Kondon nephrite blesny / Lower Amur slat-lure

нефритовая блесна

Source term: нефритовая блесна; желобчатая пластинка из нефрита; grooved nephrite slat-lure

нефритовая блесна (nefritovaya blesna): 'nephrite spoon-lure'

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. What the fishing reading and the bullroarer reading have in common is that 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

Particulars

Object

Narrow plates of white nephrite, carefully polished, grooved down their length, rounded at one end and drilled through at the other.

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 a blade spun on a cord is also a bullroarer.