A non-trivial question: what do you use to clean your ears? With cotton swabs, most likely, and never in your life did you even realize that you could clean your ears with anything else. But there is one caveat!
It turns out that in the old days our ancestors used a special object, which in Russian is called “kopoushka”. It is difficult to say when this object first appeared, probably when one of the anthropoid primates began to clean his ears with a stick.
However, archaeologists discovered early “kopoushki” in Bronze Age burials. Kopoushki were used by the Goths, Avars and Huns, Scythians and Sarmatians. Thus, the first finds of “kopoushki” date back to the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 1st millennium BC and were found in Syria, in a settlement called Marik.
Kopoushki were made of bone, bronze, copper, wood, glass, animal bones and even gold! The most interesting thing, probably!
Nowadays, copushki can be found on the sites of former settlements, plowed-up villages and abandoned farmsteads. The item is interesting and could fetch a good sum at auction.
Also, be careful on the cop – such a small one (from 3.5 cm to 15 cm in size) can easily be mistaken for a shmurdyak. Therefore, we look at the photos of the sets and remember what real cops look like.