Identify: Słupcio
What it’s: A bear figurine carved out of amber
The place it’s from: Słupsk, northern Poland
When it was made: Between 9600 and 4100 B.C.
Associated: Pfyn culture flint tool: World’s oldest known ‘Swiss Army’ knife
What it tells us in regards to the previous:
This distinctive carved amber bear was found in northern Poland by employees digging for peat in 1887. An historic hunter possible wore it as a protecting allure, for the reason that bear was essentially the most highly effective and harmful animal that lived within the space through the Stone Age.
“Słupcio” — or “little man from Słupsk” in Polish — is the title given to the amber bear in 2013, when a Polish kindergartner won a contest to call the artifact. (The fortunate winner additionally snagged a teddy bear.)
The carved bear is on show on the National Museum in Szczecin, round 136 miles (220 kilometers) southwest of his authentic discover spot, and he has turn into one thing of a neighborhood image, the place copies of him are broadly accessible as souvenirs.
The figurine is 4 inches (10.2 centimeters) lengthy and 1.65 inches (4.2 cm) tall and will date to Europe’s Mesolithic interval (12,000 to five,000 years in the past). Right now, individuals had been largely hunter-gatherers, so archaeological proof of their settlements is uncommon. However within the space of Pomerania on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea, archaeologists have discovered Stone Age sites with artifacts, similar to pottery, instruments and weapons, together with objects produced from amber that washed ashore. The sort of amber comes from marine sediments.
Słupcio’s legs are basically simply bulges, and he can’t stand on his personal, however the bear’s head is clearly carved to indicate his ears, mouth, nostrils and eyes. In the midst of the figurine’s torso, there’s a gap that goes throughout the amber, possible utilized by the traditional hunter to string a strap for hanging or carrying the little man.
On the finish of World Warfare II, Słupcio was taken out of Poland by the Germans together with quite a few different historic artifacts, and the amber bear ended up within the Stralsund Museum till he was returned to Szczecin in 2009. Whereas in Germany, Słupcio was studied by experts who known as him a “Bernsteinbär” (amber bear) and decided that the entire carving was historic.
However since Słupcio was a stray discover from greater than a century in the past, consultants stay divided on when he was really made.
MORE ASTONISHING ARTIFACTS
In a 2023 study of a number of amber bear collectible figurines from the Baltic Sea space, researchers concluded that the objects usually tend to be Higher Paleolithic in date, a interval from 50,000 to 12,000 years in the past. The amber bears could also be additional proof of the Paleolithic custom of representing animals in cave work and portable objects, and so they additionally present that folks shifted their looking from reindeer on the open tundra to elk and bear within the forest.
Carving bears in amber — a pure materials that appears like stone, floats in seawater, is translucent when polished, and smells aromatic when burned — might have been perceived as imbuing the fabric with magic, making Słupcio a robust Stone Age amulet.
