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[ta0]

If you enter "stone spinning tops" on Google, one of the first hits is an old paper from 1888 describing tops from Murray Island in the Torres Straits that separate the New Guinea and Australia. You can read the article online and here is the plate I took from it:



The ones numbered 1 and 2 are stone tops with wooden axles. The larger one is 15 cm in diameter and 30 cm tall. I actually found a photo of 2 showing the painted design which is still in the archives of the British Museum:



The painting probably shows a Papuan in gala dress and probably dancing. This decoration is also reproduced on Gould's book.

The smaller stone top shown in profile on the plate also had a painting according to the paper. I could not find a drawing or photo but the description on the paper says that it must be the drawing of a European because he seems to have a bottle in the hand. Supposedly when they saw Europeans they generally had a bottle 

[cecil]

Six looks like the Taiwan top, I worked on. When I came up with the excel-erator rod I thought it was original then I seen a picture of the same thing 300 years ago.

[ta0]

Six looks like the Taiwan top, I worked on.

Yeah, it does look like your modded tuoluo.

Just to clarify that we are not talking about bottles of water:

The smaller top is painted . . . The design is a standing figure, full face . . .  The figure wears apparently trousers, reaching below the knee, has the left hand resting upon the hip, and the right raised and holding an object, which may be a club, though it is not unlike a bottle. . . this painting may be intended to represent a white man with the bottle, which is too often his companion when living among savages. In the carvings of the West African negroes, the typical white man is constantly figured with a brandy bottle in one hand and a large glass in the other, while in the Nicobar Islands the figure of the British sailor occurs very frequently . . . Among all savages, indeed, who have any pictorial skill, and few have not, the clothed white man is a subject which the artist cannot resist. It may, therefore, well be that the figure on this top is intended to be an European in the attitude which seemed to the painter most characteristic.

[Jack]

this is interesting