Europe’s oldest Neolithic bow discovered

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Europe’s oldest Neolithic bow has been found in Spain.

Archaeologists working at the Neolithic site of La Draga, Banyoles Spain have excavated the oldest known Neolithic bow in Europe.  According to Barcelona University, the bow dates to between 5400-5200 BC, and is in a remarkably good state of preservation.  The date places the bow in the earliest phases of occupation at La Draga and provides archaeologists with a unique opportunity to study ancient technology.The La Draga excavation centers on a settlement that is one of the earliest farming communities north of the Iberian Peninsula. The Neolithic settlement is located in the eastern side of Lake Banyoles. Covering about 8000 m2, the site stretches along about 100 m of the lakefront and is about 80 m wide. The Neolithic beach is currently under the lake, making La Draga both a land based and underwater archaeological project.

Read the full story here: http://www.montysworldonline.com/2012/09/archaeologists-find-oldest-neolithic.html

Visit the Museum of The Stone Age: http://www.stoneagetools.co.uk

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Stone Age ‘superglue’ held microliths in place

Scientists in Estonia, using infrared spectroscopy, have been able to identify the adhesive used to glue an early Mesolithic microlith to its wooden shaft as birch bark tar.  Their sample came from an excavation at Pulli and was found together with a lump of the same adhesive with teeth marks where it had been chewed.  Read details here http://www.primitiveways.com/birch_bark_tar.html

Birch bark tar has long been known as the ‘superglue’ of the stone age.  It has been found on a Neanderthal spear point, with a thumb print. Pieces of chewed
birch bark tar with human teeth marks go back as far as 11,000 years. Otzi’s
5,300 year old copper axe was hafted with birch bark tar.

Birch bark oil produced by Mike Richardson.

Mike Richardson, who lives in Anchorage, Alaska, has experimented with making his own birch bark tar.  Mike says, ‘Birch bark tar is a thermal plastic material, that is a solid at 65 degrees Fahrenheit. At 85 degrees Fahrenheit, it is just a bit softer and can be molded in your hands. At 105 degrees Fahrenheit, it is a medium stiff putty. At 135 degrees Fahrenheit, birch bark tar is a softer sticky putty. Birch bark tar boils at about 352 degrees Fahrenheit.”Birch bark tar is not made from the sap of birch trees like birch syrup. It is made from just birch bark heated in a oven with little air, much like charcoal. The birch bark oil, mostly betulum, will sweat out of the bark and run to the bottom of your oven.’

Read Mike’s article in full: http://www.primitiveways.com/birch_bark_tar.html

Visit The Museum of The Stone Age: http://www.stoneagetools.co.uk

Why have early hominids “changed” their appearance?

Early apelike restoration of Heidelberg Man

Why has our perception of the appearance of early hominids changed in recent decades?    As it is impossible to know with any real precision the facial appearance and other bodily features of early human relatives, it is not surprising that there is a subjective element in restorations, especially facial restorations.  The result is a very wide range of 3D models and images, sometimes contradicting each other.
At the extreme ends of the spectrum are restorations of the same species that are irreconcilable, at least visually.However, I have noticed that there does seem to be a general trend in such restorations.  In the early days, at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth, restorations tended to be decidedly primitive and ape-like.  Java man, Heidleberg man and Neanderthal man were generally depicted as being very crude and ape-like and were conceived of (at least popularly) as behaving in a primitive animal-like manner.  This seems to have gradually changed over the past 50 years or so with early hominids becoming represented as more and more human-like in appearance and behaviour.

Today’s Heidelberg Man is much more human

Remains of Homo Heidelbergensis found at the British Palaeolithic site at Boxgrove, for example,  (c550,000 BCE) have been restored to show a tall chap with a certain raffish charm and no trace of the ape at all.  Neanderthal man, too, has undergone something of a humanising process (perhaps helped by the discovery that most of us have up to 4% Neanderthal DNA).  Cave and Strauss, writing in the Quarterly Review of Biology observed that if he were given a bath, collar and tie, he would pass unnoticed in the New York subway.In a few cases, modern restorations depart quite significantly from the known anatomical facts.  For example, the restoration of ‘lucy’, Australopithecus afarensis, in the British Natural History Museum, shows Lucy in an upright human posture, with human-like hands and feet, even though Stern and Susman (1983) who described the type specimen, described Lucy’s hands and feet as being long and curved, and typical of those of a tree-dwelling ape.

