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I have portrayed some hoop earrings with the cloister of the Pedralbes monastery in Barcelona reflected, as a symbol of contemplation and culture of women, from all times and that has survived to this day.
Now, currently, the use of earrings is not restricted only to the ears, but throughout the body, such as the navel, eyebrows, nose, tongue, lip… This technique is known as a piercing and, although it may seem modern to us, it is actually very old.
So much so that, based on these photographs in La Vanguardia Readers’ Photos, we asked the following question: What came before, the earring or the piercing?… In both cases we have to go back many, many years. , to try to find its origin.
The term “slope” is relatively modern. It is a Castilianization of the French “pendentif”, which means “pendant”. It was used by French archaeologists in their excavations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to define the objects they found.
It is very possible that piercing was before the traditional earring that we know hanging from the ear, since nose ornaments have been found already in Bronze Age graves, piercing the nasal cartilage.
The use of earrings passed from the Egyptians and Assyrians to the Phoenicians, Hebrews and other eastern peoples. The Greeks and Romans adopted the same custom, especially for women’s own use, although children in Athens and Rome also used to wear earrings (only in one ear, in this case).
Complete (and often large) earrings, known as circular hoop earrings, were used in ancient times by the Egyptians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Etruscans, Celts and Iberians. In Spain we have a clear example through the statue of the Lady of Elche.
Regarding piercing, we can associate it with a very ritual use, for example, among the Eskimos, who marked how young people went from being children to adults. Earrings have also been used in some cultures for purposes beyond adornment, as a protective amulet against evil spirits, for example.
There are manifestations of body piercing that survive today (and that have even been exploited as tourists), such as in tribes that deform the oral cavity of women with discs to increase the size of the mouth and lengthen their lobes by carrying large metal reels.
Be that as it may, earrings, earrings or piercings have survived to this day, being reformulated and readapted to fashions, both male and female. And there are elements that have been with us since time immemorial, although sometimes we do not realize it.
