized that the rounded, protruding egg-like chin seen in anatomically modern humans but no other hominins has resulted from genetic influence from a long-running cultural imperative to selectively favor mates with chins resembling a "cosmic bird egg."
December 2015 Paper: Ontogeny of the maxilla in Neanderthals and their ancestors
Abstract: Neanderthals had large and projecting (prognathic) faces similar to those of their putative ancestors from Sima de los Huesos (SH) and different from the retracted modern human face. When such differences arose during development and the morphogenetic modifications involved are unknown. We show that maxillary growth remodelling (bone formation and resorption) of the Devil’s Tower (Gibraltar 2) and La Quina 18 Neanderthals and four SH hominins, all sub-adults, show extensive bone deposition, whereas in modern humans extensive osteoclastic bone resorption is found in the same regions. This morphogenetic difference is evident by ~5 years of age. Modern human faces are distinct from those of the Neanderthal and SH fossils in part because their postnatal growth processes differ markedly. The growth remodelling identified in these fossil hominins is shared with Australopithecus and early Homo but not with modern humans suggesting that the modern human face is developmentally derived (emphasis added by Ken Johnston, Archaeology of Portable Rock Art).
Paper: Facial prognathism in the hominid and human species