TY - JOUR

T1 - A Sealed History

AU - Komissarov, Sergei

AU - Соловьев, Александр Иванович

AU - Solovyeva, Elena

N1 - Komissarov, S. A. A Sealed History / S. A. Komissarov, A. I. Solovyev, E. A. Solovyeva // Science First Hand. – 2025. – No. 2 (69). – P. 114-131. – EDN KIPWLE.

PY - 2025/11/1

Y1 - 2025/11/1

N2 - In our lives we all have to deal with numerous seals and stamps. Primitive communities could place a certification stamp directly on one’s body in the form of a tattoo; a more civilized society could put it on a document. In fact, animal tracks on wet soil, the ones followed by Pleistocene hunters and their Holocene descendants, served as natural seal imprints that certified the virtual presence of the creature that had left them. An example of humans coming into awareness of this phenomenon might be the handprints found on the walls of caves (e.g., Cueva de las Manos, or the Cave of the Hands, in the south of Argentina), which can be interpreted as a personal sign of the individual who left the imprint, i.e., as that person’s substitute or stamp. The earliest examples of actual seals and stamps appeared in the Near and Middle East and gradually spread to the territories of modern China and Japan. In the new issue of SCIENCE First Hand, our regular authors from the SB RAS Institute of Archeology and Ethnography in Novosibirsk, attempt to consider this phenomenon using examples from the history of the Far Eastern civilization.

AB - In our lives we all have to deal with numerous seals and stamps. Primitive communities could place a certification stamp directly on one’s body in the form of a tattoo; a more civilized society could put it on a document. In fact, animal tracks on wet soil, the ones followed by Pleistocene hunters and their Holocene descendants, served as natural seal imprints that certified the virtual presence of the creature that had left them. An example of humans coming into awareness of this phenomenon might be the handprints found on the walls of caves (e.g., Cueva de las Manos, or the Cave of the Hands, in the south of Argentina), which can be interpreted as a personal sign of the individual who left the imprint, i.e., as that person’s substitute or stamp. The earliest examples of actual seals and stamps appeared in the Near and Middle East and gradually spread to the territories of modern China and Japan. In the new issue of SCIENCE First Hand, our regular authors from the SB RAS Institute of Archeology and Ethnography in Novosibirsk, attempt to consider this phenomenon using examples from the history of the Far Eastern civilization.

KW - SPHRAGISTICS (SIGILLOGRAPHY)

KW - CHINA

KW - HAN EMPIRE

KW - DIAN KINGDOM

KW - STATE OF NAKOKU

KW - TRADITIONAL HANDICRAFTS

KW - INSIGNIA

UR - https://elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=83162245

M3 - Article

VL - 69

SP - 114

EP - 131

JO - Science first hand

JF - Science first hand

SN - 3210-2500

IS - 2

M1 - 5

ER -