Ancient greek cave may be origins of Hades myth

reply to post by KilgoreTrout


Hey KT,

The needle comes in at about 15,000 years ago, I believe, but given a sharp and precise cutting implement, you can punch holes in leather and would be able to thread the sinew through without a needle. Similarly, with such a sharp implement you can make leather thongs for tying and binding.

You mean something like this


By the way, the pieces pictured are from Calico hills California, and have been deemed naturally occuring "geofacts"by studies more twenty years ago and due to the extreme dates , on the order of 200k years , the site is being ignored.
The reason i brought it up, other than they are very good pictures of stone tools, is that one of those blades is made from chert that is only found in Colorado. I thinkl it is clear that the first form of commerce would have been the trade of tool stone.

reply to post by punkinworks10


Aye, that'd do just dandy.

I do not see whether it being a natural form, or whether it was worked of being greatly important...if the tool fits the job. If anything, if such a shape is a natural break off compounds the theory, with each subsequent working seeking to improve on the original in terms of efficiency. However, that is chert, and I am not sure that would be effective for what we are discussing.

I am a sewer, and leather is not that easy to work...depending very much on the finish achieved via the various methods of tanning. Chert would be fine for 'drilling' through toughened leather, or even for punching through leather that has been dried and stretched, such as for a drum, but on leather prepared for use in clothing, it would tear and rip if you tried to puncture it with chert, or as likely, require the tool to constantly be repointed, greatly increasing the labour intensity. Obsidian on the other hand keeps a sharp enough edge to bite cleanly through the leather...which is the very same reason it is gaining popularity in surgical uses, and has consistently been used for circumcisions. If someone was skilled enough to replicate the chert 'tool' that you pictured but in obsidian, you could create holes that wouldn't create holes with a potential to tear when a thread was drawn tightly through them.

reply to post by KilgoreTrout


That's some pretty good insight into working leather. I'm kind of thinking the best tool for punching hides would be a bone awl or a sharpened animal claw. What you said about the sharpness of obsidian makes me also think of its use in terms of garment making. You have to have something sharp enough to cut the leather accurately, obsidian would be highly desirable.
Also for cutting woven cloth you need that super sharp edge.

Originally posted by punkinworks10
reply to post by KilgoreTrout

 

That's some pretty good insight into working leather. I'm kind of thinking the best tool for punching hides would be a bone awl or a sharpened animal claw. What you said about the sharpness of obsidian makes me also think of its use in terms of garment making. You have to have something sharp enough to cut the leather accurately, obsidian would be highly desirable.
Also for cutting woven cloth you need that super sharp edge.

Obsidian is no good for cutting woven cloth, until the refinement of needle manufacture...in fact cutting any woven cloth is futile until sewing had fully developed as a craft. Any weave, even basket making, has limited structural integrity that will not stand being cut, which is why, up until probably the middle ages, most cloth was woven to a size and then folded or draped for garments, not ever cut, until the sewing stitches had been developed to counter the unravelling process. Hence the importance of brooches and their frequency in archaelogical finds. Either way, it was really only with metal working, and the invention of scissors that fabric cut be cut cleanly. You cannot slice cloth, leather and hide yes, but not woven materials.

Going back to the original article that Hanslune linked to, the significance of ritual to the communal group, I was thinking about the Christian Orthodox ritual of Holy Communion, which is, if you know the terminology, basically a fusion of the hunter ritual feast, and the Judaic Bridal ceremony...both originally celebrated in Spring as fertility/abundance rites/thanks giving. Anyway, I was thinking of the Masai Mara people, and the use of bovine blood letting as a source of sustenance...there the obsidian would have been of great use, and it would also explain why, as detailed in the paper, there is no evidence of dairy stabling in the caves. Instead of milk, they used blood letting as a dietary supplement, in addition to the slaughter of the occasional bull for ritual, communal feasts.

reply to post by KilgoreTrout


I would have thought that a well crafted obsidian blade would cut a lot of textiles.And I never thought about the whole sewing thing and why simple tumics and shawls wee the norm until fairly late.
Unfortunately, I've only been able to get a couple of pages into the paper Hans posted. For some reason it crashes my reader after a couple of pages, so ill try it on another comp soon.
That whole blood letting thing sure has a eurasian steppe feel about it.
For they give dating on that ritual.
I wonder how long it took for dairying to take hold in the Agean,
The libyans were dairying 7000 years ago and British cattle have shown up in north africa by
5000 years ago.
Your comment about the commumion rituals intruiges me, I've always felt that the Christian rituals have their origins deep in antiquity.
I have always considered the communion to be a hold over from ancestor cannibalism rituals practiced in pre bhuddist Nepal and Tibet, where I personally believe Christ travelled early in his life.

