Digs Reveal Stone-Age Weapons Industry With Staggering Output

Obsidian—a glasslike, volcanic rock—is abundant on the slopes of Mount Arteni, an extinct volcano. Photograph by Ellery Frahm

Millions of weapons were made at Paleolithic “factory” in the Caucasus.

Under a cloudy winter sky, the eastern slope of Mount Arteni has the dull monotone of a barren wasteland. At 6,715 feet, its spare crest is dwarfed by the snow-capped 13,419-foot summit of nearby Mount Aragats, the highest point in the Republic of Armenia. The only signs of life are ragged clumps of wild grass, bent horizontal in a frigid wind from the high Caucasus.

Then the clouds suddenly break, and Arteni explodes into a dazzling mosaic of sunlit mirrors. Every square foot of ground, as far as the eye can see, is carpeted with fragments of glassy obsidian, many of them chipped and flaked into razor-sharp weapons and tools.

“We are looking at the remains of a gigantic open-air workshop,” says archaeologist Boris Gasparyan of Armenia’s National Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology. Countless blades, hand axes, scrapers, chisels, arrowheads, and spearheads produced at the mountainside “factory” circulated over a vast exchange network that long precedes the oldest recorded instances of formal trade. [...] news.nationalgeographic.com


Actualización 25-04-15: Monte Arteni: primera carrera armamentista de la historia - Los Andes Diario
... Hasta donde la vista alcanza, cada metro cuadrado del piso está alfombrado con fragmentos de vidriosa obsidiana, muchos de ellos astillados y descamados para formar armas y herramientas filosas como navajas.

“Estamos viendo los restos de un gigantesco taller al aire libre”, dice el arqueólogo Boris Gasparyan, del Instituto Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología de Armenia. Incontables cuchillas, hachas de mano, espátulas, cinceles, puntas de flecha y lanza producidas en la “fábrica” del costado del monte circularon en una vasta red de intercambio que precede por mucho los ejemplos más antiguos registrados de comercio formal.

Equipados con nueva tecnología que puede identificar con precisión el origen de las herramientas de obsidiana (hasta a una vena de lava particular de un volcán específico), los científicos han llegado a creer que Arteni fue un componente central en lo que representa una industria armamentista paleolítica de largo alcance...