Imagine a tool from the Stone Age. You’re probably thinking of something in the shape of a leaf, with at least one of its sides fashioned into a point. But whether that point is sharp or blunt, smooth or jagged, you’re almost certainly picturing it in a boring shade of brown or gray.
But Stone Age people also made tools out of colorful stones, and were willing to travel tremendous distances to acquire these striking raw materials. In fact, according to a new study in the Journal of Archaeological Science, hunter-gatherers in southern Africa trekked dozens of miles to source rocks like red jasper and green chalcedony, which they fashioned into tools as many as 40,000 years ago.
“Colorful and shiny materials seemed attractive to early humans,” said Gregor Bader, a study author and a researcher at the University of Tübingen, according to a press release. “They often used them for their tools.”
Read More: Stone Age Humans Chose Their Rocks with Care
The Study of Stones, Boring and Brilliant
The rocks used by Stone Age people can tell us a lot about their lives and their interactions with the world. For instance, understanding where these individuals obtained the raw materials for their tools can help reveal their
travels, their trade relationships, and their material cultures.
For the most part, researchers have focused on the duller, drabber rocks used by Stone Age hunter-gatherers in southern Africa — rocks that are brownish and grayish, without much color or shine. But colorful, shiny materials were fashioned into tools there, too, though they haven’t been subject to the same sort of archaeological scrutiny.
To address this gap in the research, the authors of the new study compared the chemical composition of colorful stone tools from four sites in southern Africa with the chemistry of nearby natural rock. The comparison revealed that Stone Age humans journeyed between 18 to 62 miles to collect materials of certain colors.
Read More: Humans Shaped Ancient History Across 3 Ages: The Stone, Bronze, and Iron Age
Traveling For the Right Rocks
Applying a method called neutron activation analysis, the study authors traced the origins of the tools from the Stone Age sites of Hlalakahle, Siphiso, Sibebe, and Nkambeni in Eswatini. After taking small samples of the tools, they bombarded them with neutrons, which were absorbed by the samples’ atoms, making them radioactive. The resulting radioactivity divulged their chemical composition, or “fingerprint,” which the researchers then matched with the fingerprints of natural rock.
“Although the method is destructive, only tiny sample quantities are required,” Bader said in the release. “By comparing the analysis patterns of the stone used and the rocks found in the region, we can pinpoint the origin of the raw stone.”
As it turned out, tools from all four sites that were made of red jasper and green chalcedony shared the same chemical fingerprints as natural rock in Eswatini’s Mgwayjza Valley. While rivers may have transported stone from this valley to one of the four Stone Age sites, the study authors say that humans took the colorful, shiny materials to the other three.
“We have calculated whether the stones used may have been transported via the local Komati and Mbuluzi rivers. However, this could only have happened as far as Hlalakahle,” Bader said in the release. “Even if we assume that the hunter-gatherers took the shortest routes, we still find considerable distances between the rock deposits and the places where the stones were used.”
Value of Stone Age Tools
According to the researchers, Stone Age people seemed to select certain stones at certain times, with the popularity of red jasper overtaking that of green chalcedony around 30,000 years ago. “Both colors occurred close together in the same valley and in the same river deposits,” Bader said in the release. “So we can assume a deliberate selection of different materials at different times.”
Though colorful and shiny stones hold certain cultural significances today, their Stone Age value remains unclear. “We can only speculate as to whether the colors had a symbolic meaning,” Bader added in the release, pointing to a new mystery for future research to solve.
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
Journal of Archaeological Science. Decoding Hunter-Gatherer-Knowledge and Selective Choice of Lithic Raw Materials During the Middle and Later Stone Age in Eswatini
Sam Walters is a journalist covering archaeology, paleontology, ecology, and evolution for Discover, along with an assortment of other topics. Before joining the Discover team as an assistant editor in 2022, Sam studied journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
