Hands are actually pretty easy to injure, and modern medicine is the reason most of us get to keep them all our lives. I've known enough farmers and construction workers who are missing digits to assume a significant number are likely to be from injury in agricultural or hunting contexts. Frostbite would be another easy source of injury depending on climate.
While I could see a possible religious practice coming out of reverence for injured hands contributing too, this seems like the age old archeology practice of assuming anything is intentionally done for religious reasons if they don't have a neat and tidy singular explanation.
Prior to this discovery, archaeologists had interpreted features such as a headdress and necklace on a stela as representing a female form, while the inclusion of weaponry such as swords would be interpreted as male “warrior” stelae.
But this latest discovery, including both “male” and “female” elements, challenges these assumptions.
This led the archaeology team to consider that the social roles depicted by these carvings were more fluid than previously thought, and not restricted to a specific gender.
No God damn way is it an intentional body mod. If it were, the pinky would not be the digit chosen.
Grip strength.
If you lose your pinky, you lose almost half your fucking grip strength. And as something like grip strength is pretty fucking important for a hunter-gatherer society, I’d be shocked if they were just lobbing off pinkies for the hell of it.
All the images in the article are showing that the hand with missing fingers is the left hand. Most people are right handed, so missing a left finger for most people wouldn’t hurt the grip strength of a one handed weapon/tool much in the main (right) hand. You could attach something like a shield strapped to your left arm and wouldn’t notice the issue for hunter gathering then. (Shields aren’t just for defense against claws, they can also be a bashing tool.)
Now, I doubt they were cutting off a pinky finger because they were bored on a Saturday night, but there could have been religious/group beliefs involved. Body modification has been around for a very long time, from as simple of scarification, to tattoos and piercings, to removal of body parts (circumcision), so it isn’t out of the realm of possibilities.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone considering they gave Grahan Hancock a whole fuckin series of bullshit. Netflix’s “documentaries” have been jokes for a few years now.
This together with all the thousands of years old cheeses, 2000 year old bog butter, and edible mammoth meat we found, we could make the sickest charcuterie board in history
The name on the coin was “Esunertos,” which can be translated as “mighty as the god Esos,”. The arrival says the coin was recently sold for around £24000
“The stem scarph is identical to what we know from the plans of Endeavour,” Australian marine archeologist James Hunter said on the group’s website. “It’s also a very unique feature. We’ve gone through a whole bunch of ships’ plans, lots of 18th century plans, and we can’t find anything else like it.”
sounds like pretty good evidence along with the other matching measurements
They say devouring a frog, I say biting a dude’s nuts off.
For real though, what a neat buckle. Since they think it was related to an unknown pagan cult, I wonder what the purpose of wearing the symbol on the belt was? For others to see you were part of the cult (assuming it was worn visibly)?
Could it not just be a war trophy? The frog representing some “barbaric hoard” that the great dragon king put down? What is it that makes it pagan besides the lack of a cross?
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