Ancient past exhibited at LAPADA Fair

An Iron Meteorite
An iron meteorite, formed early solar system, 4.6 billion years ago. Impacted 50,000 years ago and collected by the famous meteoriticist, H.H.Nininger. 20 cm

A giant Megalodon tooth and a 150-million-year-old ‘raptor claw’ will be on display at the LAPADA Art & Antiques Fair from September 15-20. ArtAncient will present its exhibition ‘Fragment & glimpses’ at the fair, unveiling objects spanning 4.6 billion years, displayed as an installation timeline.

The exhibition is dedicated to 35 exceptional and fascinating objects, each of which has been carefully
chosen to tell the story of a particular period, epoch or event.

The exhibition begins with sculptural, rusty iron meteorites formed in the early solar system, then
continues with a beautiful banded stone slab; a trace fossil that provides evidence of the first life on
Earth, around 3 billion years ago. Later there are fossilised fish, giant Megalodon teeth and an iconic
fossilised “raptor claw” from a ferocious Allosaurus, circa 150 million years old.

Sabre Tooth tiger skull
10 million years old. The size of a large lion, saber tooth cats were powerful ambush predators with a stocky, muscular build. These creatures roamed the savannahs of central Asia, preying on grazing herbivores. This skull is from one of the largest saber toothed cats, M.giganteus. 33cm

The dawn of man is represented by early stone tools, including Neanderthal scrapers carved from
beautiful multi-coloured jasper, as well as an early stone axe, itself carved from an even earlier fossil.

Other moments in the human story are represented too, such as early artwork in the form of a Neolithic idol, and landmarks such as the invention of writing, the first coinage and even the assassination of Julius Caesar. The exhibition ends with the Roman conquest of Britain, represented by a huge inscription bearing the name of a legionary who likely participated in the invasion in 43 AD.

Costas Paraskevaides of ArtAncient said “We wanted to create an exhibition to engage visitors, to explore that feeling of wonder when you see extraordinary objects like these. Often we are dealing in thousands of years, and in natural history we are talking about millions, even billions of years. These time periods are impossible for a human mind to comprehend. Every one of these objects has its own amazing story, they are beautiful, rare and exciting in their own right. But when you bring them together and set them in a timeline, it helps to give a sense of scale, a context; it intensifies their wonder!”

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