Mysterious 3,500-Year-Old Sealstone Found Buried With An Ancient Greek Warrior Leaves Scientists Baffled
I n 2015, researchers have found a rare 3,500-year-old seal-stone from the collection of 1,400 artifacts unearthed in the ancient tomb of a Bronze Age warrior buried in southwest Greece. This seal, which the researchers have now dubbed the “Pylos Combat Agate,” depicts a fierce hand-to-hand battle between three warriors, and changes our understanding of Greek art in the Bronze Age because it was around 1,000 years ahead of its time, according to experts.
It took experts from the University of Cincinnati about a year to clean the artifact before they might spot the delicate details carved into its surface.
As the team member Dr. Jack Davis told UC Magazine, the university’s news outlet. “What is fascinating is that the representation of the human body is at a level of detail and musculature that one doesn’t find again until the classical period of Greek art 1,000 years later. It’s a spectacular find.”
The battle scene was engraved on a piece of hard stone just 3.6 centimeters (1.4 inches) long. Some of the details engraved into the stone are merely half a millimeter big and can only be easily noticed with a photomicroscope camera lens. According to experts, in order to create such a masterpiece, a magnifying glass might have been used. But the problem is, they didn’t manage to find any type of magnifying tool from this time period.