Stone Age people with gold ornamentation?

[Jabrosky]

When briefly researching the prehistory of metallurgy, I learned that gold doesn't require a lot of effort to work relative to other metals; in fact, you actually can work it using Stone Age technology. With this in light, how come more artists don't reconstruct prehistoric hunting and gathering people with gold ornaments? Of course such people would have to live in gold-rich areas, but surely if they did they wouldn't pass the chance to adorn themselves with shiny stuff.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

But why would they? They didn't necessarily wear a whole lot of clothes to stick a broach on! Most of their time I would guess would have been concerned with survival. Coming up with even a primitive form of metallurgy to look pretty would be a waste of time and effort.

In order to have the free time available to start dreaming and creating, you really need a stable (Non migratory as well as unified) population. That means essentially some form of agriculture. Something to keep the belly full for not so much work. There is a reason that the fertile flood plains and river banks of the Nile became the dawn of civilisation. And after that you have a whole host of other problems to deal with before you start adorning yourself. Housing and shelter for a start.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Jabrosky]

Hi,

But why would they? They didn't necessarily wear a whole lot of clothes to stick a broach on! Most of their time I would guess would have been concerned with survival. Coming up with even a primitive form of metallurgy to look pretty would be a waste of time and effort.

In order to have the free time available to start dreaming and creating, you really need a stable (Non migratory as well as unified) population. That means essentially some form of agriculture. Something to keep the belly full for not so much work. There is a reason that the fertile flood plains and river banks of the Nile became the dawn of civilisation. And after that you have a whole host of other problems to deal with before you start adorning yourself. Housing and shelter for a start.

Cheers, Greg.

Actually there is reason to think that prehistoric foragers generally had more leisure time and didn't have to work as hard as modern "civilized" people:

There are two ways to achieve an affluent society: by assuming (as we do) that human wants are infinite, and then work as hard as one can to increase the means of satisfying them, or 2) by assuming that human wants are limited and that the existing means to achieve these wants is sufficient. Modern economics is based on the assumption of infinite wants and expanding methods of providing for them. You might describe foragers as operating with a kind of "Zen economics" which assume that wants and limited and existing methods sufficient.

Most of us live in the cultural clutches of something which might be called the bourgeois mentality: that humans have infinite desire for goods and infinite ingenuity to devise new techniques for getting them. Through hard work anything is possible.

If we use this model, our understanding of foraging societies will be distorted. The bourgeois mentality assumes that poverty is simply a relationship of people to the amount of goods they have. But Marx clearly pointed out that poverty is a social relationship between people, not a relationship of people with things.

We are obsessed with the question of scarcity, but this a feature of our economic system. Most hunters have nothing approaching the modern idea of scarcity. They have great faith in the ability of the habitat to provide for their wants.

There is a good bit of evidence that hunting and gathering peoples do not work very hard.

1. Bushmen (Ju huansi) of Kalahari in Namibia in SW Africa worked on average at subsistence related activities about 3 hours a day. Some S. American hunters have day of work followed by day of rest. One hunter can on average support 5 people among Bushmen -- which makes it about as efficient as French agriculture before WW II.
2. More sleeping, resting, and goofing off, in foraging society than in any other condition of mankind.
3. Most hunters underachieve. When they have enough they stop.
4. Starvation occurs very infrequently -- about 1/2 of the agricultural world goes to sleep hungry every night. Rare among existing hunters and probably rarer still in the Paleolithic.
5. Malnutrition very uncommon.

Source

 

[Saigonnus]

I know for a fact that many of the pre-colombian cultures from Mexico and Central America DID use precious stones (more for them being pretty, then them actually being worth anything) though for personal decoration used feathers, paint and sometimes masks of wood for the basest members of the tribe or inlaid with Jade or Lapis Lazuli so it wouldn't be too far off to assume that other cultures in the world used gold for decorations on their attire.

History of Metals

I also found that article and it implies that stone age man did indeed use gold for decorations and jewelry.

 

[BeigePalladin]

I feel it'd work perfectly fine. afterall, humanity has a natural urge to show off and look good, and gold does this perfectly fine - and as Saigonnus said, prehistoric people did this. we've found cave tools next to gems and the like, so its definatly plausable

heck, just from cave paintings we know they where just as imaginative as us, why should we assume they wouldn't make jewlery etc. Even in regards to being hunters, well, think of it this way; do you wear your best clothes to work, or only in social occassions?

 

[Telcontar]

Perfectly plausible for them to have some gold ornaments. In some especially rich areas gold mines were found because nuggets of gold were lying about in the dirt. In other words, it didn't need to be mined - just picked up.

Chances are this is the only source available to any stone-age people, assuming they haven't developed mining technology.

 

[JonSnow]

human nature, in most cases, prioritizes vanity over practicality. Many things have changed throughout human history, but human nature is NOT one of them. I could easily see a primitive (stone age-level) tribe adorning themselves in gold and gems, even before mastering the "practical" uses of metal, such as smelting/forging iron and making copper tools. Not sure if this actually happened historically, but it doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility.

 

[J.P. Reedman]

The beaker people were the first people who brought metal to Britain c2400 BC--including copper daggers and gold hairtresses. This was right on the border of the neolithic/copper age. Most of the tools they used were still of stone and very few of them actually were forging metalwork, most of it was being passed around via trade. And the gold, as you mentioned, was worked using a whetstone. They were eagerly seeking metal,however, and things developed from there...