Archaeologists working in a cave near Tel Aviv have found the world’s oldest known disposable knives.

Dating to the Stone Age, the tiny knives are believed to be at least 200,000 years old. A Tel Aviv University excavation team found the tools around a fireplace littered with charred animal bones.

Archaeologist Ran Barkai said he believes Stone Age hunter-gatherers used the rough, round-shaped cutlery — ranging from the size of human teeth to guitar picks — for slicing through cooked meat because they were found next to the animal bones. The bones were used to determine the age of the knives.

The number of knives found, coupled with the fact that they had no signs of sharpening, indicates they were disposable because they would have dulled after several uses, he said.

The knives were made from recycled material — parts of larger knives and tools designed for other uses such as butchering animals and scraping hides, he said.

“They are made in a special way. On the one hand, they are very efficient and on the other, very simple,” Barkai said.

[Full story]

Archaeologists in Finland are excavatin the remains of a house which was built 2,000-3,000 years ago.

Archaeologists from the University of Helsinki are carrying out excavations of what they say is a unique Stone Age site at Järvenkylä in Virolahti in the far south-eastern part of the country.

The most striking feature of the site is the remains of an exceptionally large dwelling that the scientists describe as a “terraced house”, in some ways like those found in many modern suburbs.

The original find was made three years ago while archaeologists were carrying out a field inventory of medieval period remains in the area .

[Full story]

Iron Age tombs have been found in Norway containing Stone Age artifacts, prompting archaeologists to ask how they got there.

The researchers say that people back in the Iron Age had a conscious relationship to objects from earlier times that connected them to their past.

“People probably considered old objects as a heritage from their ancestors.

Recycling of old burial mounds for new graves is an indication of this relationship. The idea was that the mounds were memories from a distant past, and written sources indicate that recycling of mounds had a double function. Apart from providing a grave for the dead they also legitimized property and rights. People asserted their control over an area by burying their family in a gravesite belonging to their ancestors,” Thäte explains.

The archeologists think that people in pre-history were superstitious and that the axe was deposited in the grave as a part of the burial ritual.

[Full story]

A 58,000-year-old Red Ochre and glue factory has been found in South Africa.

A once-thriving 58,000-year-old ochre powder production site has just been discovered in South Africa. The discovery offers a glimpse of what early humans valued and used in their everyday lives.

The finding, which will be described in the Journal of Archaeological Science, also marks the first time that any Stone Age site has yielded evidence for ochre powder processing on cemented hearths — an innovation for the period. A clever caveman must have figured out that white ash from hearths can cement and become rock hard, providing a sturdy work surface.

“Ochre occurs in a range of colors that includes orange, red, yellow, brown and shades of these colors,” project leader Lyn Wadley told Discovery News. “Yellow and brown ochre can be transformed to red by heating them at temperatures as low as 250 degrees Celsius (482 degrees Fahrenheit).”

[Full story]

An man out for a walk with his dog in Ireland came across a Stone Age axe head.

Local archaeologist Ian Leitch believes the item dates from the Mesolithic period or middle stone age and was around 7,000 years old.
And he believes the finds significant in terms of the wider archaeology of the area. “The axe head from Culmore suggests that there may be a mesolithic site on or near to the find spot. It may have been dropped or lost by its owner while out hunting on land near the river.”

He added: “The stone axe head is made from mudstone, measures around six centimetres in size and is in quite good condition.”

Mr Leitch paid tribute to the finder for alerting him to the find. He added: “It is important that such an artefact is reported and properly recorded.”

[Full story]