I was born with red hair and green eyes. My hair turned brown and curly, but my eyes remain quite green.
As for bone, it can be cleaned quite easily and doesn’t have much trouble if left in the Sun after warm water (trust me, this works). Stone works too, but not sure about glazes in Neolithic times. They might also not have been so safe.
I was born with blonde hair and green eyes, by the age of five my hair turned jet black but my eyes are still green.
Wonder why that happens.
genetics. My ancestors were Welsh/English, my welsh ancestors were from north Wales and were of the clergy/gentry, that plus genetic markers indicate that I was originally from Roman more than Celtic stock. Romans had very dominant genes for black hair, male pattern baldness and long thin feet and large shoulders, amongst others, traits I share very closely.
I also share the English genetic traits of a mildly ruddy complexion around the cheeks, it is also likely where by brief blonde hair came from…
I just wish I had kept my copper red hair.
I would have looked almost like my main book character lol
The creation of a ceremonial Neolithic clothing item
@Uncasual It is important to add at least a few ceremonial items and garb to the Neolithic game. Fertility festivals and religious ceremony were obviously important people from the Neolithic, based upon their grave goods. Here is a object of that type.
I have started a new project to create a beaded ceremonial pectoral upper body garment. If you’re curious what a pectoral garment is, you’ve probably seen them before on ancient Egyptian people. They typically cover the neck, upper body and shoulders. Sometimes they cover the breast and sometimes they do not, but they are usually worn for ceremony or status as they are not particularly practical and serve no functional purpose.
Exmple of a pectoral necklace / upper garment
We see them constantly featured in Neolithic artwork. It’s important to understand the Neolithic artwork is typically representative of ceremonial clothing, and not everyday clothing. As a result, most Neolithic statues are either nude or wearing very little clothing, which is probably how rituals were carried out in the situations. Nudity has long been associated with spirituality.
here we see a figure with a necklace and a waist cord, both with hanging bobbles of some variety. This beautiful outfit is of course holy and practical as clothing, but probably commonplace and rituals. It is from pre-pottery Neolithic Middle East, perhaps Turkey?
Here we see what looks like a male wearing an asymmetric harness with waist cord. Again, this reinforces the notion that ritual involved a nude form decorated and body paints and wearing religious, ritual ornamental clothing.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/287597126186149930/
@Uncasual This may be one of the most interesting examples as it shows an artist’s attempt to derive what actual Neolithic clothing looks like from figures. Again, this was likely ritualistic clothing not everyday clothing, but it gives you an idea of what everyday clothing may have been similar to.
And finally, this beautiful figurine reveals a pectoral upper garment much like what I intend to make. They provide a beautiful upper body ornamentation while allowing the breasts, an important symbol of femininity and fertility to be witnessed by those attending an event, perhaps a fertility festival.
In order to make this item, I will need to construct over 500 clay beads by hand. Each bead begins as a small ball of clay that is carefully rolled, a whole press down the middle, and shaped into a clay bead.
To attach the beads, I will of course use either flax string or wool, hand spun on a Neolithic drop spindle, which I also made using only Neolithic techniques. In effect, this entire outfit will be made completely Neolithic. I will even been wearing Neolithic clothing while making it (which is a really important for its construction, but it puts me in the mood)
So this is the garment that I intend to make in the next week or so. I will post updates as my work continues and eventually finish it. We must not forget to add at least a few of these more interesting ceremonial items as ceremony and religion will be very important to the Neolithic game.
Here is my alternate hypothesis on why linen garments are constantly used to illustrate Neolithic people:
Far too often, the Neolithic is depicted and illustrated to look like this:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/455215474825787789/
The reality based on all of the evidence that we have is that it much more likely looks like this:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/121526889928749468/
Is there evidence for using beads in those quantities?
500 large beads might be ceremonial, but it appears to be bordering on body armour.
Thinking outside the box, if we have remains of large quantities of beads from a single garment/set of garments we shouldn’t assume they are merely decorative.
We don’t definitively know the purpose unless we see it in cave art, but our purpose for beads is not necessarily indicative of those of primitive peoples.
