Prehistoric Bling
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Friday September 7th, 2007 @ 3:51 PM
Filed under: Body Modification, Body Piercing, History, Quality
Digger (”punk rock prehistorian” — check out his page to see his superb petroglyph tattoos and more pictures like this) sends in these photos of a Thai bronze age burial excavation (click through for a second photo), showing shell and marble bracelets as well as large shell ear tunnels.
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38 Responses to “Prehistoric Bling”
awesome! i love to see proof of ancient body mods.
shokroklove on September 7th, 2007 at 3:55 pmThat’s really neat :)
sarah schizm on September 7th, 2007 at 3:58 pmOh, kids these.. umm.. those days.
LarrySDonald on September 7th, 2007 at 4:02 pmI love it ! (and i love to read about body modifications in more ancient times)
Lunar on September 7th, 2007 at 4:03 pmNice teeth too !
Fascinating. LOL Larry. Goes to show we never outgrow it.
Viking In LaFleche on September 7th, 2007 at 4:07 pmThat’s incredible. I miss studying archaeology.
RooRaaah Crumbs on September 7th, 2007 at 4:10 pmThat is so fantastic - my parents seem to thing that my love of body mods is some teenage rebellion thing. Pictures like these prove that it’s so much more cultural than that.
Rhiannon on September 7th, 2007 at 4:25 pmi’m so invigorated when i see pictures like these. wonderful! more!
brute on September 7th, 2007 at 4:55 pm“Pictures like these prove that it’s so much more cultural than that.”
You’re from Bronze-age Thailand??
HuH? on September 7th, 2007 at 5:14 pmwas disco popular back in the prehistoric ages? because sorry to say, that’s the tackiest jewelry i’ve ever seen. cool, but tacky.
Noah Matteson on September 7th, 2007 at 5:15 pmVery awesome.
redneckzombi on September 7th, 2007 at 6:09 pmI think they’re beautiful.
TheWomanMonster on September 7th, 2007 at 6:35 pmExcellent photo that I may need to pilfer. Who owns the rights to it? Is it Digger?
Giles Wallwork on September 7th, 2007 at 6:43 pmHaha @ #9
Yeah it was “cultural” for them, and I don’t know, perhaps it is for us too, but definitely on a different level.
Oh and I thought he had beautiful teeth too.
Hanargh on September 7th, 2007 at 6:50 pm#9 - I’m not saying it’s part of my culture, necessarily. But tell me this - is it not acceptable for Christians to celebrate Halloween? Or for atheists to put gifts underneath a tree during the holidays? Are you telling me that you never picked up on the traditions of another culture?
I’m not trying to argue - just to put things into perspective.
Rhiannon on September 7th, 2007 at 7:28 pmThis is my favorite modblog entry ever. SO great.
Gillian on September 7th, 2007 at 8:18 pmdo we know if these are male or female?
Christa on September 7th, 2007 at 8:24 pmI like how happy it looks in the click through. =)
vi on September 7th, 2007 at 8:37 pmI think it’s female due to the hips, but I’ve only seen so many skeletons to judge just based on two pictures!
I could go on all day about how amazing the history about body modification is, but I would be here all day. I love that there is just always so much to learn, too. I’m proud to say that I’m part of something that means and has meant so much to so many people all over the world.
Grunt on September 7th, 2007 at 8:41 pmthis is one of my favorite modblog entries ever.
Aaron on September 7th, 2007 at 8:46 pmbest entry in ages :)
namesofthedead on September 7th, 2007 at 9:15 pmWaw hadn’t seen this yet!
Frances on September 7th, 2007 at 9:34 pmI study archaeology and bodymodification has indeed a long history. You probably knew this already but even the prehistoric ice man Ötzi had tattoos as well.
They had some mighty fine teeth.
