While Colin Powell Posts “Throwback” Selfie, Ancient Syrians Win That Contest

The kids these days are very excited about their selfies. But former General Colin Powell would like them to know, he was hip to this 60 years before Facebook.

The selfie he posted to Facebook earlier this week shows Powell as a serious young man in a vest and tie, looking into a bedroom mirror while taking a shot of himself.

He captioned it: “Throwback Thursday — I was doing selfies 60 years before you Facebook folks. Eat your heart out Ellen!” The reference, of course, is to Ellen Degeneres’s Oscar-night selfie that became the most retweeted of all time on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/TheEllenShow/status/440322224407314432

But let’s go back further in selfie history, if you will. Live Science reported that archeologists have unearthed a 9,000-year-old face carving (or selfie) in southern Syria. Excavated near a graveyard where 30 people were buried without their heads, the image was carved into the rib of an auroch, the wild ancestor of cows.

The delicately crafted 4.7-inch wand has two serene-looking faces on it, and was maybe part of some funerary rite, said Frank Braemer, an archeologist at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France, to Live Science.

He also noted that they really have no idea what it is, that it could be an attempt to represent supernatural beings. Otherwise, it could be a trophy made to honor vanquished enemies.

It’s no Hollywood panoply of stars, but the ambiguity leaves this “selfie” a distinct possibility — at least, according to us.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.