[martin_fierro]

Histoey

Phooey.

[blam]

GGG Ping.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[Publius6961]

to a boy with a hammer... everything he sees is a nail

My feeling is that if you simply throw a random pattern of 18 dots on anything and, allowing for primitive "artistic license" in positioning the resulting pattern, someone will find an astronomical significance... every time.

[e_engineer]

This artifact looks more like an optical tool than a knife. Held at arms length, the two central holes form a viewfinder of sorts.

Liu Baoshan should contact the nearest astronomer, and take this thing out at night to figure out how it works.

[Natural Law]

Today in breaking news, China threatened the break away province of Orion........

[RedwM]

It looks more like a pendant with a random design to me.

[Cvengr]

Looks to me as though some reasonable fellow just wanted to sharpen some pointy sticks and maybe sharpen some flint,...as if he simply used a hard rock to make some arrowheads,...as one area became worn he made a new notch to keep his edge honed,...then again I'm just being simple about it,....perhaps its the key to a subterranean preCambrian nuclear reactor connected to the Doomsday machine like Ambassador DeSadesky alluded...

[Ruth A.]

I didn't see constellations in the dots. Will show my husband who actually knows some.

[longtermmemmory]

Remember about 10-15 years ago when these french school boys found a stone mask that was THOUSANDS of years old? In the end they not only confessed it was a hoax that all the "experts" had dated and hailed as genuine, they went on TV and demonstrated how they made it by making another "ancient mask".

[spunkets]

"stone tool"

That's a soft, fine grain, metamorphic stone. It's claylike, so it's carved with stone tools, rather than knapped. It looks like jewelry, such as a pendant, or fastener. It looks like a face and that sawtooth pattern is hair.

[farmfriend]

Of interest to you guys maybe?

[RightWhale]

The star design is vertical plane mirror symmetric, something real constellations aren't.

[ladyrustic]

I don't see the Big Dipper anywhere on that stone.

[Nowhere Man]

I wonder if they can compare it to constellations as they were 5000 years ago. Due to stellar motions in space as as orbit the center of the Milky Way, the constellations would change over time. Still, maybe 5000 years is maybe too little to notice a change unless you have special instruments but I remember seeing pictures of what the Big Dipper would have looked like 25,000, 50,000 and 100,000 years ago as well as 25,000, 50,000 and 100,000 years into the future. If you go back 1,000,000 years, the Big Dipper would have resembled a spear.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks blam! Whoever saw a constellation on this axe probably takes horseys in the clouds seriously. Nothin' there.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

[Phsstpok]

._____._____.
._____._____.
._O___.___O_.
._____._____.
..____._____..

OK, so we've got some pretty dots on a stone. Astronomy? hardly.

I saw a cloud yesterday that looked liked a volkswagon.

[dog breath]

The purpose of the marks is debatable. What is not debatable is that the Chinese public loves anything that makes a case for Chinese superiority.

[-=Wing_0_Walker=-]

...designs of constellations will extend China's history of astronomical observation by 1,000 years....Qinghai Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute, said seven holes on the stone knife clearly form the Big Dipper and another three holes form the Altair. With this brilliant logic, Man has been looking skyward since he came to be... therefor we can add millions of years...if only we had a few holes in/on something.

[flying Elvis]

It's not a knife either. It looks to be a slate gorget or something akin to it, much like stone gorgets found in the southeastern US.