The fact that your pectoral uses many more beads and larger than any decorative item of equivalence is a clue.
Have you ever made a mailshirt? I worked on one, a ring shirt requires about 10-30k rings, a fine shirt can have three times as many. this assumes thigh length shirt with sleeves to be worn over heavy gambeson; but chain mail is advanced technology. A sinew lattice reinforced with wooden or clay beads would form a low tech mailshirt and should cover vital body areas with 500-1000 beads easily, less if you allow spacing, more if you cover the upper arms back and legs, or had some form of gambeson, which is in my opinion highly unlikely…
clay bead mail would be largely ineffective against a simple arrow or spear, which would find a hole. Beads are spherical or cylindrical, thus steering an arrow/spear around them. This is why they are not used as armor. Ring mail catches the arrow within the ring, a completely different technique.
Ok, then again we need to think outside the box in recreative history. Medieval chainmail had the properties and protections you mention, until weaponry developed to penetrate chain.
What a neolithic person might need is something to protect against the claws or bite of an animal.
Something different entirely. No armour will save you from tampling by megafauna, and clay beads may or may not helps against spears or arrows, I reckon they will may provide some real protection against blunt weaponry, but more importantly claws rake rather than penetrate, and an animal bite will be largely negated. They could be used as armour to some effect.
We have some evidence to give this hypothesis some lead way, though it isn’t evidence per se. And that is to look at the Roman bestiarii (arena beast hunting gladiators). They were noted for wearing odd things as armour effective based on the animals they fought, this includes leather straps that caught claws.
Also for anti beast armour we have to look at where it is worn. gladiators and fighters wearign light armour tended to protect the head and shoulders, then if a shield is used thel ower legs and groin, then everythign else from the body outwards. Later armours covered the whole torso. Now bestiarii protected the stomach first, quite unlike fighters fighting humans. A hunting cat will try to disembowel, raking with rear claws a cumberband of beads would be pretty good protection againt that. The other main place to protect is the neck, as that is the instinctive place for a predatory animal to bite. Does this leave you any clues from what we seen of beads, the evidence might be right in front of our faces. Bead neck or stomach armour could well be mistaken for oversized jewellery.
Understand that 560 beads = 1.4 bead per inch, 10 loops of ~40inch each. What I’m describing would hardly be effective for any form of armor. A large percentage of the flesh underneath would be completely see-able through the beads.
I heard tale of an American adventurer in the 19th century who wanted to enact a revenge on a native tribe and wore two boiler suits packed between with nuts, this acted as body armour that helped protect him when he rampaged through the tribes camp. I do not know if the story is true, but it gives pause for thought as to viability of odd armour.
It is a fertility ritual garb
Are you saying neolithic beads were always ceremonial, or are you saying that what you are personally making at the moment is a ceremonial bead accessory.
I don’t contest what you choose to make, it’s not relevant to anyone else except for the materials technology involved. I am asking only about the provenance for the usage. I ask you if it is assumed to be ceremonial based on preconceptions of later uses of beads, or if there is evidence to support this.
Neolithic people didn’t fight against megafauna. The fertility outfit I described wouldn’t hold up against a small child grabbing at it, let alone giant claws. Neolithic people aren’t hunting large game like that anymore. You’re speaking of the early Mesolithic or perhaps the upper Paleolithic, it completely different time period.
I strongly reject this, with evidence. Even if we assume hunters did not fight megafauna, megafauna might hunt them. We know from written evidence that the European lion was made extinct by the Romans hunting them to transport for use in the Ludi Magni. So if they were there then they were there when the neolithic man walked.
When Cicero was governor of Cilesia, (the island of Cyprus) in 51BC the kept a correspondence which has survived for posterity, amongst the letters he was asked by friends in Rome to step up the hunt for IIRC leopards in the Troodos mountains, as the supply had run out, Here we know that not only there were big cats in Mediterranean islands let alone continuous mainland but have a very good idea of when the extinction occured.
If there were leopards as late as the 1st century BC in Cyprus, predatory megafauna in Europe and the middle East is a certainty.
