Cosmic laws are beyond our comprehensions! Sometimes you search for something and you end upon finding some other things which were not subject of your search! You are destined to find out that! A similar thing happened recently; some archeologists who were searching for kinds of clues of ancient climate of the Caucasus Mountains discovered some signs of the ancient craft work!
They got some structures of the ancient plant ‘Flax’ which belongs to the ‘Linum Usitatissimum’ group and these small structures were calculated to be of more than 34,000 years old! These ones looks like needles from their shape and size; they are twisted and dyed and looks like that these were used as needles for various purposes like weaving baskets, sewing cloths or making some kind of ropes! This piece of information makes us to believe that fibers are the oldest forms of human usages!
According to Olfer Bar-Yousef, an archaeologist of Peabody Museum of Harvard, these fibers were accidentally found while examining the different layers of soil of the cave which dates back to 6000 to 36,000 years back. They were conducting the microscopic examinations of the soil. Eliso Kvavadze the famous ‘Paleobiologist’ was also with the team who were looking for some ‘pollen grains’ which can contribute some idea about the age old climatic conditions.
Dr. Bar-Yousef added that apart from the pollen, some ‘insect remains’, ‘micro-fossils’ of fungi & algae and fur of ‘Tur’ which is a wild goat, were also found by Dr. Kvavadze. Dr. Bar said, “She found many things’ but especially those flax fibers”. He added that the nature of the clay soil which remains under a wet condition all through the year might have helped the preservation of the fibers.
Many of the fibers were found in the old soil layers which can date back to 24,000 years. Some of them were with several knots, some were with intricate distortions and some were with pure proofs of being cut. On checking the dyed ones many were in black, some in gray and turquoise and one was in pink color.
Dr. Bar-Yousef added, “The fibers clearly indicate these humans were making some kind of coats or ropes”. According to him these are more strong evidences of ‘Upper Paleolithic Revolution’, which started thousands of years before; period when major social and technological changes happened to human race as a whole.
