Wolf and Horse Portable Rock Art and Flint Tool

Another flint tool from my find site that shows the horse head glyph and possibly a double sided depiction of the Egyptian Jackal or African Wolf, I also notice the elephant and front leg motif is incorporated into the horse head, another convention noted in previous finds of mine. The blade or cutting surface of this flint tool is along the bottom of the figurative neck area.

Rule of Thumb - Portable Rock Art Motif

Something I have been aware of for a few years is the Thumb motif found on my site and in other hand axes and blade tools. I have already shown a number of hand shapes in my poly iconic materials and perhaps there is a similar meaning to these icons. I have long suggested that these motifs are actually visual language devices rather than art per se. I have found many suspected thumb shapes from my find site and have seen others, both recognized and unrecognized both in flint tool form or just as worked stones. So what is the meaning of this motif? Many portable rock art finds contain images of hominids and apes, usually in head profile form, and there is a great variety of both, all of these motifs can be replaced by the thumb motif. So instead of carving various ape and hominid head profiles, prehistoric men could of carved a thumb shape to indicate all, allow me to explain a little further. One of the unique features of hominids is opposable thumbs, so this motif would cover all hominids. On a double sided piece direction of travel could be easily indicated, furthermore when the piece is turned upside down this could indicate all apes and monkeys, as the thumb would be in the position it is on monkeys hands rather than the natural position it is in on the hands of humans and hominids.

This is a Flint hand Axe found in Kent Uk, a thumb shape and nail can be seen. Source: www.stoneagetools.co.uk 

Below: A selection of 3 thumb shapes found from my find site, The top one is also a blade tool.

Below another one of my UK thumb finds.

 

The Two Flint tool finds below were both found in North America and Both show the Thumb Motif.

Picture Lost somehow? empty space deleted 13/10/2021

From Ebay, another combination elephant half and thumb motif.

Below: From my find site here in the UK, another combination thumb and elephant front leg motif.

Below: The images to the left are drawings of an eolith, recovered from layers dated to at least 2 million years old. Again elephant half and combined thumb motifs can be seen.

Is this neolithic? polished hand axe carrying comparatively modern traces of figurative art?

Image source: The British Museum, link has further details about the find.

USA stone below: The bottom picture also shows the Elephant and front leg motif, thumb shape and claw.

Prehistoric Stone Toy or Decision making Device?

Another stone from my site that shows various face profiles, hominid, ape and feline and other prehistoric language elements. But is there a little more to this piece of portable rock art than first meets the eye? The stone has a kind of trigger/lever which can be used to spin the device and a gouged chevron, which presumably was used to indicate direction. The Item could of been used rather like spin the bottle, as a toy or gaming device, or to make decisions about direction of travel or who should go and collect the dinosaur stakes for supper.

Russian Mammoth Flint Sculpture

Yesterdays post of one of my finds got me searching for other examples of clearly worked flint portable rock art. I came across this example in Early Art of the Northern Far East a book by Russian author M. A. Kiriyak (Dikova) (English Translation by Richard L. Bland). The find was found in Ushki which is far to the east of Russia. Check page 66, Dikova talks of other mammoth finds being covered in paint and having traces of red ocher, and even seated, just like mine.

This mammoth sculpture is also in the form of a flint tool, a very subtle feline face can be seen on the posterior of the mammoth motif. The white lines making a triangle for the ear shape, the white spot to the right of that becoming the 'eye' the vertical line on the rump making a triangle muzzle of the suspect feline motif. You can also see a feline like head profile on the posterior of the mammoth motif shown on my example in the previous post.

I would like you to think about what this could possibly mean, as far as prehistoric people from very distant parts of the world sharing common symbolgy and common conventions within that symbology.

Flint tool shows Mammoth Iconography?

This piece of portable rock art from my find site shows the possible outline of a mammoth and also has a a subtle face profile on its posterior (probably sub-human), as well as other iconography. Unlike any other suspected mammoth interpretation I am aware of, this flint also doubles as a cutting tool, so its an artifact in its own right.

Other amateur portable rock art collectors have also recognized the mammoth with face on posterior convention, mainly in North America, the clearest example of this convention can be seen here (last image), although I suggest that the motifs in this example show Elephant and Human.