Culture and the Hands

  • Introduction to the Hand
  • History

  • Gunter Gebauer
    • Source of creativity
    • Source of human intelligence
    • Practical use
    • Symbolic/gestures communication
    • Anaxagoras
      • hand as the cause of human intelligence
    • Aristotle
      • The first tool that produces all other tools
    • Cicero
      • generator of culture that creates a second nature within a given nature
    • Primates
      • Initially used hands to grab
      • Ability to grip
        • allowed to use tools
        • throwing  – hunting
        • Carvings with wave forms shows a new ability
          • biomechanical elements
          • aesthetic element
          • physiological
            • can feel shape and form
            • touching
            • needs contract things
          • social organ
  • Evolution

    • Evolutionary development of the the hand and the brain
      Ashley Davidoff MD TheCommonVein.net
  • The Hamsa
  • amulet
  • depicts open right hand
    • used in jewellery
    • wall hangings in
      • North Africa and in the
      • Middle East
      • believed to provide defense against the
      • evil eye.
    • Hamsa in Hebrew  derives from
      • ḥamishah (חֲמִישָׁה), =  “five.”
    • Khamsah is an Arabic
      •  means “five”,
      • refers
        • “the five fingers of the hand”
  • Other symbols of divine protection based around the hand
    • Hand-of-Venus (or Aphrodite),
    • the Hand-of-Mary, that was used to protect women from the evil eye and/or boost fertility and lactation, promote healthy pregnancies and strengthen the weak
  •  Indians
    • Eat with their hands
    • Hindus Henna
    • men hold hands – not unusual

Eating with Yor HAnds

  • Buddhism

 

Christianity

Indonesian Hand gestures

 

 

 

 

 

Links and References