EFE
Posted on 08/14/2011 1:02:02 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
A pendant some 25,000 years old has been found in the Irikaitz dig in northern Spain's Basque region by archaeologists from the Sociedad Aranzadi.
The piece, an oblong gray smooth stone some 10 centimeters (4 inches) in length, is perforated at one end and apparently was hung from a thong or cord around a person's neck, according to the director of the excavation, Alvaro Arrizabalaga, who added that the other end of the stone was used as a tool to retouch the edges of tools made from flint, like arrows or scrapers...
The Irikaitz deposit, where archaeologists began working in 1998, is known for being the site of discoveries of pieces up to 250,000 years old, a period when the precursors of Homo sapiens were still in existence.
(Excerpt) Read more at latino.foxnews.com ...
EFE
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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. |
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No Helen Thomas pix, please.
So *that’s* where I lost it!
Made of finest silver from the North of Spain
A locket that bears the name
Of the man that Brandy loves
You can never be too careful.
She’d make a tugboat rope look like dental floss...
Hung from a thong? Seriously?
Nice keychain. Durable anyway.
Dude, you know the rules.
Mention her name.......You know the rest.
What ? Does that “X” up by the hole say “2,300BC” in some ancient language ?
I’d be willing to bet supper that that rock is a LOT older than 25,000 years ... now when the hole was put in it is debatable.
A cautionary note about estimated ages of artifacts. It is very common for “initial estimates” of the ages of artifacts to be grossly overstated, based on a single factor, then later the age is adjusted based on other age markers. But that is never mentioned, as there is no popular follow up.
I'm not convinced on the "worn around the neck" part. A tool might be perforated to hang from the belt, from a peg board, from some other tool rack, for carrying on a pack, or for a number of other reasons. You don't want an essential tool where it might be lost or stepped on, so you're more likely to take the time to create a secure way of storing/carrying it. "Pendant" sounds like an ornament, but I don't think of my tin snips as ornamental, nor would I wear a soldering iron as jewelery on a thong.
I think the archaeologists presume these guys were peripatetic hunter/gatherers so they’d need to be hauling their tools around all the time!
Don’t know how pathetic they were but I have thrown dozens of these stones in the river.
Good catch!
That is true. The article mentioned that all the similar things in Spain have been “found in caves,” but that wouldn’t be particularly surprising since there are many areas in Spain where people lived in caves until fairly recently (as late as the 1950s-60s) and actually many 16th-17th-18th century houses are built over the mouths of formerly inhabited caves. I was in one of these once in Extremadura and the modern inhabitants, members of a family that had lived there for several centuries, told me that some younger members had gone at least 5 km into the cave and then decided to return because they were afraid they’d get lost...but they’d seen paintings and carvings all along the route.
I’ve never quite understood why people think that anything with a hole in it has to be decorative, however. Possibly this was actually a tool of some sort that was used regularly (so its owner wanted to keep it attached) or possibly it was even some kind of cooking implement.
The earlier finds were about 15000 years old, this one’s from deeper down.
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