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Oldest flax fibers used by humans discovered
15 Sep '09
4 min read
Bar-Yosef and his team used radiocarbon dating to date the layers of the cave as they dug the site, revealing the age of the clay samples in which the fibers were found. Flax fibers were also found in the layers that dated to about 21,000 and 13,000 years ago.
Bar-Yosef's team began the excavations of this cave in 1996, and has returned to the site each year to complete this work.
“We were looking to find when the cave was occupied, what was the nature of the occupation by those early hunter-gatherers, where did they go hunting and gathering food, what kind of stone tools they used, what types of bone and antler tools they made and how they used them, whether they made beads and pendants for body decoration, and so on,” says Bar-Yosef. “This was a wonderful surprise, to discover these ancient flax fibers at the end of this excavation project.”
Bar-Yosef and Kvavadze's co-authors are Belfer-Cohen, Meshveliani, Elizabeth Boaretto of the Weizmann Institute of Science and Bar-Ilan University, Nino Jakeli of the Georgian State Museum, and Zinovi Matskevich of the Department of Anthropology at Harvard.
The research was funded by the American School of Prehistoric Research at the Peabody Museum, Harvard University.
Bar-Yosef's team began the excavations of this cave in 1996, and has returned to the site each year to complete this work.
“We were looking to find when the cave was occupied, what was the nature of the occupation by those early hunter-gatherers, where did they go hunting and gathering food, what kind of stone tools they used, what types of bone and antler tools they made and how they used them, whether they made beads and pendants for body decoration, and so on,” says Bar-Yosef. “This was a wonderful surprise, to discover these ancient flax fibers at the end of this excavation project.”
Bar-Yosef and Kvavadze's co-authors are Belfer-Cohen, Meshveliani, Elizabeth Boaretto of the Weizmann Institute of Science and Bar-Ilan University, Nino Jakeli of the Georgian State Museum, and Zinovi Matskevich of the Department of Anthropology at Harvard.
The research was funded by the American School of Prehistoric Research at the Peabody Museum, Harvard University.
Harvard University
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