A foreign team of archaeologists has excavated and tested projectile problems from 8,000 years ago (spears and arrows) at two sites in Yemen and Oman. They discovered that the ancient Arabs had independently invented a procedure for creating unique projectiles, called furrows, that were first used among Native Americans some 5,000 years earlier.
The groove is an emblematic approach to stone tool production and fast action that leads to the extraction of a channel lacquer along the longitudinal axis of a bifacial piece. It is well known in North America, as evidenced by discoveries across the continent dating from 13,000 to 10,000 years ago.
“There is a key difference between the flute as it was used in North America and how it was used in Arabia,” said co-author Professor Joy McCorriston, a researcher in the Department of Anthropology at Ohio State University.
“In North America, the groove used only to make the arrowhead or spearhead more functional. But in Arabia, other people also used it to demonstrate their technical skills.
Professor McCorriston and his colleagues studied dozens of projectile problems from two archaeological sites: Manayzah in Yemen and Ad-Dahariz in Oman.
“The discovery of open-air ribbed points in North America was a vital discovery,” said Dr. Rémy Crassard, a researcher at the French Center for Archaeology and Social Sciences at CNRS.
“These striated peaks were, until recently, unknown in other parts of the planet. This until the early 2000s, when the first remote examples of these elements were identified in Yemen and, more recently, in Oman.
“The groove comes to a highly professional procedure of crushing the scales of a stone to create a unique channel. It’s complicated and requires a lot of practice to improve,” Professor McCorriston added.
“In North America, almost all the slots in the projectiles were made near the base, so the tool can be tied with a rope to the arrow or spear. In other words, it had a practical application.”
Scientists discovered Arab peaks with furrows that had no useful purpose, so close to the tip.
As a component of the study, they asked a paedolym technician to create projectiles in a way that researchers believe the ancient Arabs did.
“He made many attempts to be informed about how to do this. It’s hard and a stone tailor solves many of those problems by seeking to be informed about how to get things right,” Professor McCorriston said.
“So the question is why do these other Neolithic people do this when it is so expensive and time-consuming and doesn’t make problems more useful? In addition, they used grooves only in certain areas.
“Of course, we can’t say for sure, but we think it’s a way for qualified tool brands to report anything to others, maybe you’re a smart hunter, a quick exam, or dexterity with your hands.”
“He showed that we were smart at what we were doing. This may just be your social position in the community.”
The effects recommend that while there are many similarities between American and Arabic striatum, there are also differences.
“The way other people played the flute is different, which is not unexpected as they were separated for thousands of miles and thousands of years,” Professor McCorriston said.
“The search for striatum in Arabia provides one of the most productive examples of independent invention on all continents,” said lead professor Michael Petraglia, a scientist in the Department of Archaeology at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, at the Smithsonian National Museum. Natural History and the University of Queensland School of Social Sciences.
“Given their age and the fact that the strident themes of the United States and Arabia are separated by thousands of miles, there is no imaginable cultural link between them.
“It is a transparent example of cultural convergence, or independent invention, in the history of humanity.”
The team article published online in the journal PLoS ONE.
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A. Crassard et al. 2020. The generation of the striatum in Neolithic Arabia: an invention far from America. PLoS ONE 15 (8): e0236314; doi: 10.1371 / journal.pone.0236314