UNUSUAL JASPER POLISHED CELT WAR AXE FROM THE WEST AFRICAN NEOLITHIC *CAP386

Product Description

SEE MORE AFRICAN NEOLITHIC CELT AXES

We have been obsessively collecting the finest African Neolithic artifacts for over 20 years and this specimen comes from a small, select group we have been holding onto for the duration of that time.  Over the past decades, we have also purchased amazing private collections in America and Europe.  In all this time, we would set aside the RAREST OF THE RAREST objects of African Neolithic cultures, and it is now time for us to sell some from this private, ultra-rare collection.  The collection is small and limited, and once sold, would be impossible to recreate due to changed legislation and site depletion.  Each specimen represents the highest grade of its kind that we have ever seen.  This is one of those precious specimens from those efforts.  The sites where these artifacts were once found, have been entirely picked clean for years, not to mention are now protected from any further exploration.

This is the ONLY ONE polished celt war axe we have ever had the rare opportunity of acquiring from the Neolithic of West Africa.  It was found on an exposed Neolithic site in the Sahel region.  Made of an unusual jasper that shows crazy patterns and porosity in the stone, it is perfectly preserved as originally made with a supreme polish and workmanship.  The luster has been further added by the 'desert varnish' from millennia of open desert exposure.  The original mineral deposits and patina are intact and deep in the pores of the stone - a trait ONLY found in AUTHENTIC specimens.

HISTORY

The Neolithic in West Africa, when people increasingly produced their own food instead of hunting, fishing or collecting it as before, developed during a humid phase around 5000 BC.  The invention of ceramics which was long thought to emerge in the earliest Neolithic, appeared at the central Malian site of Ounjougou dating to about 9,400 BC, and is believed to be an instance of the independent invention of pottery.  The earliest Neolithic is attributed to the phase of self-production of food, although no plants were cultivated and no cattle were kept.  

The middle Neolithic is marked by first traces of nomadic cattle breeders (again) around 4000 BC.  Around 3500 BC, the relatively humid climate came to an end.  A thousand years later, the dry phase, which apparently drove cattle nomads from the east to Mali, reached its peak.  The northern lakes dried up and the population mostly moved south.  

The late Neolithic was marked by renewed immigration from the Sahara around 2500 BC which had grown into an enormously spacious desert.  

Approximated to the Neolithic, there were Negroid skeletal remains found in West Africa.  At El Guettara, Mali, there were two individuals found.  At Karkarichinkat South, Mali, a skull was found.  At Ibalaghen, Mali, there was a cranium found.  At Tin Lalou, Mali, there was a cranium and mandible found.  At Tamaya Mellet, Niger, there were 12 individuals found.  All of these remains have been specifically dated between 5000 BC and 2000 BC.