• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Adorable 5,000-Year-Old Owl Plaques May Have Been Toys For Copper Age Children

December 2, 2022 by Deborah Bloomfield

Kids’ owl-drawing abilities don’t appear to have progressed much over the past five millennia, according to the findings of a new investigation into Copper Age animal engravings. Previously, these ancient owlish depictions had been interpreted as ritualistic artefacts, yet the “cartoonlike” nature of the etchings implies that they may actually have been toys created by and for children.

Several thousand engraved slate plaques resembling owls have been found in Copper Age burials across the Iberian Peninsula. And while archaeologists have debated the function of these carvings for over a century, most scholars favor the idea that they represented goddesses and were used in funerary rituals.

Advertisement

However, the authors of a new study challenge this theory by pointing out that the owl plaques appear too simple to have held such ceremonial importance. 

For instance, they note that many ancient funerary objects of were crafted from “precious materials or rare rocks including gold, elephant ivory or rock crystal, which originated in distant areas sometimes hundreds of kilometers away from the site of discovery.” In contrast, slate was readily abundant in and around Iberian settlements, and would not therefore have been considered a valuable material.

Furthermore, they say that engraving on slate is easily done, and can be accomplished by even the most inexperienced craftsperson. “Plaque manufacture and design were simple and did not demand high skills nor intensive labor,” they explain, pointing to previous experiments in which untrained participants managed to recreate the plaques in just a few hours.

Advertisement

The rudimentary nature of the objects therefore led the researchers to suspect that they weren’t created by master artisans, but by children. After all, the availability of slate, combined with the fact that it is so easy to etch, makes it the perfect material for youngsters to practice drawing on.

“In some of the engraved plaques we see… a cartoonlike owl… as if conceived by a child,” they say.

comparison of owl plaque and little owl (Athene noctua)
An engraved plaque representing the little owl (Athene noctua). Image credit: Negro et al., Scientific Reports 2022 (CC-BY 4.0), cropped by IFLScience

To validate their theory, the study authors gathered 100 Copper Age owl plaques and rated their “owliness” based on how well they represented six different traits that are characteristic of the nocturnal birds. More specifically, the researchers looked for a flat facial disk, a beak, patterned feathers, two eyes, wings and feathery tufts.

Advertisement

While some of the plaques clearly depicted all of these features, others were somewhat loose in their owlish likeness. This led the researchers to wonder if the birds were drawn by children of different ages, with the younger artists producing more abstract-looking birds.

They therefore gathered a second set of 100 owl drawings that were created by modern-day children aged between four and 13. Using the same owl rating system to assess the sketches, the study authors found that those drawn by younger kids tended to include fewer of the six fundamental owl traits, while older children generally included all of these key features in their depictions.

“There is a progression related to age in the owliness of the depictions, with more and more owl characters added by older children,” write the researchers. This, they say, “may help explain at least partially why there are so many plaque types, and why some are more evocative of owls than others.”

Advertisement

Summing up their findings, the authors state that “owl engravings could have been executed by youngsters, as they resemble owls painted today by elementary school students.”

They therefore conclude that the plaques were probably intended for use during “playful activities”, and that some children may also have offered their owls as burial goods as a way of participating in group rituals.

The study has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Life insurers shift to pre-pandemic norms after COVID vaccine roll-outs
  2. Inspiration4 crew, meet outer space: SpaceX’s first all-civilian mission launches to orbit
  3. Democrats mobilize to extend government funding, avert shutdown
  4. We Can Make Oxygen On Mars So Reliably That It Will Sustain Human Exploration

Source Link: Adorable 5,000-Year-Old Owl Plaques May Have Been Toys For Copper Age Children

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Very Hungry “Plastivore” Caterpillars Get Fat From Eating Plastic
  • “Nobody Expected This”: Earth’s Rotation Will Speed Up Tomorrow, Bucking The Downward Trend
  • Chimps Are Sticking Grass In Their Ears And Rears As They Embrace “Pointless” Fad
  • Hui Te Rangiora: Old Māori Legend Suggests They May Have Discovered Antarctica 1,000 Years Before Europeans
  • “Potential Impact On Saturn”: Astronomers Appeal For Help As Video Appears To Show Object Hitting The Gas Giant
  • What Is Prosopometamorphopsia? The “Exceedingly Rare” Condition That Made A Patient See Faces As Dragons
  • Are We In An Enormous Void? It Could Explain What’s Wrong With Our Model Of The Universe
  • Woylies Boing Back Into Western Australia Thanks To Groundbreaking Wildlife Project
  • North America’s Oldest Pterosaur And Turtle Fossils Found In Arizona’s Petrified Forest
  • Proposed “Dark Dwarfs” Near The Galactic Center Could Reveal The Nature Of Dark Matter
  • Watch: 18-Kilometer-High Ash Cloud Looms Over Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki After “Explosive” Eruption
  • “ShipGoo001”: Mystery Of Entirely New Lifeform Discovered Coating A Great Lakes Ship
  • Rare White Humpback Whale Calf Filmed By Drone Off Australia’s East Coast
  • Who Was Buried At Cave Of Salome: A Female Disciple, Jesus’ Midwife, Or A Princess?
  • “Hidden” Changes To US Health Data Swapping “Gender” For “Sex” Spark Fears For Public Trust
  • Easter Island Was Never As Isolated As We Thought – Study Puts That “Strange Argument” To Bed
  • If Birds Are Dinosaurs, Why Are None As Big As T. Rexes?
  • Psychologists Demonstrate Illusion That Could Be Screwing Up Our Perception Of Time
  • Why Are So Many Enormous Roman Shoes Being Discovered At Hadrian’s Wall?
  • Scientists Think They’ve Pinpointed Structural Differences In Psychopaths’ Brains
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version