The first thing to understand when talking about the mysterious handbag carvings is that they don’t appear in just a handful of places, or in just one region, but literally all over the world. Start in Mesopotamia, where the handbags appear in the works of the Sumerians, Assyrians, and Babylonians, the Mitanni and the Phoenician Empires, and the ancient Armenians.
Head across the ocean, and the handbags appear in Mesoamerican works that predate the Aztecs, Mayans, and Incas, including the Olmec and Toltec Empires, and the ancient tribes of Veracruz.
They appear in Asia, in the works of Indian Hindus and the ancient tribes of Indonesia.
They were depicted by the Etruscans in Italy, the Hittite Empire in Turkey, and the ancient Bosnians.
They even appear in the Coso petroglyphs created by indigenous North Americans and at the mysterious 12,000-year-old site known as Gobekli Tepe.
We could go on, but the point is clear – the handbags are everywhere.
