50 year student of portable rock art documented a "Full face of a cat" from Missouri in a 2006 letter

"Full face of a cat"

Arthur Langeneckert, Jr., find, Crawford County, Missouri

Link here to Alan Day's web site Mr. Langeneckert makes reference to

I think it is very possible this sculpture depicts a fractal-like "cat face within a cat face within a cat face" for a total of three cat faces in the one perspective. The 2nd cat's left eye is the right eye of the 1st cat (shared eye).  The 3rd cat is depicted at the mouth of the 2nd cat, a motif I have interpreted on a 300,000 year old artifact from the Belgian Kempen.

Here is a 9 year old's drawing of the "face within a face" art concept, expressed like fractals through 5 levels, one going off the paper and out of the frame of reference. A similar kind of representation is also seen in portable rock art as in this fine example from Mr. Langeneckert's Missouri collection.

Art of Homo erectus: two additional Acheulean handaxes, this time from Africa, may include worked zoomorphic forms

Acheulean handaxe from the Sahara, west Africa, interpreted as including a facial profile of a monkey-like creature like other examples noted by Ken Johnston on this blog.

ORIGIN: WEST AFRICA (Sahara desert), from an old collection.
length : 15.5 cm ( 6.10 inches)
width : 8 cm ( 3.14 inches)
thickness : 5 cm ( 1.96 inches)
made of JASPER with Saharan patina

These kinds of Acheulean "decorated handaxes" have been documented by scholars and amateur archaeologists in Europe for several decades and are predicted to be found in existing archaeological and museum collections if time and care is made to inspect for them. Some of the facial profiles are human and some are animals.

Face profile on middle right edge on this handaxe from Dunbridge, Hampshire, was featured in an earlier posting on this blog. The handaxe is centered on stone cortex (light feature) which was intentionally retained by the artifact's creator. This face is similar to the new identification from north Africa above.

Another Sahara desert Acheulean handaxe which appears to have an area worked out to present a face of a creature, perhaps a human or feline.

A European handaxe identified in an earlier posting compares favorably to the new handaxe from Africa above it. Both have anthropomorphic/zoomorphic faces on the lower right edge.

The "fish mouths" interpreted on two artifacts a couple of postings ago were also in this approximate position, hinting that these so-called tools also served as a kind of display frame for expression of symbolic zoomorphic forms.

John Feliks, a co-founder of the Pleistocene Coalition, has demonstrated in a series of falsifiable proofs that homo erectus was highly intelligent and creative:

"Hence, the following advanced cognitive qualities may be quite easily assumed for the species Homo erectus by way of geometric analogy: interrelationship sensitivity and complex organizational skill; language; use of metaphor and hidden meaning; philosophy; mysticism or other “spiritual” perspectives; and a general ability to discern, appreciate, and create the most subtle nuance within any area of intellectual endeavor."

Baboon head depiction on a handaxe. Part of the stone's cortex was retained to depict the animal's nose and mouth.

Here is an example of a baboon head depiction I discovered on an Acheulean handaxe from the Île-de-France, along with a human head depiction on the obverse, which was featured in an earlier posting.

Minnesota artifact exhibits classic mammoth profile iconography, the Golden Ratio and is a probable palaeoart sculpture in light of a human face figure

 "Minnesota mammoth standing on the ground with a human face on its posterior"

photos by Mark Jones, artifact from Gibbon, Minnestota
6.8kg, 53cm wide to 33cm tall = ratio of 1.606

This ratio of measurement of width to height in the sculpture approximates The Golden Ratio of Phi, 1.618. This object was sculpted to Golden Ratio proportions (1.606) demonstrated by John Feliks to be visually desirable to humans for hundreds of thousands of years.

Mark Jones of Glen Burnie, Maryland, is a fossil hunter and artifact collector whose figure stone find and interpretation "Kissy Birds" was featured in my first article on this blog. Several other of Mark's finds from Piney Point near the convergence of the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay have also been featured. Mark contacted me today regarding a friend's anomalous artifact find from Minnesota. They could see the object had been worked but did not know if it could be a tool, some kind of art, a trail marker, etc. and asked for my opinion on it.

