Kunz Axe

Votive Adze "Kunz Axe," (Olmec Formative Period), c. 1200-500 B.C.E., jadeite, 31 x 16 x 11 cm (American Museum of Natural History) Speakers: Dr. Rex Koonz and Dr. Steven Zucker. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.

[@dariogonzalez233]

this Olmec sculpture is one of the most beautiful and rare pre-Columbian sculptures ever created, is really remarkable.

[@mirandamartinez150]

Darío González hola tengo una mascara de olmeca por si le interesa

[@brendajimenez2979]

Diario gonzales tengo tres mascaras son dos d olmecas y una de maya y dos ídolos también de la cultura maya

[@HuckfinnC]

Looks to me like it's clutching a knife. It's amazing!

[@evilsdog1638]

Aún hoy en día el uso de la jadeita mesoamericana está limitada a ciertas personas.

[@RivLoveshine]

The Olmecs really had a thing for large heads, didn't they? 😂

[@Sasha0927]

Dr. Zucker: "...it's often referred to as an axe blade, but is actually a carved figure that could never be used that way." Me: 🤔😅💀 It's interesting that as prominent the colors of blue and green are in the natural world, the Mayan language just skipped them both, lol. The speculations to what this is were also interesting. Who knows? Maybe this is none of the above and it's a depiction of ~an alien race that the Mayans had contact with / considered godlike~ Very timely for this spoopy time of year. I want to be an originary person. 😌

[@stijnvdv2]

they valued jade.... uuuhm not only them. Although we don't use it as currency, like we don't use gold and silver anymore as currency and have become commodities, it's pretty expensive and rare. It's like buying truffles or caviar. Even today Jade is more expensive then your average Joe can afford.

[@mariaejose4437]

Jade is a semi-precious stone. For chinese emperors rare jade was more valuable than diamonds (and I agree with them, much prettier).

[@HeadsFullOfEyeballs]

But in the West jade doesn't _symbolize_ wealth and power and preciousness the way gold does. We don't put jade crowns on our kings or jade medals on outstanding athletes. So if we were going to create a precious sacred object we would typically make it out of gold, not jade.

[@thequietone9785]

These short videos are greatly appreciated and well-done, but please don't spell Guatemala "Guatamala" again!

[@SimonSozzi7258]

"Natural History"...with all the dinosaurs and Neanderthals? 🤔

[@stijnvdv2]

The funny thing about history is that we know surprisingly little about it. The further down into history, the less they can tell us about it. Even history books about past century are often depicting the causes wrongly. Go back further and we end up with empire building where slavery is usually wrongly depicted. Europe didn't made slaves, they bought them from the real slave makers which were African tribes. Go back further and we end up with Christopher Columbus that supposedly discovered America or better said re-discovered as both the Vikings and the Chinese were there first. Go back further and we can't even decide whether the Eastern Roman Empire was Roman or Greek (Byzantine), go further and we have barbarian German tribes that were simple men despite the art they left behind being of very high quality, though not as high quality as the Romans. Go back further and we have the Bronze Age where we can't even explain what caused the Greek dark age to the point even writing disappeared... was it natural disasters? The invasion of sea people? Climate change? Also we seem not to be able to distinguish Democracy (Athenian Greek) from a Republic (Rome) and usually western politicians today are going on about 'our democracy' while we have a republic, not a democracy. (hint, a democracy doesn't have politicians as people voted on policy directly). Go back further and we have the golden age of Egypt with it's pyramids we can't explain it's purpose, nor even how it's build. Egyptologists say they were tombs despite NO mummies ever been found in a pyramid, let alone the granite architecture/statues that we can't reproduce today even if we wanted to. Apparently Egyptologists say it's all made with stone boulders and copper chisels pounding at the granite (yeah right). Not to mention at the same time in America we have also structures build that are so precise with giant hexagon blocks, 3 very different styles of which the oldest appears to be the most superior yet we have archeologists say 'Oh yeah, Inca made this.... all of it and all at the same time.' And before the Bronze Age we actually have nothing at all except some cave paintings and different Sapien species, coz yeah that's considered prehistory and except some findings here and there, we know NOTHING about them.

[@nsdtgabe4082]

@@stijnvdv2 im pretty sure a 7 mil people slave raid wasnt a simple purchase, we literally learned about more than half the things you mentioned after ancient egypt in middle school