Now it’s as plain as day that those responsible for research into early hominids have gradually changed their perceptions of the appearance of our ancestors, and that these subjective changes have found their way into museum publications, paintings and restorations.  But why exactly?  What scientific evidence has been found, or what paradigm shift has occurred, that would account for this change?

The only new information that I can think of that might contribute to this changing perception is our better knowledge and understanding of lithic technology.  When Java man was restored as ape-like, stone tools were widely regarded as crude artefacts, and evidence both of low intellect and lack of development.  We now know that making, for example, Solutrean blades, Clovis points or microlith arrows required not only a very high level of manual dexterity but also considerable forethought and pre-planning.

I wonder if anyone can suggest other reasons for this change in viewpoint?

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English Heritage unveils amazing new proposals for Stonehenge

Stonehenge now and (below) how it will look.

English Heritage has unveiled its proposals for Stonehenge on its Website.  They are far reaching and imaginative and look as though they will restore the site to a much more natural state, while at the same time improving access for visitors.

They plan to get rid of the car park and put in a transit system like they use at The Eden Project from a new visitor centre 1.5 miles away. They’re also closing the A344 road that runs beside the monument and grassing it over.  The new visitor centre will have a large shop, cafe and exhibition area.  It will have car and coach parks screened behind trees and the contours of the landscape.  From here visitors can either catch a four-trailer transit system (like the Eden Project) or can walk to Stonehenge which will be returned to its position as the focal point of the landscape

Judging by the artist’s impressions, the overall effect is one of enabling modern visitors to experience and appreciate Stonehenge in a way that is not all that different from the way our Neolithic ancestors experienced it.

Overall it looks like better access for more people, less damaging modern building, and returning the site to a more original state.  See their proposals here

Read the proposals in full and see a video at http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/stonehenge/our-plans/our-proposals/?goback=.gde_1826371_member_182284991

Visit The Museum of The Stone Age at http://www.stoneagetools.co.uk

Some mystery stones – and a Mesolithic speculation

I’ve recently made a couple of interesting ‘mystery’ finds in the South Downs. In a rich surface scatter of Mesolithic worked flint (including a tranchet adze, a pick etc.) I found a stone that was clearly out of place geologically (picture 1).  It was identified for me by the Natural History Museum as a lamprophyre containing the rare mineral barkevikite.  The nearest place that the stone could have come from is either Scotland or Norway, so it must have been imported.  As a surface find it could have been brought at any time, but I was intrigued by the idea that it could have been brought by the Mesolithic people who camped in the Downs making tools.  It appears to have been worn along one side by rubbing.

Perhaps because I had been alerted to the possibility, I found a second similar stone a week later, again among a surface scatter of Mesolithic worked flint, but in a second field some distance from the first (Picture 2).  This time it was a piece of sandstone that again must have been imported from outside the area. This, too, showed distinct wear from rubbing.  It also showed blackened areas that suggested it had been in fire.

Is it possible that the Mesolithic nomads who visited this region each year brought along these stones to assist with the making of flint weapons and tools?  If so, what did they use them for? Perhaps for dressing the edges of their cores, especially the more delicate microblade cores?  And if this is the case, why leave them behind – possibly even tossing one in the fire?

Finding these stones started me thinking about the many camp sites along the seaward (south) side of the South Downs.  The sandy soil of the northern side has long yielded finds of microliths and scrapers.  On the southern side one can easily find microburins – snapped off butts of microblades that are the preliminary stage of microlith manufacture – but very rarely do you  find microliths themselves.

This suggests the possibility that some Mesolithic people set up temporary camps on the south side of the Downs (perhaps in spring) to take advantage of the abundant flint to make their season’s tools and weapons, and then departed for the Northern side where they set up their hunting camps and living quarters.

I wonder if, on the last day of toolmaking, a Mesolithic man or woman looked around, tidied up and tossed his or her sandstone rubber into the fire as a gesture of a job well done.

Visit The Museum of The Stone Age at http://www.stoneagetools.co.uk