World’s Oldest Fibres Discovered In Georgian Cave By Harvard University Archaeologist

Submitted by MalcolmJ on Wed, 09/16/2009 - 10:00

Tiny flax fibres aged 34,000 years old – the earliest examples of their type ever seen – have been discovered by archaeologists in a cave in the Caucasus mountains of the Republic of Georgia. They’re so tiny they’re not visible to the naked eye – the team responsible for the find, from Harvard University, only spotted the minute artefacts while examining clay samples from the cave under a microscope.

The flax was probably used to make linen or thread, and was collected raw from the wild, rather than being farmed. It could have been put to all sorts of uses – from making warm clothes by sewing animal hides together, or fastening packs to aid mobility in the harsh prehistoric climate. Some of the fibres are twisted, which suggests that they may have once been part of a rope or string. Others were dyed.

“This was a critical invention for early humans,” said team leader Ofer Bar-Yosef, a Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at Harvard, speaking to Harvard Science. “They might have used this fiber to create parts of clothing, ropes, or baskets – for items that were mainly used for domestic activities,” he added. “We know that this is wild flax that grew in the vicinity of the cave and was exploited intensively or extensively by modern humans.”

“This was a critical invention for early humans. They might have used this fiber to create parts of clothing, ropes, or baskets.” -- Ofer Bar-Yosef

Bar-Yosef’s investigation of the cave in Georgia has been ongoing every summer since 1996. He set out to analyze tree pollen samples there, in order to assess environment and temperature fluctuations that would have affected ancient humans inhabiting the rocky recess over the course of thousands of years. The fibres were, he said, “a wonderful surprise at the end of this excavation project.” The previous oldest known objects of their type – aged 28,000 years – were found in Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic.

A leading Georgian archaeologist and anthropologist – speaking least week at the British Science Festival – said Georgia was the “cradle of the first Europeans” and home to primitive “hominins” around 1.8 millions years ago who may have been the precursors to mankind’s ancestors Homo erectus.

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