Slate plaques from about 5000 years in the past engraved with photos of what seem like owls might have been kids’s paintings slightly than funeral choices, however not everyone seems to be satisfied
Humans
1 December 2022
Could slate plaques like these (the one on the left is a reproduction) have been made by kids? Juan J. Negro
Slate plaques engraved with owl-like options might have primarily been kids’s paintings slightly than funeral choices as beforehand proposed, however the thought is controversial.
For over a century, researchers have debated the which means of 1000’s of palm-sized slate plaques primarily discovered at burial websites within the south-western Iberian Peninsula, courting to communities dwelling there within the Copper Age some 5000 years in the past.
Archaeologists have beforehand urged that the handfuls of plaques bearing an owl-like picture have been symbols of goddesses that have been positioned on deceased individuals as a burial providing. It is debated whether or not the engravings are of owls, individuals or different figures.
Now, Juan Negro on the Spanish National Research Council and his colleagues suggest that kids engraved owls on the slate – utilizing copper, flint or quartz instruments.
Each plaque has a physique and a head with a variety of engraved options resembling owl beaks, feathers and huge eyes.
The group in contrast engravings on plaques with drawings of owls made by kids aged between 4 and 13 right now and located that the standard and variation within the “owliness” of the plaques was just like the fashionable drawings.
“We propose these plaques may have resulted from children playing – though we cannot put an age to it,” says Negro. “This is not incompatible with the idea that the plaques may also have then been used in rituals as burial offerings.”
Many of the plaques even have small holes in them by which string might have been handed, in accordance with earlier interpretations. Instead of string, Negro’s group recommend that hen feathers may have been positioned within the holes to imitate the tufts on a local owl.
This interpretation isn’t accepted by all.
Drawings of owls performed by kids Juan J. Negro
“I applaud the attempt to bring children, who are under-conceptualised in archaeological theory, into our picture of prehistory,” says Jonathan Thomas on the University of Iowa. But evaluating the engravings to trendy drawings by college kids isn’t strong proof, he says.
The concept that feathers have been stuffed within the holes additionally isn’t robust compared to the standard interpretation, he says. “I don’t disagree that Copper Age adolescents likely made plaques, and that some archaeological plaques look like owls, but the authors don’t present any real scientific evidence that would suggest adolescents in particular were making owl plaques in particular,” says Thomas.
Katina Lillios on the University of Iowa can be unconvinced. “If children, as the largest demographic of these communities, were making them, these kinds of plaques should be much more common, when in fact, those plaques with owl-like qualities make up only about 4 per cent of all plaques,” she says.
The incontrovertible fact that the owl-like plaques present such consistency and are so extensively dispersed means that there was a normal method by which they have been made, and that they weren’t the playful creations of kids, says Lillios.
Journal reference: Nature Scientific Reports , DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-23530-0
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