Cylcon
Cylconsare among the earliestartefactsof theAboriginal Australians.A cylcon is a cylindrical stone tapering at one end and marked with incisions. The name is a shortening of the descriptive term "cylindro-conical stone".[1]
Matthew Flinderssaw two cylcons in 1802 and wrote up a description. Archaeologists have sometimes assigned cylcons an original ritual, magical, or religious function that over time was displaced by a more utilitarian one, that of apestlefor use in food production.[2]
It is impossible to date most cylcons, but the very heavy weathering of most attests to their great age. The earliest yet found in a dateablearchaeological contextis about 20,000 years old. They belong, with the earliest Aboriginalrock art,to theEarly Stone Age.They are earlier thantjurungas.If they were used to communicate messages, as generally thought, they are the oldest form of recordedcommunication.Some are even thought to containmaps,which would be the oldest maps in existence.[1]
References
[edit]- ^abSchøyen Collection,MS 5087/36, Cylcon (Yurda), possibly with map of Darling River,commentary.
- ^A. Kearney & J. J. Bradley, "Landscapes with Shadows of Once Living People: The Kundawira Challenge", in B. David, B. Barker, & I. J. McNiven (eds.),The Social Archaeology of Australian Indigenous Societies(Aboriginal Studies Press, 2006), pp. 182–203, at 186ff.
Further reading
[edit]- Etheridge, Robert."The Cylindro-conical and Cornute Stone Implements of Western New South Wales and Their Significance".Memoirs of the Geological Survey of New South Wales,Ethnological Series No. 2, 1916:1–41.
- Black, Lindsay.Cylcons: The Mystery Stones of the Darling River Valley.1942.
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