Columbian mammoth reconstruction to illustrate profile shape

The artifact struck me as having the classic mammoth icon shape seen in other portable rock art sculptures seen on this blog and elsewhere. It appeared to have been chipped along its edge to produce the shape of the rough outline a mammoth. The mammoth is depicted as standing on the ground which is a flat, elongated surface acting as a base for the vertical mammoth figure.

To support the idea that this is a Paleolithic mammoth sculpture, I interpret a worked human face figure on the posterior of the overall mammoth shape of the stone. This is in line with this same motif seen on other examples and in sum they are not attributable to coincidence. They are attributable to a robust North American palaeoart tradition which produced identifiable patterns of symbols and symbol arrangements on stone.

 "Human face right profile on posterior of mammoth icon." 

Close up of worked human face on lower right edge of the sculpture as if on the mammoth's "leg"

To quote Jan van Es from a posting made about an Italian mammoth sculpture from Montarsolo on 8 October:  "In many sculptures of animals (bear, elephant, bison, etc..) is a portrait by the legs visible. Here I see a man's face by the hind legs." This mammoth also exhibits a face in the place of the mammoth's rear leg and supports van Es' interpretation of the Italian artifact and others.

Objects like this can have value to us even as surface finds with what would normally be considered weak archaeological context. Portable rock art can have what I call "self-supporting context," where there is more than one element of the same piece which have "art" attributes and each these elements should be considered as supporting the veracity of the interpretation of the piece as a whole. The mammoth profile and the human face I interpret here would have more limited value if they were the sole potential art elements of a piece. But combined together on the one piece, with physical placement in "correct" position compared to other known forms, they make a most compelling case in support of an art interpretation.

View of the bottom of the "base" of the sculpture.

Amateurs will continue to serve up examples on silver platters like this until some good scientist determines it is time to be looking for these kinds of objects in situ. If they do not look, they will not find. I am confident if they do look more closely for art attributes in all stone material at archaeological sites they will find a world of symbolic information left in stone by our ancestors- an art world that can inform us more about our human past than the technological tool sets which are the basis of our current archaeology.

"Although incised cobbles are common at the Gault site, portable art is otherwise rare at early New World localities, and, in either case, this art emphasizes simple geometric patterns rather than the naturalistic portrait style that characterizes much (though not all) of the portable art in the European Upper Paleolithic. Given the difference in the nature of the early portable arts of these hemispheres, there is no reason to expect parallels between their rock art corpora, and good reason to doubt that similarities would exist. Even though there may be occasional examples, early New World art apparently simply did not emphasize (now extinct) megafaunal species, but most likely for cultural reasons rather than due to chronology alone."

Journal of Archaeology
Volume 2013 (2013), Article ID 713159, 15 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/713159
Review Article
Rock Art Dating and the Peopling of the Americas

David S. Whitley

The above statement, which also reflects the current consensus of Archaeology regarding figurative portable rock art in America, now stands refuted. -Ken Johnston

A bird sculpture with a quartz crystal eye from Flint Ridge, Muskingum County, Ohio

"Bird sculpture with quartz crystal eye"

Flint Ridge, Muskingum County, Ohio

The sculpture measures 10cm x 14cm

Another bird looking right with beak tucked to breast. The two bird beaks are touching, implying mother feeding chick as seen in this Oregon sculpture.

New perspective moving to the right from top 3 photos. A second bird (owl face) comes into view.

The bird's eyes as seen in the top three photos are seen in circles here. The top bird's left eye becomes the right eye in another possible bird figuration on this artifact, seen at right with a mark up of my interpretation of a worked owl face icon with beak here.

Quartz crystal bird's eye is seen protruding along the upper left edge of the artifact as seen here. It has been exposed and incorporated into the sculpture with great skill and artistry.

Obverse view of the sculpture

The Ohio bird sculpture has similar form to an owl sculpture from The Old Route 66 Zoo, site 23JP1222. Both sculptures stand upright on bases and present in correct viewing orientation. 

These sculptures are products of mimetic iterations of culturally mediated imagery which likely span millennia and hundreds of miles in North America.

