Stone Age Sculptures Unearthed
Thursday December 4, 2008
For those of you who dig archaeological goodies like I do, here's a neat story from the BBC. Researchers in Russia, near Moscow, have uncovered a treasure trove of late Stone Age artifacts. The items include carved figurines which bear some resemblance to the famous Venus of Willendorf, as well as mammoth tusks with carved designs on them, and a cone-shaped object that no one seems to be able to figure out (it looks to me like one of those thingies you use on a drop spindle, but that's probably unlikely). The late Stone Age, or Upper Paleolithic, period is when humans transitioned from making just functional tools to creating objects which were decorated with art.
Comments
I do love archeological/anthropological discoveries, and this one was a real gem! Thanks for this piece!
I also love to read about anthropological discoveries! I think it would be absolutely fascinating to be present on one of these digs. Can you imagine the energy these objects must hold? I’ll bet meditating with one of these objects would uncover interesting images!
Your guess doesn’t seem that far out to me. I think the cone thing could be used with a stick as a drop spindle, or it could have been used for the same thing just by itself. Large bead type things were used to spin thread before they added a stick to make it look like the drop spindle we know today.
Awesome article, thanks for posting about it. Hoenestly they look like buttons. But I’m soooo sure I’m wrong about that.
Archeology, made relevant to this modern age? Cool!
When you said mystery cone-shaped thingie, the first thought that jumped out was “lignam” something representational of the phallic, religiously.If there are known to be cloth from the same time period And location, okay; spindle whirl. If not, I suggest lingam as another possibility.
-Rafe
Ps- if the font is screwy it’s a hiccup of my phone; not intended.
I have no doubt that is a spindle whorl. It’s actually not unlikely at all. Impressions of woven cloth on pottery have been found from more than 20 thousand years ago, and this appears to date from a similar period. See the book “Women’s Work: the first 20,000 years.” Can’t remember author’s name. She makes a case for paleolithic ’string skirts’ from this period, which would have been spun, possibly on a drop spindle.
I do need to disagree with a comment made above. Most likely the stick part of the spindle came first, and then the whorl. Most likely spinning began with finger-spinning, which is pulling and twisting fiber into yarn with just your hands. You can get about 3-4 feet of yarn this way, and then you need to wrap it around something. A stick would be really handy, and once it is wrapped around the stick, you can use the stick to twist more. A whorl would be added for weight and stability once it was realized that you could spin and drop the whole thing for much faster yarn production.