Archaeologica.org

Manystones wrote: "prehistoric" coastline scenario? My understanding - and I could well be wrong - is that the present coastline has remained pretty much the same for the last one million years thought?

Hi Manystones.
The landscape and coastline has altered dramatically beyond all recognition since the end of the last Glacial. There was no 'English Channel'..No 'North Sea'. (an area that was Mammoth Heaven!!)
I presumed in my silly drawing that the coastlines would've been much closer to the Continental shelves?

Won't it be fab when/if 'Google-Earth et al can show underwater topography?

Mike Jupp wrote:That makes sense and would explain the Negro head sculptures of the Olmeca 'Indians'.

AAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Olmecs had a well-documented obsession with babies and many of their supernatural figures are depicted as infants, notably the Rain-Baby (about which we know little beyond a hypothesis of his (?) being an ancestral form of Tlaloc the Classic/Postclassic era rain God). I can't see any great mystery in the Olmec heads. They look a little African maybe, but they sure look a lot more like giant infants - note the proportionally overlarge eyes, too big for an adult of African extraction I would say, particularly as the big-heads-as-babies is entirely consistent with the general thrust of Olmec iconography.

Mexican baby.

Olmec baby figurine

Olmec stone ultranoggin. And that ain't no damn space-helmet he's wearing either.
More on the Rain-Baby: http://www.umfa.utah.edu/index.php?id=NTEz and suchlike http://www.dosmanos.com/learning_olmec.html

Mike Jupp wrote:
Ancient soccer fans? Didn't the Aztecs have a version of soccer using the heads of their enemies as 'balls'? (could've been worse, could've been the other way around! )

Yup, and it's still played today in rural areas (I should probably point out that only some variations of the rules required a human head as a ball. http://www.orecity.k12.or.us/ogden/myaz ... _olmec.htm although I liked the description that John Goodman gave in an old episode of Roseanne: "The Aztecs used to play football, except instead of a ball they used a human head, and when the game was over there'd only be one guy left alive, and they made that guy king."

Right. Sorry. Ancient coastines...

Hi War Arrow,
Interesting..I knew nothing about the Olmec's obsession with Babies!
Were the Heads territory markers? Only they can't have 'fallen off' some huge stone body. If so they were presumably a warning to foreigners to Foxtrot Oscar!
The foreigners would presumably not know of the Baby Obsession?
Here's my question. IF they were markers...Why would a foreigner be in the slightest bit intimidated by giant demented babies?

Hang on!...I've just answered my own question!

I still think the Baby theory is a bit dodgy!
The artists that created those heads were bloody good. If they had wanted to make them look like babies..they would have done.
For instance, they would have ommited the nose to cheek folds which are not usually present in babies!

Hmmm. I imagine something along the lines of what a baby would become if it were a seperate species to humanity, hence size and nose to cheek folds, I'm guessing. OR skilled though their sculptors were, much of the work they produced was heavily stylised - possibly said folds just made more sense in terms of composition as something to further define the dimensions of the face. Truthfully I don't know beyond the baby thing making a lot of sense in relation to what the Olmecs apparently thought was sculptural fair game. As to what they were for (by the way, they were just heads - no body involved) nobody seems to know. Someone suggested portraits of rulers but it seems pretty unlikely. The only clues are in the head gear which has been suggested resembles protection worn during ancient ball games - also there's a number of later myths concerning disembodied heads (amongst the Maya at least) which also pertain to the ball game. Beyond that, the jury remains very much still down the pub and into the rugby songs and trousers as headwear stage of the evening.

Excellent answer!!
and as if by spooky magic...I discovered the following programme which knits together the thread I started (and I know about being a knit!)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/une ... ries.shtml

The 'Who got to the Americas first' debate is getting more juicy by the day!
(BELOW) 40,000 year old footprints in America?



Programme 4

The Americas represented a New World not only to Christopher Columbus but also to his Stone Age predecessors, the first humans to colonise the continent.

Until a few years ago, the story seemed clear: native Americans are descended from people who crossed from Siberia at the end of the last ice age, when melting ice opened a route 11 or 12,000 years ago.

But there is an increasing body of evidence to show that there were people there before that time, reaching South America 12,500 years ago and possibly much earlier.

Now, there is a sensational claim from Mexico where Silvia Gonzalez from Liverpool John Moores University and colleagues have found what they claim are human footprints 40,000 years old!

This is controversial research in a highly competitive field and already critics from the United States are saying that the volcanic rocks in which the prints lie are 1.3 million years old, meaning that the traces could not possibly be from human feet.

Aubrey Manning travels to the site amid the volcanoes of central Mexico to see the evidence for himself and hear the claims and counterclaims of rival research teams. He finds a mystery that is not going to be easily explained away.

Well spotted, that man. hopefully it'll stay online long enough for me to get that new computer (downloading old radio shows is a bit beyond me right now). On the big ol' heads front, another thought has occured to me - dwarves - they also had a thing about dwarves (as did most of Mesoamerica) hence maybe baby proportioned faces (except much bigger obviously) with older features (dwarfism being regarded as a deformity = deformity being outside the norm = outside the norm = the sacred). More thinking aloud.

Also in attendance were musicians and dwarves. The latter were more than simple jesters, they enjoyed a high status derived from their special association with caves and entries into the Underworld."

from
http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/dept/d10/asb ... power.html
Also http://www.evertrobles.com/ezine4-004.htm has a load more stuff about big heads and football.
By the way, nice paintings Mike. I took a look at your site.

Mike Jupp wrote:The landscape and coastline has altered dramatically beyond all recognition since the end of the last Glacial

Mike - I accept that it has changed - I am questioning the extent to which it has changed according to your dotted line.

Reading back on the post there is mention of two dates; 10-12,000 years ago and then later 4.5--5,000 years ago.

Can you provide a reference that the coastline of England was _markedly_ different at this point in time please?.. I am currently looking at this
http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/geography/st ... 2004_n.pdf and this http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/geography/st ... 2004_s.pdf
via the NIAN site http://www.iceage.org.uk/

Thanks

Hi Richard!
Whoa!!...Bluff called!!
I didn't make it up..So all I've got to do is find the reference!
That's going to be far more interesting than working!!..
BUT!.. That will have to wait until I've finished my latest Jigsaw Puzzle illustration
Look> http://www.webnet2000.com/mikejupp/viewtopic.php?t=48

Cheers,
M

Yow!

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi- ... 7/ABSTRACT

Abstract
Although native copper has attracted the scholarly attention of both geologists and archaeologists since the middle of the 19th century, it is only recently that native copper studies have benefited from interdisciplinary research. This history of disciplinary solitude can be traced to the professionalization of the two fields in the early 20th century, an era in which crossdisciplinary communication began to wane. The effects of this phenomena resulted in the development of a model of aboriginal native copper procurement by archaeologists that did not take into account the geological literature, which had long identified numerous - rather than a single - source of native copper in North America. In this article, the author discusses how this disciplinary solitude developed and how it resulted in the creation of a dominant model for native copper procurement that constrained our understanding of aboriginal lifeways for generations. The author also considers how increasing collaboration between geologists and archaeologists since the 1970s has led to the reevaluation of an old model of native copper procurement that has been uncritically accepted by most archaeologists for over a century and a half. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

The issue of native american copper use is being revisited, primarily through the efforts of geologists. This is the entire abstract. The entire article is available for purchase at this web site.

I am a member and don't want to abuse my agreement of membership, so I leave the translation of this abstract to others.