A second owl sculpture in Flint Ridge material with quartz crystals from Buckeye Lake, Licking County, Ohio, which is one of seven sculptures found together as a "hoard."

Luigi Chiapparoli identifies Italian elephant sculpture interpreted as a male baby mammoth with human and wisent forms on its side by Jan van Es

Luigi Chiapparoli find and identification of an elephant sculpture in Italy

Jan van Es made these comments and interpretation of this sculpture: "The corpse is in fact of a baby elephant (mammoth of the child). In many sculptures of animals (bear, elephant, bison, etc..) is a portrait by the legs visible. Here I see a man's face by the hind legs. On the side of the belly I see a female form of a symbol of fertility. That's why I think it's a young male animal."

Interpretive drawing by Jan van Es. A depiction of a wisent is illustrated in top part of the drawing here linked to the contemporary male symbol.

Interpretive drawing by Jan van Es

 

Photo by rock art investigator Luigi Chiapparoli

 

These animal combinations and arrangements as interpreted by Jan van Es may also be seen in North America but continue to be ignored by a field too comfortable to dismiss them as "cloud watching" by hopelessly naïve people. Too many lay persons and amateur archaeologists have noticed these portable rock art forms but have received the "Boucher de Perthes" treatment from a field which claims to operate as a science but has no mechanism or desire to handle anomalous material.

 

Jacques Boucher de Crèvecœur de Perthes was vindicated in his observation of stone tools in association with extinct Pleistocene fauna and with proper science he will be vindicated that pierre-figures, or figure stones, may be found right alongside the tools. 

Little mammoth figure with human face icon in bas relief on its side

Little mammoth figure with human face in bas relief on its side

Find by archaeologist Jan van Es, The Netherlands

 

The human/mammoth combination seen in Hans Gram's sculpture featured in the prior posting and in other sculptures featured on this blog is also seen here on this small pebble with a mammoth form including eye, with a simple human face icon on its side. The mammoth is facing right and the human face is looking straight-on, perhaps smiling. The photo at right shows human stone removal to define the oval-shaped human head.

American paleolithic sculpture example of a smiling human face on the side of a mammoth

 

This North Carolina mammoth shaped sculpture (in profile facing left) identified by Buzzy Boles was interpreted in an earlier posting on this blog as having a carved smiling human face mask, a bison head looking right and a lion face in the lower left as illustrated here.

"A piece of slate with 7 lines..."

"This article is not about easy answers, but all about the questions. In 2004, at a field not far from the village of St. Geertruid, (The Netherlands), among many prehistoric flint tools (with a Neolithic date) a piece of slate was found, where 7 engraved lines are clearly visible." -Jimmy Groen

"A piece of slate with 7 lines..."

Stonehenge figures identified by The Open University are similar to a Maine figure documented by American Archaeology pioneer Warren K. Moorehead in 1922

Interpreted as "votive offering bird figures" from the Stonehenge site, courtesy The Open University

Photo by The Open University, Stonehenge site stone bird figures

 

Photo plate with a frame around the Maine figure which has a striking similarity to the bird figures identified from Stonehenge by The Open University. Photo from "A Report on the Archaeology of Maine," Warren K. Moorehead, 1922.

125 years later, these words are very relevant to the new approach required for more thorough and meaningful portable rock art studies:

“… The museums are full of axes, celts, pipes, banner stones, discoidals, hematites, tubes, slate ornaments and ceremonials, pestles, hammers, etc. What the museums need (as of great value to Archaeological Science) are collections from a single locality including everything found in that locality. They want the finds of the village site, the studies in unfinished specimens, the poor and the good, the imperfect as well as the perfect. In this regard, the collectors make a great error. Most of them do not save everything but cling to the ‘pretty relics’ and discard the rough and the rude. Personally, I would give more for a collection, provided it contained all the types, all the finds of a certain valley than for just the fine, perfect objects of that valley. From a collection of the latter, I would be misled, for if I accepted it as indicative of the people of that valley, I would say they made the most beautiful works of aboriginal art, nothing rude or unfinished being turned out by their artisans. In such a statement, I would be unpardonably wrong.”

