Posted on 12/20/2004 5:45:54 PM PST by blam
Out of the flames, a work of art from 4,000 years ago
By Paul Stokes
(Filed: 21/12/2004)
Archaeologists believe a 4,000-year-old stone carving found among the remnants of a devastating moorland blaze could be the world's earliest work of landscape art.
Inscriptions on the yard-wide sandstone panel are thought to depict fields and a house with a mountain or seascape in the background.
The sandstone panel is thought to depict fields and a house
It was discovered last summer after a four-day peat fire exposed a huge chunk of subsoil on Fylingdales Moor, North Yorks.
The area of the North York Moors near Ravenscar is known to have been used from pre-historic times and is thought to bear many artefacts.
Experts were confronted with vast numbers of previously unsuspected features when aerial photographs of the scorched terrain were studied.
Searchers found the stone half buried in the ash and immediately recognised its potential significance.
But it was only when it was rotated through 90 degrees and photographed with a laser scanner that the image of a landscape became apparent.
Across the top are a series of jagged peaks or waves with undulating lines like clouds above them.
Below are a series of intersecting lines, resembling field boundaries, a series of triangles to the right in a cross shape and what could be a hut with an extra triangle representing the doorway.
Neil Redfern, an inspector of ancient monuments for English Heritage, said yesterday: "If this is what we think it is, then it is going to turn our view of the culture of this period in our history upside down.
"Frankly, we are not entirely sure exactly what it does show, but it is certainly unlike anything else we know of that period.
"It suggests for the first time that the people of that time were as intellectually aware of their surroundings as we are today and made efforts to depict it.
"Who knows, this could once have been hanging on the wall of a Bronze Age farmer.
"There are many rock carvings in this part of the world, but they are all of the cup-and-ring type, small circular depressions and circles cut into the stone.
"This was just so different. It is incised with straight lines that criss-cross the surface forming a strange pattern."
The stone, similar to local rock, is not thought to have been in its original location and may have been either dumped or re-used.
A survey carried out by Mr Redfern and his team before environmentalists moved in to stabilise the ravaged moor identified almost 2,500 artefacts ranging from Stone Age arrowheads to bullets used in Second World War exercises. He said: "To find such well-preserved signs of settlement and human activity over such a long period in such a small area is amazing."
So far his team has been concentrating on restoring the fragile environment of the heather moor. A £200,000 Government grant will extend work on restoring the moorland, which is within a Site of Special Scientific Interest.
Early next year, however, the finds will be more closely scrutinised with help from international experts.
The stone will be re-buried where it was found and the site will be recorded using satellite mapping techniques.
Mr Redfern added: "Where else should it go? We have recorded its image for research purposes. Why should it go to, say, the British Museum? It was found here, so should remain here."
GGG Ping.
It's called a cutting board. Look in your kitchen. "Slice, dice, make julienne fries, but you have to something to cut on!"
True. It happened to me in reverse. When I was a child, I painted what I thought was a terrific portrayal of an aerial view of an Indian campground. When I showed it to my siblings, I was complimented on my wonderfully complex abstract design. LOL
Flash papryus betting slips for the glacier races.
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
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This thing came from a moor in the UK, it ain't like they were stealing history from Egypt or Greece!
That struck me as odd also...as if it were a sacred object or something.
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