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In a recent post in connection with Dave Webster's suggestions, I doubted that useful stone mirrors could be constructed, because even a polished stone would have surface irregularities. But the early Egyptians may have done just that, by employing an extra trick. They made flat polished stone objects of unknown function, which Flinders Petri once suggested could be made into usable mirrors simply by wetting the surface. If this is actually done, the water evaporates quite quickly, but meantime a tolerable image can be had. I also doubted that a decent mirror could be made out of obsidian (volcanic glass), which is very hard and dark, fractures irregularly and would have been impossible for neolithic artisans to polish. Wrong again. The oldest known mirrors in fact are made from polished obsidian, found in graves (of women) at Catal Huyuk in present day Turkey, and dated at ~8000 years old. The region has deposits both of obsidian and of corundum, a very hard mineral used even today for grinding and initial polishing (as in carborundum powder, emery paper), so that is presumably how the mirrors were polished initially. In the article quoted next, there's a photograph of a face reflected in one of the better dark obsidian mirrors from the site, using bright sunlight as the illuminant. Source: Google to "History of mirrors dating back 8000 years", to find an interesting general account of that name published in an academic journal by celebrated vision scientist, Jay Enoch. When you get there you can download the PDF file for free. As far as I know, these corrections don't impinge at all on discussions surrounding the Neolithic Orkneys, where no mirrors have yet been found. But given that the excavations at the huge site at the Ness of Brodgar are not yet extensive and started fairly recently, who knows what might turn up in the next few years? Steve (Hfx)
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