Ancient people used to 'exploit' child labor

Child labour may have been used 4,000 years ago in Britain to create sophisticated weapons and jewellery, according to exciting new findings.

Children may have worked in Brittany, where researchers have found numerous daggers decorated with gold in archaeological sites. The most elaborate was a 2,000-year-old knife found in the Bush Barrow grave, near Stonehenge, the richest Bronze Age grave ever excavated in Britain.

Two daggers were found in 1808 in a Bronze Age grave at Bush Barrow

Blinded by the craft of exquisite workmanship

Bush Barrow was excavated by wool merchant William Cunnington and local landowner Richard Colt Hoare in 1808, a period when many amateur archaeologists were “crazy” digging into the past.

The man in this grave was buried when the Stonehenge site was 1,000 years old. He was buried with an axe, bronze daggers, and a diamond-shaped gold plaque on his chest.

When studying the rotten wooden handle of a dagger, researchers found that the original handle was decorated with 140,000 very small gold grains, each grain only as big as a human hair, and for every 1cm2 on the handle there were 1,000 gold grains.

But the price of such exquisite work is high. Gold setters lose their sight dramatically by the age of 15 and are completely blind by the age of 20. Eye specialist Ronald Rabbetts told the Guardian that only young people had eyes sharp enough to do such work thousands of years ago, long before magnifying glasses were invented.

“Only children, adolescents or adults with natural short-sightedness could have made such difficult decorations. It is almost certain that some of the Bronze Age artisans were severely short-sighted due to the work they had to do from an early age. Because of their poor eyesight, they could not do anything other than making the objects for which they had a lot of experience,” he said.

Part of the wooden dagger handle is decorated with thousands of gold beads.

A remarkable but sad discovery

This gold-encrusted dagger, now on display at the Wiltshire Heritage Museum, is considered an exceptionally rare artefact. Using only rudimentary tools, the ancient craftsmen were able to create a very sophisticated knife, demonstrating a profound understanding of geometry and design.

However, this is the first time scientists have looked closely at the cost of such masterpieces. "Every time I look at the objects on display in the museum, I think, 'How hard must it have been to make these?' Now we have the answer," said David Dawson, curator of Wiltshire Museum. "Neil Burridge, the metalworker who made many of the replicas for our museum, used to call these artifacts 'God's work.' Now we know that they were not God's work, but the work of ancient children."

Artist Willard Wigan, whose sculptures are so small they can fit through the eye of a needle, said: “Adults cannot make such delicate knives, because human eyesight begins to decline at the age of 21.”

Mr Dawson said the discovery was both remarkable and sad. “It makes you think that children of that era had to work hard… What’s even sadder is that even though they knew the work would cause their eyesight to decline and lead to blindness, they still had to work diligently.”

According to TT&VH