Something interesting discovered

I went back to some ‘hunches’ I had, after coming across something very interesting and bingo!  I finally found a very important link.  Not hypertext mark up link, but link in strands of study.  

I can’t wait to spill those beans...

Apart from that, I finished the two short stories. I will have to change the names etc of the one that....you know.  I was more pleased with the second than the first, but I came across some further research and so will add that into the first, I think and tie that one up.  I think I can publish the Paleo story on here but the other one might be uploaded somewhere else....

All of this short story stuff reminds me that last year I did two other short stories about completely different subject matter.  They are not finished but the planning is over.  I have to read a book before I can finish the longer one of those, but then again, if the thing is ‘a work of imagination’ I don’t see why I have to bother reading something more factual.  You can either see it in your head, or your can’t.

Well, I was promoted in my day job, which is good e.g. fiscally speaking, but a bit of a bore regarding sapping my time.  

Who cares, I can mine more out of a spare 10 minutes than a lot of people I come across.  All you need is determination, a clear objective and a fair dollop of obsession.

My clear objective today was getting into the head of the Gravettian sculptor who made the subject of this quick-ish drawing here I did on the reverse of a teabag box.

So this is another piece of mammoth bone ivory that was carved around the same time as the Venus de Brassempouy and there are lots of similarities in the mark-making.  So what you are looking at here is a horse, obviously, but not the usual kind of horsey portraiture we are all so familiar with.

Below is a preliminary drawing, where you can see horses back then were fuller in the face and hairier.

Some might say it’s a better drawing in a way, because it captures maybe the horse that the sculpture was based on, which was alive sort of thing, whereas the later drawing is of a carved object made to look like a horse.

Well, it was only when I really got in there and was wrestling with the facial muscles etc that I realised the horse depicted in this Paleo Ice Age sculpture is actually being caught for dinner.  Sorry folks but you have to realise, horses were food back then.

So, my personal view is this sculpture depicts the moment when the horse is giving up its last violent movements of life and is being taken down. 

There are loads of these types of equestrian figurines from that time, and quite a few are of the horse defleshed.

Soapbox time

I believe that these sculptures were traded between tribes of these people and I think as a group of hunter gatherers living around the regions where they did and most specifically moving hundreds of kilometres a year in search of food, it’s my view that they preceded and eventually became Celts.  I would class them as proto- proto -Celts. 

I know that sounds like a massive leap and ‘who does she think she is anyway’.  I don’t care, I know what I’m looking at, and I have a really strong feeling that later, when gold, battle dogs and warriors were traded, around the Steppes etc, I think these people were linked, from very early on.  The Torc is a very specific piece of Celtic iconography and I think it’s fascinating how certain people spread over a vast area, recognised each other quickly with these torcs.  

You could argue me down and say ‘what on Earth has a piece of mammoth bone got in common with a gold Torc?’.  My answer would be “high quality craftsmanship that was traded”.  

Oh well, I gotta go and feed you-know-who...