22 September 2008

Neolithic pull toys


"Neolithic" and "pull-toy" are not words you would expect to see used in the same sentence. Scribal Terror tonight featured the above image, with the explanation that it was part of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture of neolithic Europe.

Intrigued, I then Googled "neolithic" and "pull-toy," and to my surprise found other examples. The book Following the Sun is online at Google Book Search; page 246 described Danish tribes contemporaneous with the Picts:
During the Neolithic period, agriculture and cattle herding became part of their livelihood in both Denmark and Scotland, and around 1000 B.C. the Danes began building large mound-graves, which have been the source of rich archeological troves. One of these artifacts was a bronze chariot found at Trundholm Bog in northwest Zealand, dated about 1400 B.C. The artifact resembles a child's pull toy. It is a wheeled horse...
In Contemplating the Ancients, online here, is this passage describing a rubbing of a stone relief from the Eastern Han dynasty (A.D. 25-220):
Scholars most frequently identify uninscribed scenes by the presence of the small child with the pull-toy, found on the stone from Jiaxiang (Shandong), where inscriptions identify both Confucius and Laozi.
As I was writing this, I seemed to remember a pull toy having been found in Tutankhamen's tomb; I was unable to confirm that, but the search did lead me to this page on ancient pull toys which alludes to 4000-year-old Egyptian pull toys.

This link depicts a Mesopotamian pull toy - a "hollow, baked, clay vessel with a ram's head" on wheels.

And finally, Precolumbianwheels.com (!) has pictures of dozens of wheeled toy dog figurines (including the one top above). I find this particularly interesting in view of the conventional wisdom that Native Americans in pre-contact North America had reportedly never invented the wheel.

Europe - China - Egypt - Mesopotamia - Mesoamerica. Who would ever have guessed that so many different early cultures would have created pull-toys for their children?

3 comments:

  1. I found this fascinating. I am setting up a toy museum at the moment and the more I delve the better it gets. THANK YOU.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Narodni muzej Ljubljana (national museum Ljubljana) Slovenia hawe from neolithic period pull toy artifact

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The world's oldest wooden wheel was also pulled from a Slovenian marsh -

      http://www.angelfire.com/country/veneti/AmerDomoOldestWheel.html

      Delete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...