The Thinker of Cernavoda

7,000 Years of Humanity in 293 Words

This four-and-a-half-inch-tall terracotta sculpture dates to approximately 5,000 BCE. Most of the extant art of the era depicts hunting or fertility, but the Ganditorul, or "thinker" as it's been called, sits in introspection, or perhaps gloom, nearly identical to the famous statue by Rodin, despite a gap of some 7,000 years between them. (For the record, Rodin's thinker was conceived in 1880, but its elder wasn’t discovered until 1956.)

The thinker of Cernavoda is without a doubt my favorite work of art in the entire history of our species. For one, it is staggeringly old. At 7,000 years, it is older than almost anything we call ancient, including the Old Testament, the great pyramids, Stonehenge, even writing itself, which didn't appear in Mesopotamia for another millennia and a half. This little statue was as old to cuneiform as the fall of the Roman Empire is to us.

And yet, looking at it, we can immediately identify with this pensive fellow and share in his thoughts and struggles, which suggests to me that whatever else has happened, being human is the same as it always was.

That’s extraordinary.

Children of the modern world tend to passively absorb either the cult of progress or the cult of decline. We believe, whatever else it is doing, society is going somewhere, even if it’s down the toilet.

But looking at this tiny, staggeringly ancient statue, I’m reminded that, even if the cults are right, I have very little control over such things, and that we can still take solace in each other—not in some abstract, distant way, but tangibly and locally through something as simple as holding hands or reading a book, which opens us to the interior lives of others.

Isn’t that why we read?