Figure Stones in Italy

Figure Stones in Italy

Figure on Left: Genoa, putatively 200,000 years BP

Characteristic features: A Janus-like image with quasi-anthropomorphic face looking in one direction, more bird-like image looking in the other. This motif is common both in European Paleolithic material and in many stone figures at Day's Knob (33GU218), like the figure on the right.

http://www.paleolithicartmagazine.org/pagina43.html

Borzonasca district, putatively 200,000 years BP

Another Pietro Gaietto Find

Apparent characteristic features: Creature emerging from the mouth, one eye open and other eye closed, figures over the forehead (here descending and turning over the left eye).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3197402.stm

http://www.paleolithicartmagazine.org/pagina99.html

Pietro Gaietto of Genoa, Italy (1937-2019) was a pioneering paleoanthropologist, artist and essayist whose work I encountered in late 2003 or early 2004 when searching on the internet for accounts of artifact material like that which I had started finding here at 33GU218. It was clear that Mr. Gaietto was ahead of me, already being aware of the janiform motif so common here. Curious what he would think of my own finds, I emailed him on 21 September 2004:

Dear Mr. Gaietto:

I have been greatly enjoying your very interesting and thought-provoking
web site displaying and describing Paleolithic European art. I thought
you might be interested in seeing some of the artifact material I have
been discovering in large quantity at an old habitation site here in
southeastern Ohio. The most characteristic image, which appears here by
the thousands, is a hybrid bird/human figure, amazingly similar to the
one from Vesima that you show at
http://www.paleolithicartmagazine.org/pagina43.html. Although it has not
been recognized by archaeologists here, the figure is unmistakably
present here in very large quantity. I know such figures appear with
great frequency in Europe. Attached is a photo of one such figure (in
limestone) from this site. Also, at your convenience, please take a look
at my own web site http://www.daysknob.com, which displays much of the
material here. I would greatly appreciate any comments and observations
you could offer on this.

Thank you very much for your time!

Sincerely, Alan Day Cambridge, Ohio, USA

His reply:

Dear Mr.Day,

it seems to me that there are nearly all sculptures; certainly, of different
periods of the Paleolithic.
Compliments for having found them, they are beautiful and of different
Typology.

Greetings
Pietro Gaietto

Of course I was quite pleased (and somewhat surprised) at this assessment, but at this point I can not assert that all the artifact material at 33GU218 is of Palaeolithic age (clearly some of it is not) but rather that much of it incorporates imagery/symbology of ancient and primal origin, the actual meaning of which is now likely irretrievable.