^That is so cool, along with your other finds. Is it really clay? Looks like metal from here. The LED light is a great idea.
The pic is a painted commodity for sale.
Mine is more like the real deal and yes, it is very crudely fired clay structure. Pretty solid.
They wore them in real life at the times to defend against arrows from puncture around the chest and neck. A bow and arrow were the most powerful weapon known at the time, next would be close in combat with blades made of obsidian or flint. Leather for protection against blades.
They were here for thousands of years before Euros came. All with every human horror, slavery, sacrifice, youth trade, rampant savagery in every regard.
Christians offered them No Quarter. Killed them all, in the name of Christ!
Mesoamerican history is sparse, but it has always been a passion of mine. Not so much as music, but I read all I can find. No one knows squat! Christian invaders saw to that.
They wrote like the Egyptians and ancient Sumerians, in stone with symbols, but the Spanish and Italians tried to erase all of the existing culture to find gold and conquer these amazing and well cultured inventive peoples.
Can't touch a line of cannon with a barrage of arrows.
It's a little like in your country. The native folk were far more cultured with arts and medicines, the ways of nature and more than anyone wanted to care about or even notice, when the white people came and wanted to make it all theirs.
Same here!
Only I feel we Americans deserve the Ugly prize for being the MOST shit there ever was at first when we were acting the same way.
I'll get a decent pic to share when I get mine on the wall. It is fucking hideous! Not pretty or shiny like the one for sale in the pic I stole.
I grabbed that because I assumed that very few would know what an Olmec tribal war mask looked like.
Obviously this one I have is made by a modern crafter who still holds to the spirit of old.