This Is the Oldest Known Cycladic Sculpture of Ancient Greece

The fig dates from astir 5000 to 4000 BC. Credit: Konstantinos Stampoulis, CC BY-SA 3.0 gr/Wikipedia

The Fat Lady of Saliagos (also known arsenic The Naked Lady of Saliagos) is the oldest known Cycladic sculpture.

It is simply a marble fig from the Aegean Neolithic play discovered connected the tiny islet of Saliagos betwixt the Greek islands of Paros and Antiparos.

The fig dates from astir 5000 to 4000 BC and is the oldest known Cycladic sculpture. The fig is missing its caput and near shoulder.

It was recovered during the excavations of Saliagos successful the 1960s and it presently resides successful the Archaeological Museum of Paros.

The oldest known Cycladic sculpture and her location connected Saliagos

Just 500 meters to the northbound of Antiparos lies Saliagos, an islet of inestimable humanities worth and earthy beauty.

The islet has a magnitude of 100 metres (from northbound to south) and a width of 50 metres (east to west). During the Neolithic Period, the level of the oversea was astatine slightest six metres little than today, and Saliagos was a peninsula connected the isthmus that linked Antiparos to its bigger member Paros.

Credit: Google Maps

Known to past lovers the satellite implicit owing to the archaeological findings made there, this islet was location to the oldest known colony successful the Cyclades, immoderate 5,300 years ago.

According to archaeologists, humankind started settling successful the Cycladic islands astatine the opening of the Late Neolithic Period, connected the islet of Saliagos, which lies 500 metres from  Antiparos.

The colony of Saliagos, traces of which were archetypal located successful 1961 by Nikolaos Zafeiropoulos, superintendent of antiquities, and brought to airy by British archaeologists John Evans and Colin Renfrew successful 1964, covers the full islet and dates to astatine slightest the extremity of the 5th millennium BC approximately.

Saliagos civilization disappeared

It was composed of rectangular dwellings with chromatic foundations, which were surrounded by a wall. The task of constructing a antiaircraft partition demands a coordinated corporate effort, a information that proves that successful the Cyclades they had already begun the process that would pb later—during the Early Bronze Age—to the instauration of cities.

The inhabitants of the colony constructed their tools and arrowheads from obsidian. It seems that the processing of obsidian took spot to a overmuch greater grade than that which section needs could relationship for; this indicates that the colony of Saliagos constituted a centre for the processing of and commercialized successful obsidian from Milos.

Its inhabitants were besides progressive successful fishing, livestock-raising, the cultivation of cereals, pottery-making and basket-weaving.

Spoons made retired of mussels, respective hoes and tools made retired of bones, vases and figurines person besides been recovered connected the islet.

Most of the vases unearthed successful Saliagos lucifer effect bowls. They are made of acheronian clay and person a achromatic linear decoration, are open, with an outline that is straight, curved oregon angled, and person a level basal or, much often, a gangly support.

No sites of the alleged ‘Saliagos Civilization’ person survived. Very fewer facts are known astir some the nine and the spiritual convictions of these people, arsenic good arsenic astir their origin.