I'm going to print this for my kid's orthodontist's office. Funny bloke, always wears crazy socks and refers to himself as a "fencing contractor".
Carved stone mask – Pre-pottery, Neolithic B period
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Re: Carved stone mask – Pre-pottery, Neolithic B period
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s insanely old. I didn’t even know we knew of communities that old outside of Gobleki Tepe
It depends on your definition of communities. The oldest preserved cave paintings and artifacts from what is now Germany indicate that there were communities 35,000-40,000 years ago. Just take a moment and contemplate that the best estimate we have has a range of 5,000 years.
Aborigines arrived in Australia ~50K-65KYA
Re: Carved stone mask – Pre-pottery, Neolithic B period
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
That does seem relatively presumptuous of the "scientists". Maybe "humanoid" would be more appropriate, especially considering that it does not seem to demonstrate any effort to accurately represent the human face. It could very well represent some sort of spirit or "demon". It also could very well not have been a mask humans would have worn, but instead it could have been part of some other thing like a statue or ma…
The teeth marks look kinda like a skeleton to me. I could see it being part of an effigy but also maybe sewn into a headdress or something?
Could be, I'm getting "death mask" vibes. So maybe something someone would be buried with, If we can assume there were fasteners of some sort in the holes around the circumference I can see this being sewn on to burial wrappings.
Re: Carved stone mask – Pre-pottery, Neolithic B period
#14Every time I see artifacts like these I can’t help but think whether we are producing artifacts that will be discovered 10000 years into the future, and still be in a robust state.
Re: Carved stone mask – Pre-pottery, Neolithic B period
#15Every time I see artifacts like these I can’t help but think whether we are producing artifacts that will be discovered 10000 years into the future, and still be in a robust state.
There are definitely projects designed with the specific intent of doing that, e.g. https://longnow.org/clock/
But there are other things, including awesome-and-dangerous nuclear waste sites, with warning messages/symbols designed to last beyond the collapse of modern civilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warnin...
Re: Carved stone mask – Pre-pottery, Neolithic B period
#16Every time I see artifacts like these I can’t help but think whether we are producing artifacts that will be discovered 10000 years into the future, and still be in a robust state.
Oh a LOT will still be around in ten thousand years, especially if climate change causes a lot of desertification. The oldest Egyptian papyrus is almost 4,600 years old and that’s just papyrus, an organic material that doesn’t survives very long in more humid climates.
Ten thousand years isn’t very much in geological timescales, not enough to bury everything and crush it to dust so anything that gets left in a landfill (and not harvested in the future) has a chance of surviving. Anything made of noble metals like gold and platinum especially, so it’ll mostly be a question of how much is thrown away versus recycled.
Our modern middens will be full of artifacts.
Re: Carved stone mask – Pre-pottery, Neolithic B period
#17This might not actually be the oldest mask. There are 16 known Neolithic masks in the world and only two have secure archaeological context (the stuff found in the same strata as the mask that we can actually radiocarbon date, like bones or wood). Most of them were found long ago and sold to collections without archaeologists excavating them, losing a lot of the scientific value. AFAIK more than ten of them are still in private collections.
This mask is not one of the two, as it was discovered by a Palestinian farmer and without a controlled excavation all that context was lost (although they’ve done surveys of the discovery site and found evidence of similarly aged artifacts). It was dated with patina analysis, which is a bit controversial to say the least. Which is to say, the scientific consensus about its age is fragile.
Re: Carved stone mask – Pre-pottery, Neolithic B period
#188800-6500 BC if you were wondering
That’s insanely old. I didn’t even know we knew of communities that old outside of Gobleki Tepe
the oldest discovered buildings for continuous occupancy are actually Tel al-Qaramel near Aleppo (not far from Gobekli Tepe) and they're 1000 years older than Gobekli Tepe
the oldest continuously inhabited city is Jericho (Ariha in Arabic) and that's essentially where this mask was found (100KM to the south, anyway). Jericho has been inhabited since 9600 BC.
Re: Carved stone mask – Pre-pottery, Neolithic B period
#19Every time I see artifacts like these I can’t help but think whether we are producing artifacts that will be discovered 10000 years into the future, and still be in a robust state.
The Disney copyrights will still be around.
Re: Carved stone mask – Pre-pottery, Neolithic B period
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
It depends on your definition of communities. The oldest preserved cave paintings and artifacts from what is now Germany indicate that there were communities 35,000-40,000 years ago. Just take a moment and contemplate that the best estimate we have has a range of 5,000 years.
Aborigines arrived in Australia ~50K-65KYA
Do you mean something like: There is evidence that approximately 50,000 to 65,000 years ago, homo sapiens reached the land that we now call Australia.
You can't possibly describe those people as Aborigines before arrival. Its almost as daft as describing any modern nation as being ready formed when it sticks up a flag and starts slagging off the neighbours.
The colonization that originally puts hom. sap. on Terra Horribilis, sorry, Australis is remarkable. Can you imagine just how many efforts failed? Its a long way to Aus from the last island hop. A quick scan, it look like what we now call Papua New Guninea would be a possible launch pad.