Ancient carvings of elephants and their ancestors, mammoths and mastodons, fascinate me, probably because of their very old connection to the game of chess. The bishop piece in modern Western chess started out his life as an elephant, after all :)
Check out this beautiful carving from Vero Beach, Florida, confirmed to be between 12,000 to 14,000 years old. (Image from Vero Beach 32963 article - see link below). It is a never-ending source of amazement to me how artists (ancient and modern), can catch the living essence of an animal with seemingly a few lines! (Compare to this rock-carved image from the other side of the Atlantic, in Somerset, England, dated to circa 13,000 years ago).
University of Florida: Epic carving on fossil bone found in Vero Beach
BY SANDRA RAWLS, CORRESPONDENT
© 2009, VERO BEACH 32963
In what a top Florida anthropologist is calling “the oldest, most spectacular and rare work of art in the Americas,” an amateur Vero Beach fossil hunter has found an ancient bone etched with a clear image of a walking mammoth or mastodon.
According to leading experts from the University of Florida, the remarkable find demonstrates with new and startling certainty that humans coexisted with prehistoric animals more than 12,000 years ago in this fossil- rich region of the state.
No similar carved figure has ever been authenticated in the United States, or anywhere in this hemisphere.
The brown, mineral-hardened bone bearing the unique carving is a foot-long fragment from a larger bone that belonged to an extinct “mammoth, mastodon or ground sloth” according to Dr. Richard C. Hulbert, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History museum. These animals have been extinct in Florida for at least 10,000 years.
Etched into the bone by a highly sharpened stone tool or the tooth of the animal is the clear image of a walking adult mammoth or mastodon. Extensive tests over the past two months have shown that the image was created when the bone was fresh, presumably right after the animal it belonged to was killed or died.
Experts who have examined the bone, found at a location which has not been publicly disclosed on the northern side of Vero Beach, concluded the carving and surface are of the same age – 12,000 to 14,000 years old — with no evidence of recent tampering (see accompanying story on tests that have been performed to date).
Rest of article.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Bone Carving Confirms Man's Presence 12,000 Years Ago
Ancient carvings of elephants and their ancestors, mammoths and mastodons, fascinate me, probably because of their very old connection to the game of chess. The bishop piece in modern Western chess started out his life as an elephant, after all :)
Check out this beautiful carving from Vero Beach, Florida, confirmed to be between 12,000 to 14,000 years old. (Image from Vero Beach 32963 article - see link below). It is a never-ending source of amazement to me how artists (ancient and modern), can catch the living essence of an animal with seemingly a few lines! (Compare to this rock-carved image from the other side of the Atlantic, in Somerset, England, dated to circa 13,000 years ago).
University of Florida: Epic carving on fossil bone found in Vero Beach
BY SANDRA RAWLS, CORRESPONDENT
© 2009, VERO BEACH 32963
In what a top Florida anthropologist is calling “the oldest, most spectacular and rare work of art in the Americas,” an amateur Vero Beach fossil hunter has found an ancient bone etched with a clear image of a walking mammoth or mastodon.
According to leading experts from the University of Florida, the remarkable find demonstrates with new and startling certainty that humans coexisted with prehistoric animals more than 12,000 years ago in this fossil- rich region of the state.
No similar carved figure has ever been authenticated in the United States, or anywhere in this hemisphere.
The brown, mineral-hardened bone bearing the unique carving is a foot-long fragment from a larger bone that belonged to an extinct “mammoth, mastodon or ground sloth” according to Dr. Richard C. Hulbert, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History museum. These animals have been extinct in Florida for at least 10,000 years.
Etched into the bone by a highly sharpened stone tool or the tooth of the animal is the clear image of a walking adult mammoth or mastodon. Extensive tests over the past two months have shown that the image was created when the bone was fresh, presumably right after the animal it belonged to was killed or died.
Experts who have examined the bone, found at a location which has not been publicly disclosed on the northern side of Vero Beach, concluded the carving and surface are of the same age – 12,000 to 14,000 years old — with no evidence of recent tampering (see accompanying story on tests that have been performed to date).
Rest of article.
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