Fly me to the moon

An exotic, "manuported," stone found at a Lower Paleolithic archaeological site in Belgium has a striking likeness to the earth's moon

Australian archaeologist and rock art scholar Robert G. Bednarik defines such objects as follows: "Manuports are unmodified objects transported and deposited by hominids, and they are distinguished by being of a usually striking material clearly foreign to the sediment containing the occupation deposit they occur in."

Archaeologist L. Jimmy Groen of The Netherlands writes "... sometimes I think, it was and it is ( now) people think, in the possession of a "look- like"object they are linked with the object, or have some power on the subject. Especially when an object is unique, people love to have it- see how many go for gold!

In this case I want to present to you an object I found in a context of oldest artifacts from the Kempen region- a basalt hammerstone and some basalt cores, together with chopping tools and a large cleaver - a round object which- according to me- has a great resemblance with our moon.

Now, after almost 6 years almost daily searching in gravel horizons, I never saw such a look a like piece before. It might be coincidentally they found at Bilzingsleben (Germany, Holstein, same period 400.000 BP) a carved bone with 14 small stripes ( moon- cycles? ). Maybe H. heidelbergensis was the first that was really thinking about the repeating patterns shown by the moon, sun and stars.

What is remarkable for this stone is, it is an imported piece that must have been found at an eroded surface, as I found it is of a tertiary age but I found it within the assemblage of pebble tools." -Jimmy Groen

Here is a link to the third article in an interesting series, by Chantal Jègues-Wolkiewiez (France), Paleolithic techniques and tools used to calculate space and time.

Hundreds of tourists touch this cut piece of a real moon rock each day in the main lobby of the National Air and Space Museum at The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

-kbj