A Question of Survival
For Stone Age communities, the availability of reliable hunting weapons was a question of survival. As metalworking had yet to be invented, people were relying on stone weapons – yet not all stone weapons were made in the same way. More than 40,000 years ago, a new technology for the production of special, tiny weapon tips, so-called “Dufour bladelets”, became established in Europe.
These tiny stone projectiles were created in a special way: flint nodules collected or removed from rock outcrops were first freed of any unwanted cortex or inclusions and then knapped into a specific shape. The core shape required to make Dufour bladelets, also called a carinated item, had to have exactly the right angle and converge in striking direction before the desired projectiles could be struck off it. The “Dufour bladelets” obtained in this way, nearly a serial production, were new types of weapon tips that were significantly smaller and lighter than their predecessors and could be hafted collectively, as a composite tool, to individual wooden spear shafts.
Game changer
In the study now published in the journal “PlosOne”, Hannah Rohringer (formerly Parow-Souchon), researcher at the Austrian Archaeological Institute of the OeAW, together with her colleague Anna Belfer-Cohen from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, put forward the hypothesis that the spread of these projectiles is closely linked to the advance of a new weapon, the spear thrower. A simple lever could give the spear additional thrust and extend the reach of Stone Age hunters to up to 250 meters. A prerequisite for accurate hunting, however, were spearheads that were light yet sharp, and that did not impair the balance of the spear – exactly the properties that the “Dufour bladelets” brought with them.
The sophisticated manufacturing technology of carinated items was nothing less than a game changer for Stone Age communities, as it ushered in a small revolution in hunting by making it possible to hunt prey from greater distances, making it safer. This production method was so successful that it is considered characteristic of an entire culture, the so-called Aurignacian.
Technology transfer across the Mediterranean
Because of their advantages, knowledge about the special processing of flint and the production of “Dufour bladelets” spread inexorably. Similar stone tools have also been found in the southwest Asia in the past 100 years. However, whether they were made in the same way remained a matter of debate for a long time. Rohringer and Belfer-Cohen were now able to prove this in their study for the first time.
The researchers analyzed material from Hayonim Cave in Israel. There they discovered traces of the same production waste as found in Europe when carinated items were used to make tiny, pointed “Dufour bladelets.” The analyses show that around 34,000 to 38,000 BCE, these carinated items were obtained and processed in the same way as in Europe to achieve the same target products. Thus, a few thousand years after the new knowledge spread in Europe, it had also reached the eastern Mediterranean. “The manufacturing technology for carinated items is identical in Europe and the Levant, we have been able to provide all the evidence for this,” Rohringer says. “This also underscores a close cultural connection between the European and Levantine Aurignacian in the Levant,” the researcher continued.
This, in turn, raises a number of new questions, as Rohringer notes – not least the question of how this knowledge was able to travel thousands of kilometers. “The question,” says the archaeologist, “is whether this is a migration of people or of ideas, perhaps even a reverse migration of people from Europe to the eastern Mediterranean.” Further research at sites along the Danube corridor is now planned to enlarge the dataset. This also includes flint material from Austria, where a number of famous Aurignacian sites are expected to provide important information.
