Category: archaeology

Ice age art

February 28, 2013 • 5:08 am

Perusing the latest stuff from the journal Nature, I found this lovely video of a new exhibit at the British Museum featuring some of the oldest artwork known—including pieces made 40,000 years ago. That’s not too long after the “out of Africa” event that spread modern Homo sapiens through the world! Take a look at the “lion man” in the first clip

Here are the movie notes. If you’re in England, go see this, though it costs ten pounds to enter (note, though, that the rest of the British Museum is free).

A new exhibition at the British Museum in London features sculptures made up to 40,000 years ago. Dr. Alice Roberts meets curator Jill Cook to discuss three artefacts in the collection; the Lion Man, a group of female figurines from Siberia, and the oldest known musical instrument. Despite being made thousands of years ago, the objects show that the minds of their creators – our ancestors – were incredibly similar to our own.

When the flute shown in the video was first discovered the finding was published in Nature: New flutes document the earliest musical tradition in southwestern Germany.
‘Ice Age art: arrival of the modern mind’ runs at the British Museum until 26 May 2013. http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on…

Here are some pieces from the BM’s website on the exhibit; they (and the video above) show that there were already accomplished artists tens of thousands of years ago.

The oldest known portrait of a woman sculpted from mammoth ivory found at Dolní Vestonice, Moravia, Czech Republic. approximately 26,000 years old
The oldest known portrait of a woman; sculpted from mammoth ivory found at Dolní Vestonice, Moravia, Czech Republic. approximately 26,000 years old
Spear thrower made from reindeer antler, sculpted as a mammoth. Found in the rock shelter of Montastruc, France. Approximately 13,000–14,000 years old
Spear thrower made from reindeer antler, sculpted as a mammoth. Found in the rock shelter of Montastruc, France. Approximately 13,000–14,000 years old
Tip of a mammoth tusk carved as two reindeer depicted one behind the other. Approximately 13,000 years old, from Montastruc, France
Tip of a mammoth tusk carved as two reindeer depicted one behind the other. Approximately 13,000 years old, from Montastruc, France

Pawprints 2: Roman cat ruins brickwork

February 20, 2013 • 3:04 pm

Here’s another trace of an ancient moggy, this time from a 1975 paper by G. S. Maxwell, “Excavation at the Roman Fort of Bothwellhaugh, Lanarkshire, 1967-8″ (Brittania 6:20-35; free download). I quote from the paper and reproduce the photo in question:

The most remarkable find in this category was, however, the collection of twenty-five brick-fragments which were discovered in the fill of a disused post-hole belonging to a first-period building on the north-west side of the Via Principalis; four of these bore imprints of an animal’s paw; (PL. VII).

Dr. A. S. Clarke of the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh, has kindly examined these pieces and identified the animal as a cat, probably Felis domesticus. The width of the prints varies from 25 to 35 mm, considerably smaller than that of the pad-impressions from the Roman fort at Mumrills (Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot. lxiii (1928-29), 57I f.), which were identified as Felis sylvestris. [JAC: note that the name of the housecat, once Felis domesticus, is now Felis catus or, sometimes, Felis silvestris catus, the latter designating the housecat as a subspecies of the wildcat Felis silvestris. And a subspecies of F. silvestris, Felis silvestris lybica, the African wildcat, was probably the wild ancestor of all housecats.]

The fact that the impressions of the claws can also be seen in three of the Bothwellhaugh ex-amples, although more faintly than in the Mumrills fragment, would suggest that the animal was not allowed to maintain a regular pace in its progress across the drying bricks.

I like the dry humor of the last sentence.

cat prints

h/t: Tweet by @DeepFriedDNA via Matthew Cobb