Carissa Wong is a person.
The one on the left is a replica of the one on the right.
A man named Juan J. Negro.
Slate plaques engraved with owl-like features are controversial because they are mostly children's artwork rather than funeral offerings.
The meaning of thousands of palm-sized slate plaques found at burial sites in the south-western Iberian Peninsula has been debated for over a century.
Dozens of plaques bearing an owl-like image are believed to be symbols of goddesses that were placed on dead people as burial offerings. Some people think the engravings are of owls or people.
Juan Negro and his colleagues at the Spanish National Research Council want children to engrave owls on the slate with copper, flint, or Quartz tools.
Each plaque has a body and a head with engravings that look like owl beaks, feathers and large eyes.
The team compared engravings on plaques with drawings of owls made by children between 4 and 13 years old and found that the quality and variation of the plaques was similar to the modern drawings.
Negro suggests that the plaques may have been caused by children playing. The idea of plaques being used in rituals as burial offerings is compatible with this.
According to previous interpretations, many of the plaques have small holes in them that could have been passed. Negro's team suggests that bird feathers could have been put in the holes to mimic the tufts on a native owl.
It isn't accepted by all.
Children make drawings of owls.
A man named Juan J. Negro.
Jonathan Thomas at the University of Iowa applauds the attempt to bring children into the picture of pre history. He says that comparing the engravings to drawings by children isn't solid evidence.
He says that the idea that feathers were stuffed in the holes isn't strong. The authors don't present any real scientific evidence that would suggest adolescents in particular were making owl plaques in particular
The University of Iowa has a similar opinion. The plaques with owl-like qualities make up only 4% of all plaques, but if children were to make them, they should be more common.
The consistency of the plaques and the fact that they are widely dispersed suggests that there was a standard way in which they were made.
Nature Scientific Reports can be found in the journal.
The revolution in archaeology and human evolution is covered in Our Human Story.
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