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Name : Bad Dürrenberg headgear
What it is : An accessory made from cervid antlers and boars ' teeth and ivory
Artistic impression of the Bad Dürrenberg shaman in full regalia
Where it is from : Bad Dürrenberg , Saxony - Anhalt , Germany
When it was made : Around 7000 to 6800 B.C.
Related : Doban - kun : A ' precious ' human being - shaped counting tool from prehistorical Japan
What it tells us about the past times :
This headgear is just one of legion artifacts discovered in 1934 in the lavish grave of a cleaning woman who lived during the European Mesolithic period ( 15000 to 5000 B.C. ) . The unequalled regalia of dangerous good and the malformation of the woman ’s skeletal frame suggest that she may have held a limited social use , such as a shaman .
TheBad Dürrenberg burialis one of the oldest in central Germany . It consists of the skeleton of a woman who was between 25 and 40 eld old when she died , as well as the fragmentary remain of an infant across her lap covering . However , the baby was n’t hers ; it was a fourth or 5th stage relative , research found . The grave was filled withred ochrepowder and contained a turn of unusual object , such as a hollow Harold Hart Crane osseous tissue that was used as a container for flyspeck Oliver Stone knife ; a polished ax ; a cervid bone that was used to apply red ochre ; and at least 50 pendant made from cow , bison and deer teeth .
The artifact were not the only unique aspects of the sepulture . Thewoman ’s skeletonwas also atypical in that her first cervical vertebra , which plug into the spine to the skull , was irregularly shaped and partly fused . This bony anomaly may have cause the adult female to have unusual maven — like the touch of Snake or ants cower on or under her skin — or involuntary jerky oculus movements , either of which may have nock her as different from a young age .
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— Queen Puabi ’s lyre : A bull - manoeuver medicine Creator fiddle for Mesopotamian royalty 4,500 years ago
Based on the artifacts and ivory , experts at theState Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony - Anhaltthink the woman may have been a shaman or a spiritual healer — someone who could bridge the cosmos of the aliveness and the dead as well as cure diseases . They reconstructed the womanhood ’s headgear based on the practice of shamanism known from Siberia and elsewhere in northerly Eurasia . The various animal bones , shells , ivory and antler could have been string together as a shamanic masquerade and headgear .
The Bad Dürrenberg priest-doctor was one of the last of the Mesolithic huntsman - gatherer who survive in Europe shortly before multitude embrace factory farm and became sedentary . She may have roamed a dense birch rod forest in search of disappearing secret plan animals , using her headgear and mask to take the form of a life brute like a Energy Department . But in the end , this last Mesolithic shaman may have died of a dental abscess that spread , causing multiple infection in her sinuses and , finally , her death .
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