EA-KONDON-BLESNY-001 - archaeological find

Kondon nephrite blesny / Lower Amur slat-lure

Russia - Kondon-Pochta, Lower Amur, Khabarovsk Krai - East Asia - Russian Far East

Function not recorded Candidate only

Russian archaeology remembers Kondon for two things: the serene ceramic face nicknamed the 'Kondon Nefertiti,' and what the textbooks still call the oldest fishing lures in the world. From the same roughly five-thousand-year-old settlement layers on the Devyatka River, Okladnikov's excavations produced narrow polished nephrite plates, grooved down their length, rounded at one end and drilled through near the other. The lure identification rests on a memorable experiment — towed through water on a line, the grooved slat played the part of a fleeing fish well enough to convince — yet the Great Russian Encyclopedia still lists the function of these plates as unclear. The atlas notes what the fishing reading and the bullroarer reading have in common: both require exactly this object, a thin polished end-holed blade made to be tied to a cord and set moving.

Эти самые древние в мире блесны сделаны в виде вогнутых пластинок из нефрита с отверстием на одном конце для привязывания к леске.

These, the world's oldest fishing lures, are made as concave nephrite plates with a hole at one end for tying to the line.

A. I. Martynov, Arkheologiya, on the Kondon-type lures

Object

нефритовая блесна; желобчатая пластинка из нефрита; grooved nephrite slat-lure. Specimens/count: one or more analogous objects reported; exact count needs monograph. Material: nephrite. Dimensions: unverified locally; BigEnc class note describes Kondon-culture blesny as narrow polished plates with longitudinal groove and upper/end hole. Perforation: drilled opposite end for line attachment per Russian summaries. Context: Kondon Neolithic settlement on the Lower Amur; exact feature context needs Okladnikov 1983. Date: Kondon culture, Lower Amur Neolithic; cited site date 4520±20 BP ≈ 5300–5000 cal BP; culture chronology contested.

Function

Published as fishing lures (блесны), famously 'the world's oldest,' after excavators watched one spin like a fish when drawn through water on a line; encyclopedic sources still call the function unclear, and the atlas adds the whirred-blade reading as an untested third possibility.

Map confidence

low - Approximate locality or municipality/site-cluster anchor from the local dossier; refine before public release.

Source location

History of Siberia vol. 1 p. 729; Big Russian Encyclopedia route

View source Open this point on the interactive map