There is also the Biblical account. The Book of Joshua says that the Israelites were to drive out the Canaanites sequentially, lest the land be overrun by wild animals. Stories of wild lions are common in the earlier books, but largely missing in the new testament.
If that is not all we have artists depictions from as late as the 18th century depicting lion attacks in the levant. The Arabian lion was not hunted out until the introduction of the modern rifle.
Finally hunting big prey is the mark of a brave hunter, not only big game hunters such as Teddy Roosevelt, but many tribes had this cultural ethos, it is possible in my opinion highly probable neolithic societies did too.
To call this apples and oranges is an understatement.
Sorry, you are getting confused and crossing topics, that was about the discussion on Dr Peterson.
What you are proposing, so kind of bead armor, has no supporting evidence whatsoever as far as I’m aware. You’re giving me conjecture of how something may have been used and how people thousands of years later had similar items, but this is completely without empirical basis.
This is why outside the box thinking is important. I am not saying that beads are armour, I am saying keep an open mind, it is possible that it was.
We assume beads are ceremonial because explorers used to travel to Africa with beads to trade, it was assumed by then to be good currency. We must assume in turn that the Europeans had plenty of experience in exploring Africa so there was likely a basis in fact. However it also put into pour collective heads that primitives plus beads equals ceremonial jewellery.
It may even be true. But is it exclusively true?
If you want to do recreative history it helps to look at the possibilities. I did some piecing together of assorted unrelated data to put forward a theorem about how longbows were used that gained traction. I have no direct evidence at all that the English urinated on their arrows when facing the French but not other English, but various little pieces of data made it a possibility.
When you say ‘completely without empirical basis’ what you are actually saying is that you don’t like having to think through what you are doing. The empirical basis comes from exercised thought, most hypothesis start from scratch, especially when working on reconstructive history from an era prior to literacy. Nearly everything is conjecture, the thing is can something be made of the conjecture.
Ten years ago some metallurgists attempted to recreate Saxon steel working techniques working on conjecture alone because the Normans had completely eradicated Saxon martial culture over 900 years before, they worked at it until they found what fit surviving relics. We will never know if they got it right, but we have a workable plausible theory at least. Making baseless or near baseless assumptions is generally bad science, but for recreative history it is actually the way forward, its not physics or another pure discipline, unlike hard sciences the question ‘what would or could you do with this technology?’ is a valid one as the fundamental building block you are assembling a theory from is not hard science but human will…
Update
Last night I finished the construction of 100 beads. Only 460 to go. You would think that 560 beads would cover the upper body quite well, but in reality it hides very little. Making this outfit from clay beads is going to be time-consuming, but imagine making such an item from bone or she’ll beads. That level of undertaking would require years of work, and perhaps be a generational outfit.
As many of you probably know, large numbers of beads have been found laid out in patterns across bodies in Graves, whatever cloth or string they were originally attached to having disappeared with time.
None of the animals you listed above are megafauna. Megafauna or an actual thing, not just large carnivores. These terms have actual meanings. Neolithic people did not hunt giant cave sloth and mastodons, as an example.
A common misconception, any ‘large animal’ is megafauna. Cows and horses qualify, mice and rats do not.
No I’m not getting confused with your earlier argument. I used a common phrase that you also happen to use earlier. They’re coinciding and frequency in English May confuse you, but they are not confusing me.
Actually you are. I was responding to your quote:
To call this apples and oranges is an understatement.
You were in turn quoting me, so it helps to remember the context. How can I be understating a completely separate topic?
So first you call into question my gender, and now you question whether or not I think through what I’m even doing. That’s a bit too far. I very much hope that Canada passes that law as it will make me very happy.
Actually I was having an intellectual discussion, you are the first person I spoke to who claims to be non-binary by that phrase. So it was interesting to work out how you think.
I wasn’t ‘questioning your gender’, its not my business. I was curious as to the mindset of non-binary, then after I mentioned Dr Peterson and you got triggered I took the opportunity to try and explain to you that he might not actually be a hate filled bigot, but a logical philosopher sticking to principles of free thought. Maybe I should not have bothered. It is sad that your mind is closed for business.
