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Star Carr

Mesolithic site

News

Stone Age Britons may have had prehistoric secret code


Stone Age Britons may have developed a prehistoric secret code.

Mysterious markings engraved on an 11,000 year old pendant found in Yorkshire suggest that the area’s ancient Mesolithic inhabitants used a system of long and short lines to represent events or objects in numerical form.

The markings appear to have been inscribed on the pendant in a deliberately faint way – and archaeologists suspect that that may have been in order to render many of them almost invisible when not being examined closely.

The site they were discovered on – at Star Carr in the Vale of Pickering – was used for ritual activities – probably ceremonial dances performed by prehistoric shamans.

continued.....

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/stone-age-britons-may-have-had-prehistoric-secret-code-a6896596.html
moss Posted by moss
26th February 2016ce
Edited 26th February 2016ce

Comments (6)



"the lines on the recently discovered Mesolithic Yorkshire pendant probably represent the number of large animals (perhaps, in this case, red deer) killed on hunting expeditions. "

" Probably " , Lol .

The report from the excavators etc , is a lot less contentious .
http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue40/8/toc.html
tiompan Posted by tiompan
26th February 2016ce
Speculation of course often leads us down false paths... ;) moss Posted by moss
26th February 2016ce

Dunno why they didn't ask someone from the team who produced the report and had done some research on pendants .Or if they had to get external opinion why not someone with expertise on pendants or Mesolithic engravings .
" Probably " , because they wouldn't have got the headline .
tiompan Posted by tiompan
26th February 2016ce
If the Indy hadn't carried the story, you "probably" wouldn't know about the find (!) Posted by tomatoman
28th February 2016ce
Your "probably" has as much weight as the original .

I was definitely aware of it before the indy mangled it .
See the ref above to the actual report .
tiompan Posted by tiompan
28th February 2016ce
I guessed as much.......the "probably" was meant to be irony Posted by tomatoman
29th February 2016ce
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