Denisovan Ancestry in East Eurasian and Native American Populations

05 May 2015

A sculpture with a bird-man nested among conchoidal fracture flake scars and a bovid and bird together on the edge of a cupule evokes symbolism similar to Lascaux Cave scene

David Boies find, Westlake, Texas. Natural conchoidal thermal fracture flake scars from freezing of the chert practically cover this side of the artifact.

At the center of the cluster of thermal flake scars is the figure of a human face in left 3/4 profile. The interpretation here is "bird-man emerging from egg in a nest of nests." A quasi bird shape left by the frost fractures inspired the artist to add details of the human face to its "breast" as seen in other examples of portable rock art.

Illustration of the sculpted face detected by David Boies

Bird emerging from egg imagery, where the human face depiction is on the belly of the bird.

Side 2 presents a single hemispheric flake scar or natural depression, interpreted as a cupule. This may also be interpreted as the wide open mouth on a human face figure with some surface anomalies serving as eyes and where the whitish band is the approximate hair line of the face.

There is an image of a bovid head on the rim of the cupule "mouth" of the human.

The right eye of the human figure is also a bird figure

The bird may be seen as "perched" on the head of the bovid

Bird perched on the head of a bison, perhaps looking for nesting material, a warm place with a view or lunch, is a fairly common scene in nature.

Lascaux cave, France, scene depicting a bird-man, a bird and an aurochs, ca. 17,300 years before present.

I propose the bird-man, bird and bovid imagery depicted in the Lascaux cave scene and on the Texas sculpture are expressions of related culturally mediated symbol systems found on two continents.

1 comment:

  1. All the fractures on the face of this specimen appear to be pot-lid fractures occurring as a result of thermal fluctuations - likely frost.

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