In England, Bar Hill’s ‘Skull Comb’ Is an Iron Age Mystery

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/bar-hill-skull-comb-iron-age

by pepys • 3 years ago

45 20 3 years ago

atlasobscura.com

sacnoradhq2• 3 years ago

a. Some guy got sick of his wife's lover.

b. Some warlord decided to turn his rival's bones into trinkets for British archeologists to find.

rootw0rm• 3 years ago

c. don't mess with the dude who's combing his skull with a piece of some other dude's skull

justinclift2• 3 years ago

Heh, strong vibes of: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/wolf

sacnoradhq2• 3 years ago

The comb was definitely for a chick. Real cave men shave their heads and tie the rest into knots like Vikings.

OTOH, his travel coffee mugs were also made out of the skulls of his vanquished foes. Difficult hours at the office conquering and pillaging need lots of caffeine.

ftxbro• 3 years ago

eww put that bit of carrion back underground stop playing with it

xref• 3 years ago

he concluded it’s unlikely the comb was used for grooming, as its relatively short teeth lack signs of wear consistent with being pulled through hair repeatedly.

Pubic comb, only used when needed to brush the lice and crabs out

TheChaplain• 3 years ago

Have people drastically changed from that time? Or have we always had characters who do things "for the lulz" or "because why not"?

toyg• 3 years ago

There are two views about that:

- no, there was no time to mess around, every living second was dedicated to subsistence activities essential to the community, or

- yeah, they had so much more free time that we do, inevitably people would make shit just for the hell of it. That's probably how we got the wheel, after all.

This said, you'd expect the "for the lulz" stuff not to end up buried with someone, which is how this was found; nor you'd expect them to travel to nearby settlements, as this one supposedly did (two more were found in England).

madaxe_again2• 3 years ago

There’s also a happy middle ground, which is that life had a variable pace over the seasons and years, depending on the availability of game, forage, and crops, and the ease of travel depending on the weather.

I live very much off-grid and have come to appreciate the rhythm of the year, and the times when you have nothing but idle hands, and hours to fill. The summer days when it’s too hot to venture beyond your shaded home, the winter days when the rain drives you to shelter, and the rare times when there’s simply nothing that needs doing today.

The thing that has defined humans since there have been humans is our capability and desire to create, just for the hell of it. Our oldest known artefacts seem to have been made for no purpose other than to have been made, and our history is littered with art for art’s sake, fabulous ornamentation where austerity would have sufficed, and Brobdingnagian works which defy any direct practical purpose, such as henges and pyramids.

We have pretty much always had time for the unnecessary, but engaging.

m000• 3 years ago

Some bored teenager finds a skull circa 350BC. 2 millennia later: "Scientists baffled by rare skull comb."

Lutzb• 3 years ago

Maybe it was used to descale fish?

shellac• 3 years ago

In England, Bar Hill’s ‘Skull Comb’ Is an Iron Age Mystery

But outside England everyone knows what this is for. Why won't they enlighten the English?

gadgetoid• 3 years ago

They found an astonishing number of animal bones here, too- https://molaheadland.com/murder-they-croaked-investigating-a...

Not quite on topic, but a bit of Bar Hill Adjacent history- the local news mailer is archived on Archive.org dating back to 1967- https://archive.org/details/bar-hill-news?&sort=date

And there’s a screamingly quaint 1980s documentary about the village on YouTube- https://youtu.be/qIovK-4yq9I

Good effort for a place that’s 50% Tesco and Golf course.

withinboredom• 3 years ago

People used to take photos with their recently deceased. It wouldn't surprise me that at least a few people would want to carry around a part of them as well. Hell, my wife carries around an amulet with some of her mother's ashes in it.

jonnilundy• 3 years ago

Senna

In England, Bar Hill’s ‘Skull Comb’ Is an Iron Age Mystery

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