Page 41 - SYTYGIB Prehistoric Times
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There are many sculptures and some baked clay models of women. Some are young, others are pregnant, and some are older. Discovered across Europe, they were carved between 35,000 and 20,000 years ago and may have been religious objects, perhaps made by women for their special rituals or as family emblems to bring good health and happiness.
   Is that a horrible monster-headed god you´re carving?
It´s a self- portrait, actually.
Oh . . . errr, top work.
 If you want archaeologists in the future to believe you were very important, simply make little clay statues of yourself and bury them. Easy-peasy!
 Do you ever wish . . . you gave that dead fly you found in the bathroom a grand send-off instead of flushing it down the loo? Well,
prehistoric humans had various ways of dealing with the dead – and none of them involved flushing . . . or flies.
In the earlier Stone Age, people were either buried or cremated, which means their bodies were burned and turned to ash after they died. Early farmers buried their dead in mounds called ‘long barrows’. A Neolithic burial site found at Belas Knap in Gloucestershire is almost as long as a football pitch and has a passageway inside leading to a set of chambers containing the bones of more than 30 people!
Some families buried important people under round mounds, until that faded out too and cremation became fashionable.
There’s no sign of the skeletons of most of
those who died in the time that iron use became fashionable, so whatever happened to them after they stopped being alive, it left no trace. But some people were buried carefully with things that showed their power, such as chariots or wine and oil jars imported from the Roman Empire.
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Gods and religion
  





















































































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