Archaeologists have discovered a 9,000-year-old workshop, which experts say holds secrets as to how the world’s last hunter-gatherers survived, reported Archaeology Mag, citing the study published in the journal PLOS One.
Workshop Contained Ancient Artifacts
The find was unearthed at the Ravin Blanc X site, located in Senegal’s Falémé Valley, which was first discovered in 2017 by a team from the University of Geneva. Relatively small, it covers only 25 square meters, but is particularly deep, and the artifacts within are preserved under a Neolithic layer which experts say provides one of the clearest pictures yet of the Holocene era.
The University of Geneva’s excavation, which was carried out in collaboration with the Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire, uncovered remnants of a quartz knapping workshop along with a fireplace. Also found at the site were small stone tools, known as microliths, which were used as hunting instruments. Archaeologists recovered no completely intact tools, but from the remnants they were able to flean that, compared to similar artifacts found in other West African savannah locations, these tools were of a much more advanced technology, suggesting collaboration between disparate cultures.
UNIGE-ARCAN
C. Pruvost et al., PLOS One (2025)
Study Recontextualizes Daily Lives of Ancient People
Researchers were able to analyze flakes of stone and discarded cores, reassembling some of the fragments to determine the tecniques used to craft the ancient tools, including how the manufacturer’s selected the quartz used. Analysis of charcoal found in the fireplace determined which sort of wood was burned, while geomorphologists, sedimentologists, and paleoenvironmentalists examined the various soils and plant remains in an effort to reconstruct the landscape.
The study has offered unprecedented insight into the technical prowess and the ecological conditions which dictated the day-to-day lives of prehistoric cultures, and marks a watershed moment in history wherein hunter-gatherer practices gradually gave way to more agricultural pursuits such as pottery-making, herding, and farming.
