If you’ve ever been a kid (and who hasn’t?), you’ve probably played with Play-Doh – the iconic modeling compound with the unique smell that was invented in the 1930s as a wallpaper cleaner (really!) and saved from extinction by a teacher who saw her pupils playing with it and thought it would make a great toy. The rest is Play-Doh history … but not the history of kids playing with clay-like products made from unusual substances. (FYI – according to its patent, Play-Doh is composed of water, a starch-based binder, a retrogradation inhibitor, salt, lubricant, surfactant, preservative, hardener, humectant, fragrance, color, a petroleum additive for smoothness and borax to prevent mold … no wonder there are so many warnings not to eat it!) A researcher in Siberia studying unusual Ice Age blobs of what appeared to be ivory determined they’re actually figurines and toys formed by prehistoric Siberian kids playing with a Play-Doh-like compound made from softened mammoth tusk
Prehistoric people developed a technique for making a playdough-like material from mammoth ivory
02 January 2021
The skill of ivory softening was used more than 12,000 years ago to make tools - or decorations - that still puzzle modern science.
While the scientists can’t yet fathom why these shapes were made, the ‘playdough’ crafting technique helps them realise that these ancient people had much greater skills than they have imagined. Picture: Evgeny Artemyev
A dozen solid elongated ivory bars crafted from softened ivory, and several figurines made from spongy parts of large mammoth bones, and resembling various animals were found at the Afontova Gora-2 archeological site by river Yenisey in Krasnoyarsk.