Something I find incredibly cool is that they’ve found neandertal bone tools made from polished rib bones, and they couldn’t figure out what they were for for the life of them.
“Wait you’re still using the exact same fucking thing 50,000 years later???”
“Well, yeah. We’ve tried other things. Metal scratches up and damages the hide. Wood splinters and wears out. Bone lasts forever and gives the best polish. There are new, cheaper plastic ones, but they crack and break after a couple years. A bone polisher is nearly indestructible, and only gets better with age. The more you use a bone polisher the better it works.”
It’s just.
50,000 years. 50,000. And over that huge arc of time, we’ve been quietly using the exact same thing, unchanged, because we simply haven’t found anything better to do the job.
i also like that this is a “ask craftspeople” thing, it reminds me of when art historians were all “the fuck” about someone’s ear “deformity” in a portrait and couldn’t work out what the symbolism was until someone who’d also worked as a piercer was like “uhm, he’s fucked up a piercing there”. interdisciplinary shit also needs to include non-academic approaches because crafts & trades people know shit ok
Or the way historians thought that the hair styles on Greek and Roman sculptures were just idealized/abstract representations, until a hair dresser started thinking, “What if the word in the ancient writings that might mean needle or several other things actually meant Needle?” and started using a large bone needle to lace together braids and re-created the “abstract” hairstyles.
Or the woman who went to the museum staff and said, “Excuse me, you know all those little clay things you have labeled as “Women’s Prayer Objects”? They are actually drop spindles.” “How do you know?” “Because they look just like the ones my husband made for me. See?” And she ended up surrounded by excited museum staff taking pictures her spindles and recordings of her spinning with them.
Published
nikkie's blog 