Warren K. Moorehead, 1884

Ohio artifact centered on a white inclusion in the stone has a "fish mouth" aspect on its edge, similar to a France example

 Flint Ridge, Ohio, flake tool centered on white inclusion with possible iconography

 

This flake tool stood out at a Flint Ridge quarry and workshop location as having a very old appearing patina and it looked to have been set up on a prepared core so as to center the flake on a white inclusion in the stone. When I later studied the flake I noticed what could be horse head imagery and showed it to Brennah, age 10, who happens to ride at an equestrian center on Flint Ridge. She said it had a "fish's mouth." Her mom looked at it and confirmed the "horse's mouth" was more like a fish mouth to her.

 

The possible horse imagery I perceive on this flake is approximated by this photograph of a modern day Andalusian. I think there is a high risk of pareidolia with this observation but I am documenting it in the event it could be a pattern that bears out in future suspected figurative portable rock art works. There is a small hole on the artifact in the place of a horse's nostril and such elements are suspected to have been used by Stone Age artists to animate or bring symbolic life to stone art figures. This supports the idea that a horse image may have been created or recognized in prehistory.

 

The combination of a horse head image with a fishy mouth may not seem to make any sense to us today as an intended figure but in photos in the prior posting Jan van Es has described a combination of horse, fish and human imagery on the same stone from an "Old world" site. This combination of horse and fish may have had a symbolic meaning to ancient peoples and may be a kind motif to be on the look out for in portable rock art analysis. As van Es has written, a "shadow language" from our human past is available for our discovery and study. What might be perceived as only tools by conventional Archaeology may also be found to have significantly informative iconic properties upon re-visitation and a new consideration.

 

Mousterian handaxe from France centered on a white patch of cortex left on the stone, also having a "fish mouth" aspect on its edge at right which is somewhat similar to the "fish mouth" on the Ohio artifact. Of course perhaps a coincidence or my own projection of a perceived similarity but perhaps a recurring subtle iconic form to be aware of in portable rock art studies. I found the France example while looking for artifacts centered on white inclusions like the Ohio example and noticed the similar fish mouth feature on it. A coincidental observation but is the appearance of these similar forms on the worked edges of two artifacts a clue that there might be more such icons yet unrecognized?

Ohio flake turned 45 degrees left is centered on a white spot in the stone and a has a "fish mouth aspect" on its edge like the France handaxe example. 

Fossil-eye used in human, horse and fish imagery on same stone

Beegden, The Netherlands, archaeologist Jan van Es, >200,000 years before present

 

 Horse head image interpreted by van Es

  Fish head image interpreted by van Es

Feliks, J. 1998. The impact of fossils on the development of visual representation. Rock Art Research 15: 109-34. 

"Abstract: The origins of visual representation have been debated primarily in terms of human activity and psychology. This paper proposes that man-made representation was preceded by a natural, already quite perfected representational system, the products of which were observed and collected by early humans. The author suggests the following new hypotheses: (1) Fossils were a means by which human beings came to understand the concepts of 'imagery' and 'substitution' prior to the creation of man-made images. (2) Humans evolved their own forms of iconic visual representation (especially those in the medium of rock), having first been made aware of various possibilities via fossils. (3) Many unexplained prehistoric artworks may be structurally and proportionally accurate depictions of fossils. Because fossils are known throughout the world, the hypotheses have cross-cultural validity. Clinical studies offer the potential of analogical testability."

-kbj

Acheulean handaxe cortex likely deliberately retained for visual significance

Acheulean handaxe, 15cm, Saint Meme Les Carrieres, Charente, France

With a well-documented phenomena of some peoples of Acheulean tradition in Western Europe making "decorated handaxes" which incorporate human and sometimes animal forms, along with fossils and other novelty inclusions being "centered" in the visual composition of the handaxe form.

It seems possible the large white cortex which was retained above, along with the two smaller circles above it, which resemble a mouth and two eyes, may have been an intentional animation of the object with human-like features.

The maker of this artifact could have removed the white piece of cortex, or rind of the flint piece, but chose to leave it in place along with the other three segments on the opposite side.

-kbj