Most of her own teeth too (Image: Lawrence Guy Straus)
Posted on 03/29/2015 11:54:12 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Aged between 35 and 40 when she died, she was laid to rest alongside a large engraved stone, her body seemingly daubed in sparkling red pigment. Small, yellow flowers may even have adorned her grave 18,700 years ago -- a time when cave burials, let alone one so elaborate, appear to have been very rare. It was a momentous honour, and no one knows why she was given it...
Her remains were discovered when Straus's team began digging behind this block in 2010. Radiocarbon dating reveals that the block fell from the ceiling at most only a few hundred years before the woman was buried...
The people who buried her used a special form of ochre, not from local sources, that sparkled with specular haematite, a form of iron oxide. It may have been applied to her corpse or clothes as a preservative or as a ritual. The regular use of red ochre at burials throughout the Upper Palaeolithic elsewhere in Europe implies this formed part of a burial rite, says William Davies of the University of Southampton, UK.
But the skeleton is incomplete, a fact that may be linked to gnaw-marks on the tibia left behind. The pattern of black manganese oxide, which forms on bones as bodies rot, shows that a carnivore -- about the size of a dog or wolf -- took to the tibia some time after the flesh had decomposed.
After this incident, a number of large bones, including the cranium, seem to have been removed, perhaps for display or reburial elsewhere. Many of the remaining bones, including the tibia and jawbone, were treated once again with red ochre, possibly to resanctify them...
Perhaps the DNA will reveal that many Europeans today can trace their ancestry back to her artistic kinsfolk.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Most of her own teeth too (Image: Lawrence Guy Straus)
Maybe given to her by Og, a suitor, who was no mycologist.
Something is wrong with those teeth. My lower jaw front teeth are sharp, like everyone else’s. Those teeth are broad and flat, and I don’t think it is because they are worn down. Any ideas?
Something is wrong with those teeth
chewing on leather to soften it , maybe
I wonder how long it was after she had decomposed they redid the red ochre?
Was it within the lifetime of the original people who buried her or sometime later and she was a legend through the tribe?
Kinda like horse teeth.
Hmmmm
Has (Bill) Clinton dated her yet?
That is what I was thinking.
Someone loved her.
Teeth appear to be worn down from chewing hides to make them soft for her man.
Raquel Welch in her Paleolithic bikini. Wow....
How do you think her teeth got so worn?
Yes. Exactly like that.
Her diet?
There’s a paleodiet sponsored link in the original article. :’)
She was a meat eater? Interesting.
It’s because they are worn down. The base of your teeth are thick too- the bladelike portion is only the top half of what protrudes beyond the gums- the part she wore off.
Eating stone ground grain & dried meat, gnawing on bones, chewing hides, running plant fibers over the teeth to make the fibers pliable for basketry or weaving, using your teeth as pliers, etc, will wear teeth down.
If she had had an overbite they might not have worn down as far but she probably had perfectly matched jawsets that wear on each other, too.
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