People living in southern Arabia around 8,000 years ago created intricate stone weapons that were not only useful, but were designed to display their toolmaking skills, a new study suggests.
Researchers from the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Ohio University and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History excavated and examined projectile points - spearheads and arrowheads - created during the Neolithic period in what is now Yemen and Oman.
They found that the Arabs independently invented a process for creating projectile points that was first used by people living in North America thousands of years earlier, between 10,000 and 13,000 years ago.
But there is a key difference between the process as it was used in North America and the way it was used in Arabia, said Joy McCorriston, a co-author of the study and a professor of anthropology at Ohio University. In North America it was used only to make the arrowhead or spearhead more functional. But in Arabia, people also used it to demonstrate their technical skills in using this very difficult technology, with its high risk of failure .
In the article published in the journal PLOS ONE, scientists study projectile points from two archaeological sites:Manayzah, in Yemen, and Ad-Dahariz, in Oman. McCorriston and a team from Ohio State oversaw the excavation at Manayzah, which lasted from 2004 to 2008.
Finding fluted points outside of North America was an important discovery said Rémy Crassard of CNRS, lead author of the study. These fluted points were, until recently, unknown elsewhere on the planet. This was until the early 2000s, when the first isolated examples of these objects were recognized in Yemen, and more recently in Oman.
Grooving involves a highly skilled process of chipping away the flakes of a stone to create a distinctive channel. It's difficult and takes a lot of practice to perfect. McCorriston said. In North America, most of the rifling on projectile points was done near the base, so that the implement could be attached by string to the arrow or spear shaft. In other words, it had a practical application.
But in this study, the researchers found some Arabian tips with ridges that appeared to serve no useful purpose, such as near the tip.
As part of the study, the researchers had a master stone carving technician attempt to create projectile points similar to how researchers believe the ancient Arabs did.
he made hundreds of attempts to learn how to do this. It's hard, and a stone art technician breaks a lot of these tips trying to learn how to do it right McCorriston said.
The question, then, is why these Neolithic peoples did this when it was so expensive and time consuming and didn't make the points any more useful. Also, they only used ribbing in a few spots.
Of course, we can't say for sure, but we think this was a way for skilled toolmakers to signal something to others, perhaps that one is a good hunter, or skilled with their hands. This could improve one's social standing in the community.
The findings suggested that while there were many similarities between American and Arabian fluted points, there were also differences. The way people did the rifling in the two places was different, which is not surprising since they were separated by thousands of miles and thousands of years, McCorriston said.
Finding the fluted points in Arabia provides one of the best examples of independent invention across continents, said co-author Michael Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute.
Given their age, and the fact that the ridged tips of America and Arabia are thousands of miles apart, there is no possible cultural connection between them Petraglia said. This is a clear and excellent example of cultural convergence, or independent invention, in the history of mankind.