No. OMERZEL1998-001Europe
Potočka perforated bone point
Slovenia · Potočka zijalka · eastern Karawanks · Europe
Function not recorded
Source term: koščena konica z luknjo / brnivka
brnivka: Slovenian bullroarer or whirring sound-maker; koščena konica z luknjo: perforated bone point
A hole pierces the broad end of a long bone point from Potočka zijalka, high in the eastern Karawanks - some 35,000 years old. The perforation is human work, and the flattened, tapered blade could catch the air. Galin and Omerzel asked whether a leather cord once turned this weapon into a voice like wind or thunder.
S konico, navezano na kožno vrv, pa bi lahko fosilni človek ustvarjal zvoke zelo podobne zavijanju vetrov ali grmenju.
With the point tied to a leather cord, prehistoric people could have made sounds very like the howling of wind or thunder.
Omerzel-Terlep 1998:170
Particulars
- Object
- Long flattened and tapered bone point, Brodar catalogue no. 75, with a single human-made hole at its broad end.
- Function
- Not recorded.
Sources
- Mira Omerzel-Terlep, 'Prehistoric stone and bone percussion instruments, scrapers, idiophones, rattles and bullroarers,' Etnolog 8 (1998), pp. 169-170, drawing p. 170 View · archived
- Brodar (1983), object no. 75, via Omerzel-Terlep (1998)
- Krešimir Galin, "Archeological Findings of Musical Instruments in Yugoslavia," Narodna umjetnost, special issue 2 (1988): 123-148, p. 136, fig. 35, via Omerzel-Terlep (1998)