The 5,500-year-old fingerprint (left) and the funnel beaker (right) as it was unearthed.
Posted on 07/01/2015 4:17:51 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Danish archaeologists doing a survey ahead of the construction of the Femern Belt link scheme, an immersed tunnel that will connect the German island of Fehmarn with the Danish island of Lolland, have found a 5,500-year old-ceramic vessel bearing the fingerprint of the artisan who made it.
The vessel is known with the name "funnel beaker," a kind of ceramics which features a flat bottom with a funnel shaped neck. Such earthenware is characteristic of the Funnel Beaker Culture (4000 – 2800 B.C.), which represents the first farmers in Scandinavia and the north European plain.
It was found in pieces in a former fjord east of Rødby Havn, on the south coast of Lolland, Denmark.
"It is one of three beakers at the site, which originally was deposited whole probably containing some food or liquid presumably as part of some long forgotten ritual," Line Marie Olesen, archaeologist at the Museum Lolland-Falster, told Discovery News.
At the same site Olesen and colleagues last year found a 5,500-year-old flint axe with the handle still attached. The axe was deliberately jammed into what used to be the seabed during the Stone Age.
As the beaker was brought to the Danish National Museum for conservation, experts noticed a fingerprint on the interior surface.
"It must have been left there while manufacturing the pot," Olesen said...
Last year the same archaeological survey unearthed 5,000-year-old footprints left by people who attempted to save parts of their fishing system before it was flooded and covered in sand.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.discovery.com ...
The 5,500-year-old fingerprint (left) and the funnel beaker (right) as it was unearthed.
When they find a 5,000 year old vessel with a phaser or disruptor left behind in it, that will be some big news.
So, the Danes finally cracked the Funnel Beaker caper, eh? Probably stolen with that unregistered axe.
It takes more imagination than I can muster.
Amazing.
How does Europe build anything without an army of Mexicans?
Boy that Brian Williams really gets around!
Breaking news.
(5500 years is recent in archeology and you have broken pottery shards).
Look at how this flex seal fixes the hole in this fish trap? It will last for at least 5500 years without leaking.
... or an android's head with Mark Twain's cigar in its mouth.
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