Ancient Technology

Throwing sticks and boomerangs are present in the collections of many French and international museums. Collected mainly in the 19th and 20th centuries by travelers, they were mainly analyzed from a stylistic point of view, to relate them to their region of origin. Some of these objects were made by the indigenous populations especially to be exchanged with Europeans and only bear...

Paja Ul Deˀŋ [padʒaul’deˀŋ] “The People of Big Water” is a conventional and compact name given to Neolithic inhabitants of the territories of Saint Petersburg and the Leningrad region in their hypothetical reconstructed language (it is possible to state that these people spoke a language that was very close to Yeniseian languages). Paja Ul Deˀŋ made axes/adzes mainly of schist, a process that takes...

The remote mountain area of Guizhou in southwest China is ethnically diverse, and interesting textile traditions survive among the groups. Perhaps the best known are the multicoloured costumes of the Miao people that are skilfully decorated with embroidery and braids (Smith, 2007). Another ethnic group are the "Lao Han" (the ancient Han Chinese) who consider themselves unique from the rest of ...