Featured Stone Age Carpenters

Not too long ago, archaeologist Rengert Elburg found something that convinced him that “Stone Age sophistication” is not a contradiction in terms. It was a wood-lined well, discovered during construction work in Altscherbitz, near the eastern German city of Leipzig. Buried more than 20 feet underground, preserved for millennia by cold, wet, oxygen–free conditions, the timber box at the bottom of the well was 7,000 years old—the world’s oldest known intact wooden architecture.
Full story at the link
https://www.archaeology.org/issues/152-1411/features/2591-germany-recreating-neolithic-toolkit

Video
https://www.archaeology.org/exclusives?slg=recreating-the-neolithic-toolkit

 

If you look at the sophisticated weaving techniques of the Neolithic period, other crafts had to be sophisticated as well.

 

I bet! Turns out we were not as primitive as many would think, mortise & tenon joints in riven oak 7000 years ago? Jeez, that's incredible.

 

Agree, there are many more things they had back then, but don’t get proper credit. Cars and bowling, to name just two.

 

LOL, Yeah! Well, thing is the perception that all we did back then was sit around in caves and decorate the cave walls with images is false. This discovery of that well proves we had the tools back then to clear land of timber, 36 days for one man to clear cut 2.5 acres with stone tools. Very impressive I'd say.

 

musta bin a big man as well..........

 

LOL, I am guessing but they probably worked in teams, some cutting/felling trees, some stripping bark, some riving logs into boards, etc. The important point here is these guys were clearing land for farming & building houses with all that timber which is contrary to what was assumed before.

"Around the time farming started in Germany and Denmark, pollen records show there was a dramatic shift in the European landscape. Tree cover declined, and pollen from grasses and shrubs increased. Archaeologists trying to explain this assumed that shifting climate had reduced the forest cover, making it possible for Neolithic farms to flourish. Given the primitive tools available in the Stone Age, their reasoning went, it was unrealistic to think people could have made much of a dent in the primeval forests" WRONG!
"Iversen and his colleagues then rethought how the stones might have fit in their wood handles, and refined their cutting techniques. With the help of some local foresters, over the course of a summer, Iversen and a few other middle-aged Danish academics managed to clear-cut 2.5 acres of forest using nothing but stone tools. Based on this experiment, their calculations suggested that it would have taken a single Stone Age farmer only 36 days—or even less—to clear an equivalent area, which would have made open-field agriculture and managed forestry a realistic possibility for Neolithic European farmers."

 

"The experiment marked the beginning of a significant shift in the way archaeologists thought about early Europeans and their tools. “The old view was that Neolithic people were more or less ape-men,” Elburg says. “It was a very slow process, but eventually people became aware that the Stone Age was not primitive, and that Stone Age tools were not crude blunt-force instruments, but sophisticated in their own way.”

 

First thing I thought of was The Flintstones too.

yabba dabba do.

Thanks for sharing, I love learning here.

 

Oldest boat in the world, between 8040 BCE and 7510 BCE. Found in Pesse, the Netherlands.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesse_canoe

 

Very cool! and, thousands of years later we are STILL studying tool marks! One of my fav things to do!

 

Some might enjoy researching the Trypillian Culture.

 

Or Neolithic Malta:


A copy of this Maltese Neolithic dreaming lady lives in my study:

 

Interesting @ "dreaming lady", even given for artistic license with human figures/female beauty, she looks like she's been padding around the house/home fires most of her life, not out trekking all over the countryside hunting or gathering.

 

Not much hunting or gathering at the time she was made, these were farming communities, so fertility was important. The female form was a reference to fertility.

The interesting thing about this little dreamer is that she represents a human being and not a Goddess, highly unusual in Neolithic Malta.
There is evidence that Malta and sister island Gozo were 'holy islands' at the time, a place of pilgrimage. No weapons of war have been found, but many religious items and a large concentration of temples. Over 30 discovered so far, if I remember correctly.
People probably came to the temples to be initiated. The dream inside the temple would have been part of the inititation.
The figure is small, you can easily rest her on your hand. Maltese Neolithic Goddess statues are much bigger and even more voluptuous.

 

So I don't need to diet - just go to Malta.