Sam. on September 7th, 2007 at 9:44 pmhaha he/she looks happy in the second pic
haha on September 7th, 2007 at 9:46 pmawesome
#24 i was just about to post the exact same thing :D
HELLS_MoNkEy on September 7th, 2007 at 11:01 pmAwesome.
I go to a lot of museums and they’re chock full of objects that are obviously ear tunnels, and are almost always mislabeled as various toys, weights or other objects.
Marshall on September 7th, 2007 at 11:09 pmThat is rather awesome
Seaslug on September 8th, 2007 at 12:29 amAwesome! Even when they are mistaken as toys and etc, the ones who know what they are feel something different, don’t we?
Trash on September 8th, 2007 at 4:52 amit was a female. the cheek bones are really distinguished. and yeah, she does look really happy. but did she start the disco craze of huge arm bracelettes?
Noah Matteson on September 8th, 2007 at 8:44 ami wanna be buried with my plugs and studs, too.
satanycandle on September 8th, 2007 at 10:55 amshe’s beautiful
uptheglasswalls on September 8th, 2007 at 11:20 amI agree with #4 #14 and #23… awesome teeth…and that’s primordial!…good teeth,cool mods…seems she was the perfect girl!…
Pastille on September 8th, 2007 at 12:36 pmI spend a lot of time in museums and have for the past 7 or 8 years but didn’t focus on the body modifications evidenced there till recently. As I walk the galleries now I am surprised at how wide spread and far reaching certain practices are. Particularly stretching ear lobes.
suzanne on September 8th, 2007 at 3:55 pmGorgeous. I wonder what that would have looked like in life.
Malice Alice on September 8th, 2007 at 6:36 pmHey, I made Modblog!
They’re two different skeletons, by the way. One has bivalve shells by the head, which are commonly interpreted as a tool to smear ochre on the corpse, dyeing it red (as seen at other sites). I don’t know what sex they are, but my ill-educated guess would be that they’re both male. Both sexes are found with ear tunnels though.
Ear stretching in Asia goes back at least 2600 years of course. People in the brahiminic caste in India had these, which is why Buddha has/had long ears, although he regected all that to become an ascetic, which is why his hang down empty. These people in Thailand weren’t necessarily thinking the same things about ear stretching as those in India at the same time of course, just like people in highland Thailand now might not think the same about ear stretching as their ‘ancestors’ did.
Funny thing is, my whole life is spent wishing that people would see how the lives of people in the past relate directly to ours, how much we have to learn from the way they lived their lives, how they fitted in (or otherwise) with society around them, how they expressed that with art and objects, and how they coped with the expectations and demands of that society. Then a thing like body modification makes loads of people basically sit up and say ‘hey look, that’s the way I relate myself to the world’. Bodies are great like that, aren’t they? Everyone knows what it’s like to live in one.
I’m a bit of an anarchist. I want people to see how people can get abused by their self-appointed masters (and change that in the present) but, for me, just to see people in the past who went through the same crap that life deals and who coped is heartening. (That’s a lot to ask of two photos, but there’s plenty of past to learn from). Here in these pictures are ideas that have prevailed over 3000 years, and some of those ideas are part of what I am (and maybe you too), and maybe they’ll prevail another 3000 years. In the absence of God I find comfort in that.
Peace,
digger
PS I can’t work out how to make my name link to my IAM page, but I’m there if anyone wants to find me.
digger on September 8th, 2007 at 7:01 pmNice picture I guess, but she’s sooo skinny. And her smile is kinda weird. Not to mention all the dirt I can see under her fingernails.
Jordan Ginsberg on September 8th, 2007 at 7:13 pmwicked awesome! i love that skeletons always look like they’re saying “haw haw haw”
Vegas on September 9th, 2007 at 5:20 amthat would be a saweet set of plugs to have.
“oh, did you get those from (local studio)?”
“no, i found them on an archaeological dig in Thailand.”
(o.o)
iam.hiendkle on January 22nd, 2008 at 4:35 amLeave a Comment