There was a similar story about a tool no one could figure out. They showed it to a leather worker and the worker pulled out a similar tool.
Then there’s the Roman dodecahedron, which truly seems to be a mystery with no modern equivalent, but lots of theories.
They look gambling related to me, but I don’t know why that would be in a burial.
dodecahedron,
I hope my family buries me with my favorite dice set
As I recall, the bones were identified as gaming pieces. there’s a similar game played in the area, and the winner gets to keep the losers playing pieces.
She was either so loved that a bunch of kids gave her their dice pieces as a symbolic gesture, or she fuckin rekt so many kids at dice one of them up and murdered her. Who can say.
Some people honor their loved ones by burying them with the things that made them happy. We buried my grandmother with her porn tapes and dildo/vibrator collection.
I don’t know if that last part is a joke, but my buddy and his brothers slipped the porn VHS that was still in the VCR when his grandfather died in his casket along with a bottle of Crown Royal.
Ah yes, religious rituals recorded on tape and an offering for the dead soul to carry with him to the afterlife.
Bro, that’s just an ancient massage roller!
Reminds me of like a caliper but for checking girth and like hole size if the holes and nipples are different sizes
Gambling would require they be standardized, and we have enough examples that aren’t similarly sized or constructed that seems unlikely.
Unless they had a governing body it’s probably more natural to see a diverse set of sizes and constructions. When you’re shooting dice in the street it’s more fun to have (or make) your own for luck/cheating
It looks like you would wrap fibers around the vertices to make something 3d out of frabric tbh.
Edit: it seems my theory has been largely discounted 😔
I remember speculation that this could have been used to make gloves. That was discounted?
as spool knitting devices for making gloves (though the earliest known reference to spool knitting is from 1535, and this would neither explain the use of bronze, nor the apparently similar icosahedron which is missing the holes necessary for spool knitting)
From the wikipedia
Not entirely discounted but considered unlikely
A form of bone folder, if I’m remembering correctly.
100%. I used to work in a museum. We had an exhibit come through all about Bog People. People killed and thrown in a bog, which preserved their bodies.
Most bodies were stabbed or hit on the head thrown into the bog with nothing on them. Not even clothing some times.
Anthrpologists: Sacrifices to the gods! Each person was chosen by a religious leader and carefully, lovingly, killed as a sacrifice to the gods to ensure the village had a good agriclutral season. Of course! So obvious.
Me: These dudes got robbed and murdered. Maybe not in that order.
This but with bogs: “A lot of holes in the desert, and a lot of problems are buried in those holes.” -Nicky Santoro, “Casino”
I don’t know a lot about the subject, but from what I’ve heard in many cases there are indications that bog bodies were people of high social status. so not the kind of people who were likely to be assaulted by bandits, but the kind of people who might shoulder blame for societal issues. that’s (at least in part) where the assumption that they are ritual sacrifices rather than random murders comes from
If they were richer or more powerful, they’d definitely be more targeted. What they might or might not have had at the time that you’d expect today (or even in a later medieval setting) is protection. What’s the line between “the town set up a ritual designating the leader as responsible for failure” and “a bunch of people from downtown got upset and ganged up on the mayor and the landlord one night”?
That and the ritual meal of blighted rye in their stomachs.
“Local mom reveals one weird trick that archeologists hate!”
I’m not saying something like this has never happened but I expect that such claims are simply anti-intellectual urban legends more often than not.
(How would we even know where pre-Columbian people stored knives? The sort of structure that would survive for centuries seems like it would be a palace or a temple made of stone, rather than a common kitchen. There the blades presumably would serve a ritual purpose.)
Many pre-columbian cultures survived for a long while in a diminished form after colonization began. It’s not unlikely we would be aware of this and speculate about it. It’s very likely that early historians of indigenous Americans would speculate in this manner, take it from me this is my specific historical interest. I do suspect many of these tales are more legend than fact but it expresses a real issue within early histories of colonized peoples written by the colonizer.
Couldn’t find anything to validate this specific claim of archeologists claiming obsidian blades were kept close to the sun (under a roof???) to keep them sharp, but you see things like this pop up from time to time, wherein specialists or people from the region point out that a poorly-understood archeological find is just a specialist tool or regional practice that’s still in use.
Also, archaeologists found the ruins of huts which had a curious circle of bricks, one brick in height, in the middle of the floor. They were stumped, and probably ready to declare it a ceremonial shrine of some sort, until one of them asked the local hired help, who immediately pointed out that the peasants in the area today have similar circles in their dwellings for penning up new-born chicks whilst allowing adult chickens to cross.
Exoticizing ancient and foreign cultures is bullshit.
Yeah they believe dtuffthat sounds crazy to you,but they aren’t fucking aliens. Having people with actual relevant experience participate in archaeology is essential. Wjenlooking at stonework, bring a mason. When looking at hair, bring a barber. When looking at textiles, bring a seamstress.
I prefer this version. Also, as someone quite close to the field, there’s an awful lot of misinformation in this thread. Tread carefully, readers.
Your sharepic is also quite misleading - yes, menstruation occurs approx. every 28 days, but the lunar month is also 29,5 days and we know of many calendar systems and ancient cultures that used lunar months. Which makes sense as moon phases are easy to observe and kind of align with the year. So that could be some stone age woman tracking her period, but it could also be a male priest tracking the moon.
So what you’re telling us is that this is proof that women are werewolves?
ITT: Lemmites upset that a WOMEN would dare say a man is wrong.
Shhhh you’ll upset the manosphere
I am imagining a giant spherical manatee.
This is some facebook boomer shit.
What makes it truly Facebook boomer slop isn’t that the story is implausible (because such a misunderstanding and then correction is perfectly likely) but the lack of sources, the anecdotal and vague nature of the post, and the slightly misguided message of “motherly experience will always beat studies and expertise” which is only pandering to the mothers who read this stuff.
If this actually happened, give that woman a name and tell us who she was, don’t just call her “a mother”.
No don’t you see, they ran their findings past a mother, as all archaeologists do (the implication of course being none of those dumb science idiots could handle being a mom as people can’t do 2 things). The mother then corrected them, likely with folded arms, likely going “mmmhmmm” once they realized that her wisdom beat their book learnin’
thus, she cemented her legashe. And that is why we all know her today: random nameless mother.
