jewelry, paintings, engravings or carvings – when and where people with the creation of art began, is one of the most fascinating questions of the archaeology. The oldest known references to forms of artistic expression are about 100,000 years old. These are traces of pigments or abstract engravings on stone surfaces. Also pierced shells, some of which are believed to have served the personal jewelry, illustrate the deep roots of symbolic forms of expression in humans. A higher level reached you paintings in the Form of a cave. The earliest evidence of this art date from the period about 40,000 years ago and were discovered in Europe and in the year 2018 in the Southeast Asia.

About the same time, originated in Europe, the earliest known three-dimensional forms of representation. There are carvings of animals and people from mammoth ivory, were discovered at a site in the Swabian Alb. When the prehistoric people in the rest of the world began, figurative representations to make, however, remains unclear. The current Fund, represents, in this context, the so far earliest evidence for the East Asian region, researchers say Zhanyang Li, from the Chinese Shandong University in Qingdao.

< p > bird carving with Sockelfuß

The small figure comes from the site Lingjing in the Eastern Chinese province of Henan. As the scientists report, it was discovered in a slag heap, which was created in 1958 with the excavation of a well. First of all, pieces of black flint were discovered in the Material, which is provided early human origins near. To this end, the researchers found subsequently, a layer in the area of the fountain, in the fire-stones were. Further studies of mine tailings promoted then pottery fragments, burned animal remains, and finally, the bird figure to the fore.

Li and his colleagues analyzed the only two centimeter-sized object and then using the most modern methods of archaeology. By radio carbon Dating of the clothing and equipment they were able to determine the age of the bird figure on about 13,400 to 13,200 to years. On the basis of other human traces in the Region with a similar age, this suggests that hunters and gatherers with stone tool technology have created the bird carving at the end of the Paleolithic period.

reference to an artistic Tradition?

On the way in which the figurine is made clear by microscopic and micro-tomographic analyses, from which the researchers developed a 3D-model. When the starting material is a charred piece of bone of a mammal. It was edited with a hard object, up to a total of 68 facets are created, which gave the Structure the shape of a bird, the base of a small Base forms. In the previously oldest known figurative representation of a bird in the area of present-day China is about 5000 years old Jadeschnitzerei, the researchers report. The new Fund is, therefore, approximately 8500 years older.

Li and his colleagues highlight that the representation of birds has developed in the Chinese culture is of special importance. Because of the style of the bird of Lingjing differs mainly by the seat on a Pedestal - comparable to that of similar contemporary depictions from Western Europe and Siberia, speculate: It could be an indication of a deeply rooted artistic Tradition that is specific to East Asia. "This discovery pushes back the evidence of the depiction of birds in Chinese art for more than 8500 years and refers possibly to the origin of an artistic Tradition,“ says the scientist. They now hope to further discoveries of stone age art of carving, the this Interpretation under the walls.

 

source: PLOS, article: PLOS ONE, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0233370

*The contribution of "record of the age: The birds of Lingjing" is published by Wissenschaft.de. Contact with the executives here.

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Date Of Update: 10 June 2020, 18:27