This is quite a stunning piece of portable rock art found in North Carolina, United States by Brandon McDonald. It appears as a face mask, but I would suggest its a lot more than that as it clearly displays the convention and common content by my definition of a figure stone.
Looking carefully at the find many figurative interpretations can be made, and many are credible due to the fact that I've predefined these and described and demonstrated them numerously on this blog and put them in my 'Figure Stone Key' of this global ancient art phenomena.
I think that what is most important here is the modern human like face description, it displays no apparent archaic features, the nose is very well defined and the brow ridge looks normal for a human and does not look as thick set as expected if this was a depiction of Neanderthal or Homo-Neanderthal. This fits with my theory that Humans are responsible for the world wide figurative art topology, even though in many cases art finds appear to be in the multi-million year age range (well before dubious theory concerning human chronology).
The find also displays proboscidean descriptions in the expected front half convention, both left and right facing, and possibly on both sides of the mask. Looking at these carefully mammoth, mastodon and even large eared African elephant can be interpreted here, this I feel is by design, deliberate ambiguities worked into the find so it covers multiple species. (Previous African Elephant like interpretation form North Carolina Artifact:- American Paleoart )
There is also a good ape like face in the fairly common frontal convention, and it also appears defined by a diamond kite shape, as is also on my key (commonly interpreted as an Australopithecus) This however is not bordered by the edges of the find as I usually require, to rule out pareidolia, but we definitively have a genuine polymorphic artifact here so this is a fare interpretation.
There is also plenty more fairly certain interpretations here that meet the standard figure stone common lexicon and convention: Lion half, hand holding a rock, grazing horse half, and no doubt more through careful examination in person. Something to be aware of is a Galapagos like tortoise and/or dinosaur like impression in this find.
So how old is this find? Standard archaeological narrative would tell us this is at maximum 13 thousand years old (Clovis first), but human habitation has already been put back much further for north America, although not directly attributed to Modern Humans as far back as around 100 Thousand years, and even further still for artistic people of Hueyatlaco, 260 thousand years, and if we accept the ape like face description is of an ape and we accept the (extremely dubious narrative) fossil record, then 20 million years old, but I suspect its only a few hundred thousand years at most.
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| Portable Rock Art Face Mask |
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| Portable Rock Art Double Elephants |
