Pretending Adam and Eve were Polynesians...

Thanks for making me laugh out loud!

I too miss the BCN. Will try harder to contribute and Visit.

edit- forgot to say- I too really like this necklace. It's a kind of Universal statement in my eyes- "I'm a Hunter, and a Badass". I'd like to know more too.

I'm not exactly shouting-it-out. But this is a very stylish piece. It is simple in its elegance.

And feel glad that we share taste.
It is simple -- and really old, a genuine necklace from the the Prehistoric Man (as we figure him from similar relics).
Of course, nothing here from me as a designer, except the restringing: not an easy task, while the holes of the bone cylinder beads are as large as 12 mm, those of the nails are about 2 mm.
It belonged to a famous singer/dancer in Modernist Europe. She was known as Tortola Valencia*, one of those ladies that performed on the stage in exotic attire.She passed away in Barcelona on 13 February 1955, and her partner auctioned most of her things in the late 80s. I got this directly from her,left-overs that perhaps the auction house wouldn't accept for obvious reasons.I guess the beads are from one of those now extinct birds from Samoa and neighboring islands...

*more on the internet

I like to wear it as in the first image posted, with the ends pointing downwards towards the wearer's body (am I a masochist?),although Samoans use to wear it as on this second image (a symptom of sadism?), clearly a warrior's statement.

Good day Nishedha.

You mention an "extinct bird from Samoa." What part of the bird are we discussing?

The claw-like pendants, I suspect, are tusks from some member of the pig family. The wart hog, for instance, lives in Somalia (NE Africa). And the roots of their tusks look very much like The pendants in your necklace.

I have to wonder whether "Samoa" and "Somalia" have become confused (?).

I will harvest a photo from my Ivory Seminar, and post it here.

Jamey

This is a composite photo of two African wart hogs to view these scruffy animals. These are not necessarily the subspecies found in Somalia.

The second photo shows a single wart hog tusk, and three pendants made from wart hog tusk. These are in my Ivory Collection, and were given to me by Elizabeth Harris quite a few years ago.

Yes, Beadman, they look amazingly similar.
But the pendants on my necklace,I believe, are not made of ivory, but of something looking very much like keratin. (Non-authorized guess).They are empty all the way to the end.

The ends of some pendants are slightly hooked, although this is not apparent on the image.
And now, allow me a boutade: they feel like they belong to the same animal...
Mmmm, for a while I was wondering whether thay belonged or not to a sea turtle...or one of those sea monsters, akin to whales?
Also, as it can be seen, the bones are empty -- as expected from birds.
I am glad someone puts some academic discipline into the issue, thank you, Jamey: I am frivolous!

If these are keratineous claws, then (of course) they are not ivory.

Nevertheless, there are pigs' teeth that are hollow, and have blood pulp throughout.

Since some keratin products are popularly misidentified as "ivory," they are included in my Ivory Seminar. "Hornbill ivory" is the most well-known material.

I didn't know it is misidentified as ivory!
It is also very beautiful!

Hello Nishedha.

I think it is possible that the name is essentially a Chinese construction. It's not necessarily that they or anyone have mistakenly concluded hornbill is "ivory" (a dental material); but perhaps that they regard it as being "like ivory," in providing a material to be carved. I haven't read anything about the Chinese names and their inferences. I basically know what I've been told, that comes come the marketplace. It warrants further investigation.

I realize now that I failed to answer rightly your interesting questions:
"What part of the bird are we discussing?"
Well, we are discussing both the "nails" (if that is what they are:-) and the "bones", that is the cylinder beads in between.
As can be seen on the photos and I said before, the cylinders are empty, very light, their very thin and lustrous walls made of what looks like bone.
The pendants are hard and look more like dentine, but not quite, and not at all like ivory. The upper (root?) part is almost translucid, not looking like bone, but more like nails or horn.

And no, I did not confused Samoa and Somalia.
I had many wild pig tusks from Papua etc., and they do not look at all like my necklace's pendants.
Moreover,the thing came to me together with other ornaments from South East Asia and/or Polinesia: I specially remember another necklace made of bat teeth, strung with glass colorless seed beads.
Everything clearly old and worn, the strings so much so that had to be discarded (very much against my habit) if intended for use.
The style of the one we are discussing being so similar to those doned in Samoa and Marquesas Islands by "warrior dancers", it prompted me to use the label "Samoan".

