This is a Mesolithic headdress made from a skull of a red deer, ca. 8000 BC
8000 BC is over ten thousand years ago, just after the end of the last major ice age.
Below the Veksø helmets from the Nordic Bronze Age, 1100 - 900 B.C.
The symbolism is weirdly similar, in fact virtually identical. The only real difference is that in the Mesolithic, they had no metallurgy, so they had to make their masks out of a deer skull. 7000 years later, people had advanced enough to use bronze, but somehow, examples of both survived to the present day.
Clearly, there was some powerful religious/magical/superstitious belief going on here that lasted thousands of years. Exactly what it was we will never know.
Maybe we'll all start wearing them in the new ice age?
ReplyDeleteI'm going to start hammering my spooky deer mask out of a brass sheet I have in the barn right now.
DeleteNo time like present to get started. The ice age will be on you before you know it.
DeleteI would not be surprised if you could find some believers in the old way & old religion even today.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure they would talk to you given the state of religious intolerance in the world but I'll bet a dollar they are still out there!
I've always read that Vikings did NOT wear horns on their helmets, but that it was a myth created for use in opera performances.
ReplyDeleteBut, these photographs definitely indicate otherwise.
Thank you for posting those and explaining them.