30,000-YEAR-OLD WILD FLAX FIBERS

Science 11 September 2009:Vol. 325. no. 5946, p. 1359DOI: 10.1126/science.1175404

30,000-Year-Old Wild Flax FibersEliso Kvavadze,1 Ofer Bar-Yosef,2,* Anna Belfer-Cohen,3 Elisabetta Boaretto,4 Nino Jakeli,5 Zinovi Matskevich,2 Tengiz Meshveliani5
A unique finding of wild flax fibers from a series of Upper Paleolithic layers at Dzudzuana Cave, located in the foothills of the Caucasus, Georgia, indicates that prehistoric hunter-gatherers were making cords for hafting stone tools, weaving baskets, or sewing garments. Radiocarbon dates demonstrate that the cave was inhabited intermittently during several periods dated to 32 to 26 thousand years before the present (kyr B.P.), 23 to 19 kyr B.P., and 13 to 11 kyr B.P. Spun, dyed, and knotted flax fibers are common. Apparently, climatic fluctuations recorded in the cave’s deposits did not affect the growth of the plants because a certain level of humidity was sustained.
1 Institute of Paleobiology, National Museum of Georgia, Tbilisi 380007, Georgia.2 Department of Anthropology, Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.3 Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University, Jerusalem 91905, Israel.4 Radiocarbon Dating and Cosmogenic Isotopes Laboratory, Kimmel Center for Archaeological Science, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel, and Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan 59100, Israel.5 Georgian State Museum, Department of Prehistory, Tbilisi 380105, Georgia.