Older than ancient: 12 incredibly valuable artifacts of history

Jewelry of the past, of course, is nice to look at, but there are finds that have value for archaeologists and culture that cannot be measured in monetary terms.

13 PHOTOS

1) Bison licking an insect bite - 20,000 - 12,000 BC Material - deer horn. Found during excavations at La Madeleine in Toursac (France).

The figurine is one of the most famous pieces of Paleolithic art. If the legs and body are depicted schematically, then the head came out with all the details.

2) The head of a cave lion carved from a mammoth tusk about 40,000 years ago.

Tiny detailed Ice Age artifact c ( 2.1 cm).

Found in the Vogelherd Cave in the Swabian Jura, southwest Germany. Collection of the historical museum Landesmuseum Württemberg, Stuttgart, Germany

3) The Shigir idol is an exhibit of the Sverdlovsk Museum of Local Lore. Age 12,000 years.

In 1890, ten large fragments of wooden sculpture were discovered at the Second Kuryinsky mine of the Shigir peat bog at a depth of four meters.

Initially, the figure was more than five meters long, but some of the fragments were lost. Now the height of the idol is 3.4 meters. And this is the most ancient and monumental cult wood sculpture on Earth!

4) Minoan poppy goddess, possibly a priestess, circa 1400-1100. BC. Let me remind you that initially Egypt was the main exporter of opium in the world, the Egyptians sold it to the Phoenicians and Minoans.

5) Last year, all archaeologists were excited by one discovery.

This bone comb was found during excavations in Tel Lachish back in 2017, but archaeologists noticed letters of 1–3 millimeters after processing it in 2022. The inscription was deciphered by Dr. Weinstub from Ben-Gurion University. It is considered, presumably, the most ancient because of the alphabetic writing, which around 1800 BC. e. began to use the Canaanites, and then the neighboring nations. The scallop is already about 3700 years old.

What is the inscription, you ask?

A common lice spell (they say it helps):

ytš ḥṭ ḏ lqml śʿ[r w]zqt
- Let him remove (נתש) this tusk (קמל) from his hair and beard.

And since the comb was an expensive pleasure, then we can conclude that the rich in the 17th century BC. not only cried but also scratched ...

6) The tip of a Neolithic spear, Northern Niger, Africa.

Neolithic period - 9000-4000 years ago.
Length - 4 cm.

7) The most ancient architectural plan, which is more than five thousand years old. The Sumerians planned their dwellings when they didn't become mainstream.

8) Babylonian weight - "mine" of hematite in the shape of a grasshopper (480 grams), around 1800 BC.

The name comes from the Assyro-Babylonian "mana" - to count. The weight value varied in different periods in different regions, usually in the range of 400-650 grams, but sometimes from 300 grams to 1 kilogram. In Babylonia, an ordinary mine weighed about 0.5 kg (504 ± 20 grams), but there were different standards, in particular, “heavy” (“royal”) was twice the usual “light” (“folk”).

9) The Lion Man is a thirty-centimeter mammoth bone figurine found in the Stadel Cave in Germany. The figurine was made 40 thousand years ago, it is considered one of the oldest known sculptures in the world.

Scientists suggest that the lion-man was a kind of deity, and his figurine was the subject of religious worship.

Stored in the city museum in Ulm, Germany

10.

11) Amber pendants were worn by hunter-gatherers around 10,000 years ago. Mesolithic.

Stored in the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen.

12) A marble figurine of a woman, was found in 2016 in the Neolithic settlement of Chatal Huyuk in modern Turkey.

Figure height 17 cm, width 11 cm, weight 1 kg. The age of the figurine is about 8000 years.

13) As they say, there are women in Russian villages...

As for me, our Paleolithic Venus is both more beautiful and graceful, and even older than the previous one: about 23-21 thousand years BC. Made from limestone. Found during excavations in the Kostenkovo-Borshchevsky complex of Stone Age sites, Voronezh Region. By the way, Kostenki has an excellent museum. I recommend!

Stored in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

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