It's not a Wand! Red Man of Paviland
It's not a Wand! It's Not a Spatula!
General Information
The artifact above is from © Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. Always listed as a want, made of bone ivory of a horse, the shape and overall design is more likely part of a ceremonial drum stick. Its been various called a wand and a spatula.
However, after seeing many ceremonial drum sticks both in their production and completion phase, it is obvious to me the end is the tip likely to have been covered at some point with leather and the bulge at the shoulder where the covering would have been bound, perhaps by some sort of sinew to secure it properly. On the other hand it can also be the remains of a rattle, or a combination of drum stick and rattle though I lean more to just a ceremonial drum stick.
I have other reasons to presume this. Note the spoon like end and then consider an illustration by Nicolaes Witsen. He was many things, including a Dutch statesman who was mayor of Amsterdam thirteen times, between 1682 and 1706 and explorer.
We can see a similar concept for a ceremonial drum stick in the Witsen illustration. But we also have a deer skull headdress that was worked into the costume. Note the oldest known deer skull headdresses are the 11,000-year-old Mesolithic "frontlets" from Star Carr in North Yorkshire, England. The image also contains Tipi like structures which continued to be used by the Sami people well into the present.
History of Bad Science and Factual Corrections
This is the case with the Red Man of Paviland, 32,000 years ago a young man in his twenties was given a rich burial was discovered in 182, and whose artifacts seems to reflect a civilization that recognized nature, religion and culture as inseparable things. This is still a concept by many cultures that have managed to survive into the present despite efforts to erase them and what we see exhibited in the "few isolated and un-contacted tribes" that still exist.
Goat’s Hole Cave at Paviland, on the Gower Peninsula in South Wales, is the site of the famous prehistoric burial known as the “Red Lady” — a name that originated in error. The burial was discovered in 1823 by the geologist and clergyman William Buckland, who mistakenly believed the remains were those of a Roman-era woman, possibly even a prostitute or witch.
This assumption was based largely on the presence of red ochre staining the bones and associated objects, as well as Buckland’s reluctance to accept that humans could be as ancient as we now know them to be. Later scientific analysis revealed that the remains were in fact those of a man from the Upper Paleolithic period, making the title “Red Lady” both inaccurate and misleading. Despite this, the name has endured, and the burial remains one of the most well-known prehistoric finds in Britain.
The cave dates to the time of early modern humans, the first people known to create cave art. While paintings from this period have survived in parts of France and northern Spain — regions unaffected by returning glaciers — no cave art was known in Wales until last year. At that time, a small carving of a cervid, likely a reindeer, was discovered in a secluded alcove in another cave on the Gower. Its exact location has been kept secret due to damage at the site.
Together, this discovery and the rich archaeological material recovered from Paviland Cave help build a detailed picture of how the earliest humans lived, as well as how certain individuals were treated in death, around 32,000 years ago, though some say 26,000 years ago.
Many Modern Scientists Can’t Handle Correction Either
Science is often presented as the antidote to rigid thinking—a disciplined, self-correcting process that welcomes challenge and refines itself in the face of new evidence. In principle, this is true. In practice, however, many modern scientists struggle with correction just as much as the institutions and belief systems they frequently critique.
This tendency is especially visible in fields like archaeology and paleontology, where dominant narratives are built around carefully structured timelines. These timelines, once established, often become “neatly packaged” stories of human and natural history—clean, linear, and comfortably ordered.
Yet the real world has never operated so tidily. Geological layers are disturbed, artifacts appear out of place, dating methods conflict, and discoveries emerge that refuse to fit the prevailing framework. Instead of being treated as opportunities for deeper understanding, such anomalies are too often minimized, explained away, or dismissed outright.
The resistance is rarely framed as outright denial. More commonly, it appears as methodological gatekeeping: evidence that challenges consensus is labeled “extraordinary” and burdened with proof standards far higher than those applied to evidence that reinforces existing models. While rigor is essential, this asymmetry reveals an unspoken confirmation bias—one that quietly protects established assumptions while claiming to oppose bias in all its forms.
Ironically, scientists are often quick to accuse religious thinkers, alternative historians, or the general public of clinging to comforting opinions. Yet the attachment to dominant paradigms can be just as emotional and institutional within science itself, and often they side step the issue by inventing other narratives and terms like "out of place artifacts." Out of place for whom?
Careers, funding, reputations, and entire academic subfields are frequently tied to the preservation of accepted models. Under such conditions, genuine openness to correction becomes difficult, regardless of how strongly it is promoted in theory.
None of this is an argument against science. On the contrary, it is an argument for taking science seriously enough to hold it to its own ideals. All scientific conclusions are provisional. All models are simplifications. And all assumptions—no matter how widely accepted—are subject to questioning, revision, and, when necessary, correction.
When scientists resist this reality, science begins to resemble the very rigid frameworks it claims to transcend. Progress does not come from protecting “neatly organized” narratives, but from confronting the messiness of evidence as it actually exists.
True scientific integrity lies not in defending certainty, but in maintaining the humility to be wrong—and the courage to change course when the evidence demands it.
Conclusion
As I started with, its not a wand. Taken together, these examples remind us that knowledge advances not through the protection of labels, timelines, or authority, but through the willingness to revisit interpretations when context, comparison, and evidence demand it. Mis-identifications persist not because data is absent, but because certainty becomes comfortable and some prefer an isolationist/separatist ideology, even if they are not aware of it consciously.
The past is complex, symbolic, and culturally integrated in ways modern frameworks often struggle to accommodate. If science is to remain credible, it must remain corrigible—alert to its blind spots and honest about its limits. As the saying goes, in science, when one assumes absolute certainty, they are often wrong—and it is precisely the acceptance of that fact which keeps inquiry alive.
