{UAH} Miriima explain mysterious 9,000 year old 'magic wand'
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The mysterious 9,000 year old 'magic wand' with FACES carved into it used to summon supernatural beings in Syria
- Discovered near a graveyard where about 30 people were buried without their heads
- Believed to be part of an ancient burial ritual
- Human faces represented the living presence of supernatural beings - or enemies that were killed
By Mark Prigg
PUBLISHED: 23:49 GMT, 12 March 2014 | UPDATED: 23:59 GMT, 12 March 2014
Archaeologists have unearthed a 9,000 year old 'magic wand' with two realistic human faces carved into it.
It was discovered near a graveyard where about 30 people were buried without their heads in southern Syria.
Experts believe it may have been used as part of an ancient burial ritual to summon 'supernatural beings'.
The 9,000-year-old wand with two faces carved into it was discovered in Syria.
Experts admit they are baffled by the find.
'The find is very unusual. It's unique,' said study co-author Frank Braemer, an archaeologist at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France.
The wand, which was likely used in a long-lost funeral ritual, is one of the only naturalistic depictions of human faces from this time and place, he told Livescience.
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The wand was first uncovered during excavations in 2007 and 2009 at a site in southern Syria called Tell Qarassa, where an artificial mound made from the debris of everyday human life gradually built up in layers over millennia.
Other evidence from the site suggests the ancient inhabitants were amongst the world's first farmers, consuming emmer (a type of wheat), barley, chickpeas and lentils, and herding or hunting goats, gazelles, pigs and deer, the authors write in the March issue of the journal Antiquity.
The wand was found at Tell Qarassa, an excavation site of an early farming settlement in what is now southern Syria.
'It's clearly linked to funerary rituals, but what kind of rituals, it's impossible to tell,' Braemer told Live Science.
The artistic innovation may have been tied to the emerging desire to create material representations of identity and personhood, the authors write in the paper.
Exactly why someone dug up the skulls and placed them within the living areas of the settlement is also unclear.
But archaeologists unearthed similar finds in Jericho, Israel, dating to around 9,000 years ago, where the skulls of ancestors were covered with plaster and painted with facial features, then displayed in living spaces.
One possibility is that the practice was a form of ancestor worship, in which the human faces represented the living presence of supernatural beings in a humanized form.
It's also possible the heads on display were trophies from vanquished enemies.
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