Ps.-Alas, I am aware of not deserving to be labeled a scholar, no. No...my father told me once: "You are a butterfly!".
Well, sometimes laughter is as handy as butter.

Actually, the pendants on the necklace look remarkably like these claws. Image of 3000 years old remains excavated in New Zealand, of an extinct bird related to Moa.

Moas, say the wise ones, were large.
I do not believe the small cylinders belonged to one of them.

Some go so far as to pretend that birds ARE extant dinosaurs.
And fossilized feathered dinosaurs have been recently excavated--in China.
OMG! and dinosaurs did lay eggs too...

Ps.- The problem is our habit of labeling everything, then believing in these labels.This belief blinds us, makes us estranged from reality, losing the power to see its suchness.
A wise friend used to say: all nouns are lies, only verbs are meaningful.

According to recent and current theories, birds have evolved out of a group of dinosaurs. My point was that a moa might "demonstrate" this much better than does a finch or hummingbird.

My point was that dinos may be birds, may be dinos*.
But of course, a rose is a rose is a rose...
and a fly is NOT a butterfly,
still I wonder whether (or not) all dinos were as large
as those of Hollywood-lore.

*recently the learned ones have decreed that mushroms are not vegetables anymore, but just mushroms instead...and a new Kingdom is born, its limits the good old traditional ones: Mineral, Vegetal & Animal.
Which is perfectly OK, naturally. But this does not mean that some vegetables have "evolved": just labels have been changed.

"Animal, Vegetable, Mineral" is a popular guessing game for normal things we may encounter. From these three categories, which category is this "thing" we are considering? It's a pastime. It is based on Science, but it is not science.

Within Science, we have the category of "lifeforms.""Lifeforms" are classified as that, when they demonstrate certain abilities. One is to be moveable in a self-operating moveability. (They move or move around at will.) Another is that they are regenerative. Through some process they replicate themselves. (That is a most-important quality.)

There are various strategies for reproduction. A primary one is mitosis (single cell division to become multiple cells). This happens with primitive simple lifeforms; but within complex lifeforms cellular division is also very active. Reproduction can also be asexual and/or sexual.

Lifeforms includes plant and animals, as we know from our daily lives. But it also includes many microscopic entities, such as bacteria, paramecium, and possibly even viruses. In recent years Fungi (that were formally considered to be "plants") are now considered to be in their own separate category.

So, the fallout from all this is that the popular "animal, vegetable, mineral" game would exclude fungi--since they are none-of-the-above.

But Fungi are clearly lifeforms (!). They reproduce by means of spores. (Not seeds, eggs, or live births, for instance.) Fungi includes molds, yeast, mushrooms, and toadstools. A mushroom or toadstool are comparable (in most respects) to a flower in a plant--being their method of reproduction.

It just so-happens, as with certain plants, there are fungi that animals can safely consume (eat for nourishment), and many that they cannot (because they are poisonous).

Knowing all this, it is easy to understand why fungi were formerly considered to be "part of plants." But the fact that they exploit spore-reproduction is a basic reason for making them separate from animals and plants.

All lifeforms (apparently) have the ability to evolve (if we accept the precepts of evolution).

Evolution!
Now this is a most interesting issue (aka dogma), that should probably be discussed in a different place, perhaps Istagram.
Although, why not: Fustat>>Islamic>>>>Venetian?
>>>>Javanese?

Now thanks to your kind attention, the old post "Nails & Bones" has evolved.
These are matters of general interest, indeed, going beyond our BEADS primary concerns: the subject "Science", for example, already merging with and/or displacing that obsolete one, "Religion"-- although only in our culture, if you know what I mean.
But I am too old to be in a hurry...
No reason to worry ,much less to fear: better to die standing that living on your knees.
Even the Word itself evolves, the proof below:

Rumi evolving

I AM X YOU ARE

I ARE X YOU AM