On display at the Stromness museum. Carved from whalebone and believed to be a child's doll.
Was discovered at the famous Skara Brae site, and then spent years forgotten in a box at the museum before being rediscovered.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-36526874
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Generally, an artifact should be 100+ years old, but this is a flexible requirement if you find something rare and suitably linked to an era of history, not a strict rule. Anything over 100 is fair game regardless of rarity.
Generally speaking, ruins should go to !historyruins@lemmy.world
Illustrations of the past should go to !historyillustrations@lemmy.world
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I'm loving this cute artifact posting! I wanna hug that thing, so much.
Me too. It boggles my mind that somebody carved this for a child five millennia ago. I can't help but try and imagine those people. Skara Brae is a windswept and bleak place, although the climate was different back then, their life would have been hard and very different to ours today, but the people themselves must have been very similar. Maybe this was carved to stop a child being scared of the dark, maybe it was to represent someone they loved who had died - but without doubt this was carved with love. I like that, and I like the modern day naming of it.