World’s oldest animation, 5,200 years old

March 10, 2008

Leaping Goat - World's oldest animation
Film showing images from a 5,200-year old bowl from an ancient burial site in Iran.

An Italian team of archaeologists unearthed the bowl goblet in the 1970s from a burial site in Iran’s Burnt City, but it was only recently that researchers noticed the images on the bowl tell an animated visual story.

The oldest cartoon character in the world is a goat leaping to get the leaves on a tree.

According to an article in the Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies:

The artefact bears five images depicting a wild goat jumping up to eat the leaves of a tree, which the members of the team at that time had not recognised the relationship between the pictures.

Several years later,Iranian archaeologist Dr Mansur Sadjadi, who became later appointed as the new director of the archaeological team working at the Burnt City discovered that the pictures formed a related series.

The bowl has some controversy associated with it. Some researchers claimed the tree on the bowl to be the Assyrian Tree of Life, but the bowl dates to a period before the Assyrian civilization.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Kris’s Archaeological Blog at About.com:

Now this is deeply cool. The Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Organization (CHTHO) in Iran has made a short film using the images on a bowl from the Burnt City. The Burnt City (Shar-i Sokhta) is a site in Iran that dates to about 2600 BC, and has seen some decades of investigation. The bowl shows five images of a wild goat leaping, and if you put them in a sequence (like a flip book), the wild goat leaps to nip leaves off a tree.

Bugs Bunny has nothing to worry about yet, if you ask me.

Animate discussion, share the word:

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183 Comments | Anthropology, Archaeology, History, History and art, History blogs, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Gault site: Clovis Man in Texas, 2008 dig

February 18, 2008

We owe a great debt to newspapers, especially those shunned by bloggers as MSM (“mainstream media”). This article in the Austin American-Statesman is a key exhibit.

While the minions and poobahs at the Texas Education Agency work to frustrate the teaching of evolution in science classes, real Texas scientists practicing real Texas science dig away at the Gault Site, an archaeological dig that recently has yielded 1.5 million artifacts from ancient Texans, Clovis Man, living 13,500 years ago.

So far nothing indicates any of these ancient people were Baptist or creationist. Surprisingly, perhaps, they didn’t play football, either.

Pamela LeBlanc, a digger at the site wrote the article in first person.

The pasture, named for the Gault family who once farmed the land, made its debut into professional archaeology in 1929 when J.E. Pearce, founder of the UT archaeology department, excavated here. Over the years, visitors could pay a fee to dig at the farm, hauling off what they found and leaving behind shallow craters.

Today, it’s considered the most prolific site of its kind. Gault has generated more than half of the excavated artifacts from the Clovis people, long considered the first human culture in America. Until recently, most archaeologists believed the Clovis came from Asia across the Bering Strait land bridge at the end of the last ice age about 13,500 years ago, walked down the ice-free corridor of Western Canada and slowly spread across the Americas.

Collins and others believe people arrived in the Americas much earlier, probably by boat along the North Atlantic and North Pacific shores. And they believe this site will help prove it. “What we’re trying to do here is expand on our knowledge of the peopling of the Americas,” Collins says.

Even better, you can volunteer to help out at the site, to dig for prehistoric information.

To volunteer at the Gault site, contact Cinda Timperley at ctimperley@austin.rr.com. Membership in the Gault School of Archaeological Research is not required to volunteer, but members have priority. Membership is $10 for students; $45 for adults; and $65 for families. The school also needs non-monetary donations of everything from equipment to electrical work. For more information, call 471-5982.

Not only does the Austin paper print news that sticks in the craw of Don McLeroy, they give details on how you can participate in making such news.

Newspapers. Gotta love ’em.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Remote Central.

Also see Pamela LeBlanc’s earlier story about Lucy in Houson.

Texas A&M undergrads at Gault site, Texas Archaeological Society photo

Texas A&M undergraduate diggers at Gault site, earlier; Texas Archaeological Society photo.

5 Comments | Anthropology, Archaeology, Education, Evolution, Prehistory, TEKS, Texas history | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

More carnivalia, stoned version

February 18, 2008

Oh, remember to check out the latest 4 Stone Hearth.  This carnival of archaeology was posted at Our Cultural World last week, its 34th outing.

John Hawks has a post featured about Neandertal’s roaming habits, all determined from a tooth.  Interesting archaeology, interesting anthropology, and just how can they tell all that from one tooth? Hawks’ blog has articles I’ll use in U.S. history, world history, psychology, and maybe economics.  One of the best things about 4 Stone Hearth is the way it points to outstanding sources.

Got a tagger in your classroom?  He (rarely a she) may be interested in ancient taggers — if we may call them that.

If you live on the Pacific coast, or in the Caribbean, should you worry about your local volcano?  A Very Remote Period Indeed pointed to a paper that suggests the hominids found at Dmanisi were a family killed by a volcanic eruption — perhaps your local volcano can help you become immortal, after a fashion?

Also featured is an article about language development at a blog I only recently discovered, Not Exactly Rocket Science.  It’s another blog worth watching.

