Leg and torso from the model of a four-legged animal, possibly a deer or horse. This is one of 36 ceramic items recovered from Vela Spila, Croatia. Credit: Rebecca Farbstein
Posted on 07/27/2012 5:43:10 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Evidence of a community of prehistoric artists and craftspeople who "invented" ceramics during the last Ice Age -- thousands of years before pottery became commonplace -- has been found in modern-day Croatia.
The finds consist of 36 fragments, most of them apparently the broken-off remnants of modelled animals, and come from a site called Vela Spila on the Adriatic coast. Archaeologists believe that they were the products of an artistic culture which sprang up in the region about 17,500 years ago. Their ceramic art flourished for about 2,500 years, but then disappeared...
Most histories of the technology begin with the more settled cultures of the Neolithic era, which began about 10,000 years ago.
...Over thousands of years, ceramics were invented, lost, reinvented and lost again. The earliest producers did not make crockery, but seem to have had more artistic inclinations...
Vela Spila is a large, limestone cave on Korãula Island, in the central Dalmatian archipelago. Excavations have taken place there sporadically since 1951, and there is evidence of occupation on the site during the Upper Palaeolithic period, roughly 20,000 years ago, through to the Bronze Age about 3,000 years ago...
Broadly, the collection belongs to a material culture known as "Epigravettian" which spanned 12,000 years, but radiocarbon dating has allowed scholars to pin down the Vela Spila ceramic collection to a much narrower period, between 17,500 and 15,000 years ago. Those which can be identified appear to be fragments of modelled animals...
Although the finds bear some similarities with ceramics discovered in the Czech Republic, which date back a further 10,000 years, there are enough structural and stylistic differences -- as well as separation by a huge gulf in time -- to suggest no continuity between the two.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
Leg and torso from the model of a four-legged animal, possibly a deer or horse. This is one of 36 ceramic items recovered from Vela Spila, Croatia. Credit: Rebecca Farbstein
One of the pages on that site mentions a book, "Cro-Magnon Man by T.Prideaux", and Amazon has two editions, one of which is actually Cher's biography (including the cover picture), apparently. I reported it, but it's amusing. Here's the quote:
It would be another 15,000 years or so before other men, living in what is now Japan, learned to turn clay into pots; yet, as the evidence from Dolni Vestonice attests, ceramics had already been invented. When the kiln hut was first investigated in 1951, its sooty floor was littered with fragments of ceramic figurines. There were animal heads-bears, foxes, lions. In one particularly beautiful lion head there is a hole simulating a wound, perhaps intended to help some hunter inflict a similar wound on a real lion. The floor was also cluttered with hundreds of clay pellets bearing the fingerprints of the prehistoric artisan; he probably pinched them off his lump of unbaked clay when he first began to knead and shape it to his desire. And there were limbs broken from little animal and human figures. They may have cracked off in the baking, or when the ancient ceramist tossed aside a work that failed to please him.James Shreeve discusses this kiln and overall site on pp 276-286 of this one:
The kiln(s) were used for 6000 years at the site, and the ceramic figurines were deliberately shattered by overheating, apparently for some ritual purpose, not tossed aside because they failed to please. :')
The Neandertal Enigma:
Solving the Mystery of Modern Human Origins
by James Shreeve
|
|
|
| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
|
|
To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. |
|
|
|
|
based on those 36 fragments they can tell us some incredible details. Their whole culture was artistic, probably an art-based society like a hippie commune/art colony.
lol
The culture died quickly when government funding dried up.
Reportedly the village elder at the time these objects were made, Barak Obamavic, told the artists "you didn't make those."
Like early man, our Resident is reputed to come out of Africa. Unlike our Recumbent Resident, these early hominids actually have a bit of documentation.
Well, I hope Mrs. Nelson sees this. Look at that model! And you wanted to give me an F in Art. At least my model had a head! OK, it had three heads. You said I was the worst art student in the history of the world. So what do you have to say now? I’m the second worst art student in the history of the world. I’m moving up.
i bet they smoked pot too, and ritually as well.
These folks didn't make pottery?
I’m sorry,but is it just me, or does the figure on the left look like Mitt Romney?
Are they certain that isn’t just a petrified ancient animal cracker? ;-’)
“our Recumbent Resident” — LOL, definitely worth stealing! I think we have a quote for this week’s Digest.
Surely, I think the whole area was a cultic site, a Temple if you will.
What are trying to do, get this thread deleted and all of us zotted?!? ;’)
I’ve still seen nothing to put me off the idea that most arts, inventions, and discoveries were made by prehistoric teenagers with too much time on their hands.
To the east side. Take a jacket and a hat.
As I am already under audit by the IRS, it shouldn't make any difference one way or the other. BTW, Korcula is beautiful sailing territory. If The Recumbent Resident is given public housing again, I may accept exile there.
I did not spot any Mammoths, but the food was fabulous. And the wine.
The one with the lumpy jaw looks like John McCain, although John’s piloting skills were such that I am pretty sure he couldn’t find Korcula from 800 feet on a clear day, considering he used to get lost quite regularly over the Chesapeake.
Before her stroke, the tribe knew her as just plain old Betty. But afterward she became their revered Spirit Sister and spent the last 15 years of her life as Shaman; not just to her tribe but to the entire moiety.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
