Archaeologists Are Reconstructing the 'Invisible' Technologies of the Stone Age

Archaeologists have identified a 35,000-year-old carved ivory tool from Germany as a device for making rope and twine, rather than a symbolic object as previously thought. Experiments showed that threading plant fibers through the tool's perforated holes could produce strong rope in minutes, revealing that fiber technology was far more important to Stone Age hunter-gatherers than the archaeological record suggests. Most ancient fibers decompose over time, leaving only durable tools like this ivory baton as evidence of sophisticated prehistoric rope-making techniques.