Leave a Comment » | Anthropology, Archaeology, Geography - Physical, geology, Prehistory, Science, Weblogs | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

How a carnival should be done: 4 Stone Hearth

December 15, 2007

By now you should have learned this is not a place from which to get clockwork notes about blog carnivals to read. Sometimes I look at a carnival, and finding not much to interest me, I assume in all hubris that you won’t find much there, either. More often I get bogged down doing other things and just forget to note some.

I post about carnivals here when I think there is good material.

So, I gotta tell you: Run see the current 4 Stone Hearth, posted at remote central. It’s #29, and it’s a doozey.

4 Stone hearth image, 12-2007, dolmen in snow

For your geography classes, make a note here of Britain’s pyramid, “the inside story.” Didn’t know Britain had a pyramid?

See what I mean? How can you ignore stuff like that?

There are posts about volcanoes, posts about excavating shell mounds and prehistoric garbage dumps (no, Mr. Dembski, no Pebbles cereal boxes), your standard skeleton moving fees story, polyandrous sex and sexual dimorphism among human ancestors, and a couple of notes about the flooding of the Black Sea (“Noah’s flood”) and what that did to human civilization. And a bunch of other stuff.
This isn’t a kids’ carnival in any way. For your geography and history students, there is a lot of material in this one carnival about prehistory, material that simply will not be in the textbooks (but probably should be).

Great stuff. It’ll take a while to wade through all of it, and you will find material that will excite your students in class.

The next Four Stone Hearth is set for December 19th, at The Greenbelt.

1 Comment | Ancient history, Archaeology, History, Prehistory, Weblogs | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Prehistory and art: Lesson plan material

October 7, 2007

Teachers looking for good interactive graphics on human migration in prehistoric times should take a look at the website of Australia’s Bradshaw Foundation. The map requires an Adobe Flash player, and I cannot embed it here — but go take a look, here. “The Journey of Man” seems tailor made for classroom use, if you have a live internet connection and a projector.

Ancient art is the chief focus of the foundation.

Ancient paintings, the Bradshaw paintings, at the Bradshaw Foundation Examples of some of the most famous cave and rock paintings populate the site, along with many lesser known creations — the eponymous paintings, the Bradshaw group, generally disappear from U.S. versions of world history texts. The Bradshaw Foundation website explains:

The Bradshaw Paintings are incredibly sophisticated, as you will see from the 32 pictures in the Paintings Section, yet they are not recent creations but originate from an unknown past period which some suggest could have been 50,000 years ago. This art form was first recorded by Joseph Bradshaw in 1891, when he was lost on an Kimberley expedition in the north west of Australia. Dr. Andreas Lommel stated on his expedition to the Kimberleys in 1955 that the rock art he referred to as the Bradshaw Paintings may well predate the present Australian Aborigines.

This ancient art carries a story that should intrigue even junior high school students, and it offers examples of archaeological techniques that are critical to determining the ages of undated art in the wild:

According to legend, they were made by birds. It was said that these birds pecked the rocks until their beaks bled, and then created these fine paintings by using a tail feather and their own blood. This art is of such antiquity that no pigment remains on the rock surface, it is impossible to use carbon dating technology. The composition of the original paints cant be determined, and whatever pigments were used have been locked into the rock itself as shades of Mulberry red, and have become impervious to the elements.

Fortuitously, in 1996 Grahame Walsh discovered a Bradshaw Painting partly covered by a fossilised Mud Wasp nest, which scientists have removed and analysed using a new technique of dating, determining it to be 17,000 + years old.

Texas history and geography teachers should note the Bradshaw Foundation’s work on prehistorica art in the Pecos River Valley: “Pecos Experience: Art and archeaology in the lower Pecos.” There is much more here than is found in most Texas history texts — material useful for student projects or good lesson plans.

Painting from Panther Cave, lower Pecos, Texas - Bradshaw Foundation

Leave a Comment » | Archaeology, Art, Geography - Physical, History and art, History images, Lesson plans, Maps, Prehistory, Technology in the classroom, TEKS, Texas, Texas history | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Gold from rust: Tulsa shines, Plymouth doesn’t

June 16, 2007

The story could fuel jokes for years. Or it could cause tears, as indeed it did from the woman who organized the festivities around the unearthing of the 50-year-old Plymouth buried at Tulsa’s courthouse.

The headline in The Tulsa World shows pluck, determination and a good sense of humor: Tulsa celebrates anyway, but the Plymouth is a bucket of rust.

“Tarnished gold,” is the headline.

Now we know what 50 years in a hole does to a Plymouth Belvedere.

The tires go flat. The paint fades. Hinges and latches stiffen, upholstery disintegrates, the engine becomes a very large paperweight.

But what the heck. None of us is what we used to be.

1957? Eisenhower sent U.S. Marshalls, and then the U.S. Army, into Little Rock, Arkansas, so 9 African-Americans could register to go to Central High School. That was so long ago that the Little Rock 9 graduated, became doctors, lawyers and businessmen, and even an undersecretary of Labor, and got very gray; Central High is now a National Historic Monument (though still a high school). Greg Morrell wipes grime from Plymouth bumper, Tulsa Convention Center, Tulsa World Photo by Michael Wyke

Leave a Comment » | 1957, Archaeology, Cold War, Current History, History blogs, Teaching, Technology, Transportation, Travel | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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