But this mask was carved out of stone 9000 years ago, which may be one of the earliest agricultural towns in the world.
The mask was found near an Israeli settlement in the east of Hebron in the West Bank. Ronit Lupu, an archaeologist at the Israel Cultural Relics Bureau, told the reporter of Living Science that a man picked up a mask from the ground and finally handed it over to the anti-theft department of the Cultural Relics Bureau, when he was crossing a field. [Photo: The oldest mask in the world]
"It was an unintentional discovery, and the person who found the mask told us where he found it," Lupu said.
Lupu and her colleagues believe that masks may have been brought to the surface by agricultural activities that disturbed the soil. Lupu said that this land is full of Neolithic cultural relics, indicating that there is an archaeological site underground, and researchers hope to finally excavate it.
Looking closely at the mask, we can see that the mask is engraved with some finer details, such as small openings around the cracked teeth.
"I like cheeks-they have cheekbones," Lupu said. She also said that a staff member of Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem cried when he saw the mask.
It may not be surprising that a stone mask can cause such a reaction.
A similar mask was purchased by Israeli Defense Minister moshe dayan at 1970. Dayan calls himself an amateur archaeologist and often engages in so-called looting. "If there is any power in the world to drive away evil spirits, it must live in this mask," Gus once described the mask he bought except the mask of the goose (now in the Israel Museum).
14 A similar cultural relic was found in the south of the Levant. But this is the first time that this kind of stone mask has been found in about 35 years. Few of them come from known archaeological sites. "KDSP" and "KDSP", for example, Palestinian archaeologist Jabril Srur later investigated the location where Dayan's mask was found, and only recorded a large village where the site once existed. In the so-called pre-pottery Neolithic period B about 9 1000 years ago,
"The safest archaeological background of this Neolithic mask is the mask of Nahar Gemar", which was collected by the Israeli Museum. Mora Goksel, an archaeologist at Debao University, told Live Science in an email that the mask was discovered by archaeologists Ofer Bar Yosef and David Alon in the spring of 1983. They dug a narrow, dark cave full of debris, overlooking the Dead Sea. Another mask was bought from villagers in the Palestinian town of Erlam near Jerusalem in the 1960s and 1990s. Kausel said that the fund is currently in the Palestinian Exploration Fund in London. Judy and michael steinhardt collected 10 similar masks, but archaeologists don't know where they came from, because they were all bought from antique markets.
The newly discovered masks and other masks have holes in their edges, probably to tie them to people's faces or other objects. Because these cultural relics have little archaeological background, archaeologists don't know how these masks were used 9000 years ago. Some people think it has something to do with spiritual beliefs involving ancestor worship.
When we talk about the Neolithic Age, we are talking about the transition from a hunter-gatherer society to permanent settlement. Lupu said that people began to domesticate animals and plants. This is a very powerful era in the spiritual world. In addition to stone masks, archaeologists also found skulls covered with plaster.