Originally posted by punkinworks10

I've worked with and made obsidian tools and they're super sharp, far more than any other flint - but fragile.

Good point by Kilgore on the unraveling and why many people used large pieces of cloth for clothing instead of 'tayloring'.

reply to post by punkinworks10


It's not totally be ignoring some steadfast persons are still working at it and trying to find some supportive evidece for the claims

reply to post by punkinworks10


Obsidian could cut woven cloth, actually, most natural fibre cloth will rip cleanly along the weft anyway. You just need to 'nick' the edge and tear, but still, it is the sewing that is required to stop it from fraying... However, after I posted, I suddenly remembered felt, which depending on the grade will cut without fraying as it is not, strictly speaking woven (it is produced by natural chemical bonding), and therefore has greater integrity. There are lots of legends about felt making too.

As far as Holy Communion is concerned, I agree, it does have it's origins in very early antiquity, but does not require Christ to have travelled very far to have learnt about those. Though, I do know someone who a couple of years ago was invited to join the 'hunters' in their spring ritual in Nepal, so that aspect is still practiced there.

To give you some indication, once the chalice is 'dressed' for communion and covered by the veil. It is brought to the altar topped by something called a 'burse' and inside the burse is kept a white linen square called a 'corporal'. The corporal is then removed from the burse and placed on the altar beneath the chalice. Obviously, corporal means, 'body', and 'burse' is derived from the Greek byrse to mean 'hide' or 'skin'. Fascinating, no?

reply to post by KilgoreTrout


Thanks KilgoreTrout
Yes fascinating.

Originally posted by Hanslune

Originally posted by punkinworks10

I've worked with and made obsidian tools and they're super sharp, far more than any other flint - but fragile.

Good point by Kilgore on the unraveling and why many people used large pieces of cloth for clothing instead of 'tayloring'.

edit on 3/12/12 by Hanslune because: (no reason given)

Yes very sharp indeed, I taught myself very crude knapping skills as a child, and learned how sharp it was the hard way. I had an obsidian source 1/2 mile from home, it was the stone work on an abandonded motel. There were basket ball sized nodules in a retaing wall that fell down.

Originally posted by punkinworks10

Originally posted by Hanslune

Originally posted by punkinworks10

I've worked with and made obsidian tools and they're super sharp, far more than any other flint - but fragile.

Good point by Kilgore on the unraveling and why many people used large pieces of cloth for clothing instead of 'tayloring'.

edit on 3/12/12 by Hanslune because: (no reason given)

Yes very sharp indeed, I taught myself very crude knapping skills as a child, and learned how sharp it was the hard way. I had an obsidian source 1/2 mile from home, it was the stone work on an abandonded motel. There were basket ball sized nodules in a retaing wall that fell down.

They brought in a large load of a brown obsidian for us to learned on. I got some interesting scars from learning that skill

reply to post by Hanslune


It's only been in the last couple of years I realized how much of a "neolithic" component there was to my childhood, I learned how to fireharden a wooden spear, more importantly how to choose a shaft from an an aborted sapling.
I hunted rabbits with throwing sticks and an atlatl, and waterfowl with sharpend skipping stones amd how to make a Mono style fish trap. My nickname into highschool was caveman, many of my old friends still call me that.
Sorry I digress, we have fine quality black obsidian here, it all comes from glass mountain on the east side of the long valley cauldera near mammoth lakes Ca. Its literally a mountain made of obsidian, its the core of an old volcano. When I first heard of it I figured it was a place that just had alot of obsidian, but its made of obsidian. I was there once and it is a mountain of solid obsidian covered in deposits from later eruptions. I rode on a roadbed carved into solid black obsidian, its one of the oddest places I've been.
Anyhow, obsidian from this site can be found as far south as Mexico, east to the plains and north to the next volcano
Indians from as far as the coast would cross the mountains and get obsidian. The ancestors of the miwok and yokuts would work their way over the sierra by way of the passes anod up the deep river gorgees with burden baskets full of acorns to trade with the shoshone( mono and paiute), for obsidian.
They used trails that went deeeep into antiquity and were really analogous to trade routes .in early Europe..
I bet that this cave represents an ancestral dwelling from which those early agean proper spread. From there they spread out and made contacts with other people in the region and it became a cross roads on the trade trails.
I figure the cave was for the original inhabitants, while the village out side was for people passing through or coming to trade, it was a market place. I imagine that the remains that turn up there will represent a broad spectrum of ethnicities.