In the lab, archaeologists showed how they could rapidly produce thick rope by threading cattail fibers through a replica of a Stone Age tool. Rope, twine and thread: Invisible technologies of the Stone Age Missing from the archaeological record, fiber innovations like string played a huge role in the daily lives of our ancestors. Researchers are working to weave together new insights from the traces they left behind.
When an abstract-looking ivory artifact emerged from the Hohle Fels cave in southern Germany in 2015, archaeologists didn’t know quite what to make of it. Previously, this same cave had yielded what may be the world’s oldest musical flutes, as well as one of humanity’s earliest pieces of figurative art, the iconic Venus of Hohle Fels. At first glance, this strange new discovery — a 20-centimeter rod perforated with four small holes — seemed comparatively unspectacular.
But it has since revealed far more about the lives of Europe’s prehistoric hunter-gatherers than its unassuming appearance would have suggested. Fashioned from the tusk of a mammoth more than 35,000 years ago, this perforated baton — a type of artifact called a _lochstab_ —was initially interpreted as a symbolic object associated with prestige or power. But Nicholas Conard, whose team discovered the item, wasn’t so sure.
Noticing that each of the baton’s holes was lined with carefully carved spiral grooves, he began to suspect that the lochstab might have been a tool used by twisting some other material through these perforations. Sure enough, when he and his colleagues tried threading cattail fibers through these holes, they found that the grooves helped to orient the strands. Within 10 minutes, the group had woven the fibers into five meters of thick, strong rope.
Yet while these experiments might have helped to solve one archaeological mystery, they also highlighted a much larger problem. The inhabitants of Hohle Fels must have manufactured significant quantities of rope, yet none of it has survived, and all that remains is the most durable component of this ancient production system — the ivory lochstab. The Hohle Fels _lochstab_ was made more than 35,000 years ago.
Researchers rebuilt the baton by fitting together over a dozen buried fragments. A clue to its function were the spiral grooves carved around the holes, which the team later showed could be used to align, twist and combine plant fibers into rope. The object dates to a period when prehistoric humans began creating more sophisticated tools and artworks.
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