The international group of scientists described the artifact with the most ancient point ornament, known to date from the discovered in Eurasia. Radio carbon dating has shown that the age of an unusual pattern on an ivory pendan reaches 41,500 years, which is two thousand years earlier than other samples of this type of decorative patterns. The results of the study are published in the SCIENTFIC Reports magazine. Briefly about scientific work is described in a press release on PHYS.ORG.
about 42 thousand years ago Homo Sapiens, settling in Central and Western Europe, began to cut from the laundry mammoths decorations and figurines decorated with a geometric ornament. In addition to lines and crosses, patterns were used from points that were found to archaeologists in the south-west of France and figures on the Mountainside of the Swabian Jura in Germany. However, the accurate age of artifacts with this ornament has so far remained unknown.
Researchers virtually restored artifact using 3D modeling, which made it possible to conduct detailed measurements and describe the decoration. According to scientists, the pendant demonstrates the thin skills of the manual skills of the members of the Homo Sapiens group, which lived next to the cave Stain on Krakow-Czestochowa in Poland. The thickness of the plate is about 3.7 millimeter, which indicates the striking accuracy of the cutting of punctures and two holes for carrying the coast.
Scientists do not yet know what symbolizes the point ornament. However, it resembles a lunar analema – a curve that is evoked if noting the position of the moon in the sky at the same time during the month. The authors of the work noted that such ornaments appeared independently throughout Europe, which makes doubt on the monocentric model of the spread of artistic innovation.