A 13,000-year-old sculpture is found by chance from a mountain of garbage
In Beijing, China, a bird statue believed to have been created approximately 13,300 years ago was excavated. The bird statue was excavated from the soil left over when the well was dug, suggesting that humanity at that time had the ability to create art by carving with fire and tools. I argue.
A Paleolithic bird figurine from the Lingjing site, Henan, China
Ancient bird figurine recovered from refuse heap the oldest instance of East Asian 3-D art
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-ancient-bird-figurine-recovered-oldest.html
In 1958, construction workers dug back the last ice age stratum about 5 meters below ground to dig a well. Ancient earthenware and stoneware were mixed in the excavated soil, but construction workers at that time did not notice it and disposed of the soil as garbage.
According to Zhanyang Li, an archaeologist at Shandong University, the bird statue was excavated with a large amount of stone tools from a dirt pile that was disposed of as garbage 60 years ago. This statue is about 19.2mm long and is shaped like a small bird, carved from burnt and blackened animal bone fragments.
The statue was probably created by a hunter-gatherer in northern China at the end of the Last Ice Age. It is said that the hunter-gatherer people in northern China had a culture of making simple pottery and making
The excavated bird image is made by burning bones, but even if you burn the bones normally, it will crack or shrink and the shape will be distorted. Over 13,000 years ago, the hunter-gatherer tribes took the process of 'burning bones at low temperatures for a reasonable time' to create this statue.
Furthermore, when the research team of Mr. Li et al. scanned the image of the bird excavated by the micro CT scanner, created a 3D model and investigated it, the bone burned with a rough grinding wheel (crusher) was crushed and the surface was sharpened with a sharp stone tool. It turned out to be smooth and made a notch on the bird's head. From these findings, the research team points out that over 13,000 years ago, the hunter-gatherer people may have already acquired the skills to create images.
It's unclear what the statue was made for, but because of the numerous random scratches on the surface of the statue in random directions, Li's research team said, ``It was carried in a leather container for a long time. It was possible.”
``This discovery reveals China's unique artistic tradition and differs from other specimens found in Western Europe and Siberia in a technical and stylistic way, suggesting the origin of Chinese statues in the Paleolithic period. It could be a missing link going back in.'
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