I know that people probably had more time by then, but how many time does it take to make 100 beads?
I guess they could do such things e.g. in the evening, or when watching the cattle, etc., but this would be interesting to know (probably at the end or your work, when you’ll get used to the work and probably more efficient than when beginning) so that a prestige valor (if there is any such principle in game) may be evaluated compared to e.g. woven clothes.
I make them in groups of 10. I roll a coil of clay, and then quickly cut it into 10 little pieces with a sharp stick. I take each piece and roll it between my hands into a ball. I poke a stick through the center of each ball and then roll the clay like a little wheel with the stick as its axle. That gives it a cylindrical shape. I then pull the stick out and toss it on the done pile. I would say it takes less than 5 minutes for 10 beads
Clay beads are easy to make and quick. You could probably get children to help you make lots of them. Making beads out of bone or shell requires a bone drill. I have one, but it can take me hours to make a single bead.
A garment made of shell or bone beads would have extreme intrinsic value and take potentially multiple years to make. I assume somebody of great respect or importance would wear such a thing.
The objects and tools I know are correct, but some of the cultural things that I’m saying are supposition
So, all in all, maybe the hardest or longest will not be the beans themselves, but putting them on the strings according to your plans.
I suppose this will need quite lot of works to keep them in place as intended. Maybe with something looking like a net made with strings, with one “horizontal” string (as depicted on your drawing) and “diagonal” ones linked to the upper and lower strings, so that each bean may be kept in place prettily on its string?
I will probably use knots to hold the beads in place. I made a truly ugly attempt at a test garment for a doll. The problem is that the doll is simply too small and scale to make this look right. This garment requires the weight of the beads to hold it down. If it doesn’t have enough wait, it’s it’s awkwardly. This is one reason for heavy clay beads.
I will be making beads of other size. The main aesthetic component will be the way that the beans are burned within the fire. By wrapping dried foliage around the beads in different ways, I will cause them to have different colors when they come out. This will give the Garment its character.
I also need two hand spin 20 to 30 yards of flax or wool string that I can make into a thick twine, 2 ply. I may use will as I haven’t spent a lot of that recently.
Let’s talk about the weight of 500 clay beads, which, as you correctly mention, only provide insufficient protection.
Why should I consider such a thing? I love speculation, but in the end you have to judge it practically, right? Think, there is the edge of the plate a bit high, rather a clay vase …
Chain mail - unfortunately we are still in the Neolithic. Hope too, that we still get there …
Probably one of the biggest problems is that the clay is typically around. A projectile, such as an arrow, will not ricochet off of the armor… Instead, the round beads will help Force the arrow into the victim at a better orthogonal angle. In effect, bead armor will make it easier to hit you.
Now if the beads were constructed more like rings, sort of like a ring mail, that might work. The problem you have then is that a sufficiently powerful Arrow will simply split the beat in half and only a little bit of energy will be released into the bead, the rest going into the victim. The bead has a very low mass so it will only absorb a fraction of the momentum from the heavier and faster-moving arrow ( now we’re just getting to basic physics).
Armor could be constructed, but you’d want to make it out of something like bark. Layers of bark would do a great job at stopping an arrow. They would split like the clay, but their larger size in the energy released in the split would absorb a lot more of the momentum from the arrow causing an effect called ablation.
Another possibility would beat layers of boiled leather. Again, the armor is ablative and if not set orthogonal to the arrow, it could be quite effective.
Beaded armor does not work for basically the same reason that fantasy breastplates that are shaped like females breasts do not work. Such armor naturally forces the arrow into the sternum. The beads just do this in a miniature scale.
Now is an element of a ceremonial outfit, beads work great. Looking at the statuary from the Neolithic we find that nudity and ritual seem to be very connected. Nudity is not to be thought of in a sexual manner in this case, but more of perhaps an attachment to the Earth? It’s hard to know exactly what they intended, but looking at all of their figures you can easily see this trend. The beads provide that open air connection, but at the same time they also provide a fanciful an artistic dressing to the body. This is similar to the use of body paint.
Beads can be seen on the vast percentage of Neolithic figurines from almost every culture.
