The Cutter
"Saturday Flashback" this week is again a recent photo, but going way, way back in time.
I found this hand tool lying on the ground in the orchard of the Moroccan hotel I stayed in last week. For days afterwards, I kept an eye open for anything similar and never saw anything else like it. It fitted my hand to perfection as a cutting tool, with a knapped and sharpened edge, just like flints that are sometimes found in the UK.
I have had a good rummage around the internet and Manchester Museum has also been consulted. However, there is far less knowledge about ancient African tools and finds than there is about European. It seems likely that the material is actually quartzite, a hard rock that was originally sandstone. Dating is an entirely other matter.
It could conceivably be "acheulean" taking it back hundreds of thousands of years to Neanderthal times. Or it could be "mousterian", roughly between 300,000 and 30,000 years back. THE FACT IS WITHOUT REAL EXPERT SPECIALIST KNOWLEDGE I JUST DON'T KNOW AND PROBABLY NEVER WILL.
I'll just call it "very old" and wonder whose hand held it before mine??
How could I resist, especially with that slightly 'arabic' opening!!!
BITH'S JUKEBOX #210
ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN "THE CUTTER"
Drop a coin in the slot :
The Cutter
"Saturday Flashback" this week is again a recent photo, but going way, way back in time.
I found this hand tool lying on the ground in the orchard of the Moroccan hotel I stayed in last week. For days afterwards, I kept an eye open for anything similar and never saw anything else like it. It fitted my hand to perfection as a cutting tool, with a knapped and sharpened edge, just like flints that are sometimes found in the UK.
I have had a good rummage around the internet and Manchester Museum has also been consulted. However, there is far less knowledge about ancient African tools and finds than there is about European. It seems likely that the material is actually quartzite, a hard rock that was originally sandstone. Dating is an entirely other matter.
It could conceivably be "acheulean" taking it back hundreds of thousands of years to Neanderthal times. Or it could be "mousterian", roughly between 300,000 and 30,000 years back. THE FACT IS WITHOUT REAL EXPERT SPECIALIST KNOWLEDGE I JUST DON'T KNOW AND PROBABLY NEVER WILL.
I'll just call it "very old" and wonder whose hand held it before mine??
How could I resist, especially with that slightly 'arabic' opening!!!
BITH'S JUKEBOX #210
ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN "THE CUTTER"
Drop a coin in the slot :