6000-year old tunic and other artifacts found in melting snow

[n2doc]

By Melissa Hogenboom
Science reporter, BBC News


The well-worn tunic was incredibly well preserved and was made from wool

An Iron Age tunic is among the discoveries found under melting snow on Norwegian mountains.

Other findings include Neolithic arrows and bow fragments, thought to be about 6000 years old.

Snow on the Norwegian mountains, and elsewhere, is rapidly melting due to climate change, which is now unveiling a world of well preserved new discoveries.

The findings are published in two papers in the journal Antiquity.

"The new find is of great significance for dress and textile production and how these reflect the interplay between northern Europe and the Roman world," said Marianne Vedeler from the University of Oslo, Norway, who analysed the garment.


The tunic, found on the Norwegian Lendbreen glacier, was partly bleached from sun and wind exposure. It showed hard wear and tear and had been repaired with two patches.

more
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23849332

[Scuba]

1. 6,000 years old? That means it must have belonged to Adam himself!

As any fundy.

[DeSwiss]

15. No.....

...Adam was a 42-long figleaf.

[awoke_in_2003]

16. That's a lot of fig leaf.

[Emit]

29. Bwhahaha!

[shraby]

2. It's a fantastic piece of material! Look how tight the weave is. All I can say is WoW.

[theHandpuppet]

5. I noticed that, too.

I expected the fabric to be much more coarse. Impressive.

[Warpy]

6. The finely spun fiber and the construction are surprising

These are set in sleeves, something other cultures didn't develop for thousands of years. They're not set in deeply enough, the person would have had trouble raising his or her arms, but those seams appear to be slightly curved and that would help.

The wool was spun very finely and the fabric woven very finely. I have to think the person who wore this was special in some way, given the hundreds of hours it took to produce this garment.

I just wonder what the original colors might have been.

Thanks for feeding the fiber junkies.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

10. I get the feeling they used something like a loom.

[Warpy]

12. Well of course they did, and a fairly wide one at that

What type of loom is likely to be hotly debated for a long time, although it was most likely a variation of the warp weighted loom. Here's Part I of a primer on how to build one:

[knitter4democracy]

14. The yarn and weaving aren't that surprising, given the age.

I'd love to get a close look at it, though. Z-twist or S-twist? Number of plies? I'm dying over here!

[Warpy]

25. Me too

I wish they'd taken a closer shot with a ruler next to it. I also wonder if they found any trace of dye on it, although that's a long shot unless you take it apart.

Its survival does prove one thing: natural fiber clothing lasts better than the plastic crap in the stores.

[knitter4democracy]

32. From the frayed edges, they could get a sample.

Thanks for the link to the close-up pic. Now, I seriously need to see that thing in person.

[BlueJazz]

3. I didn't realize that that quality of clothes could be spun 6000 years ago.

[starroute]

19. Weaving may go back more than 34,000 years

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090910142352.htm

A team of archaeologists and paleobiologists has discovered flax fibers that are more than 34,000 years old, making them the oldest fibers known to have been used by humans. The fibers, discovered during systematic excavations in a cave in the Republic of Georgia, are described in the journal Science. ...

Some of the fibers were twisted, indicating they were used to make ropes or strings. Others had been dyed. Early humans used the plants in the area to color the fabric or threads made from the flax. ...

The discovery of such ancient fibers was a surprise to the scientists. Previously, the oldest known were imprints of fibers in small clay objects found in Dolni Vestonice, a famous site in the Czech Republic some 28,000 years old.


http://www.jewishfederations.org/page.aspx?id=206450

More than 30,000 years ago someone living in a cave in the Caucasus Mountains twisted wild flax together and dyed it, producing the earliest known fibers made by humans, scientists report.

"Making strings and ropes is a sophisticated invention," said Ofer Bar-Yosef, a professor of prehistoric archaeology at Harvard University. "They might have used this fiber to create parts of clothing, ropes, or baskets - for items that were mainly used for domestic activities." ...

Some of the fibers appear to have been dyed using plant materials common in the area, the researchers said. The color range included yellow, red, blue, violet, black and green.

"The colored fibers may indicate that the inhabitants of the cave were engaged in producing colorful textiles," they reported.


http://archaeology.about.com/od/middlepaleolithic/ss/textile_dzudzuana_3.htm

The most well-known evidence for the Upper Paleolithic use of fibers is, of course, illustrated on this page: fabric apparel on so-called venus figurines, including the 24,000 year old Venus of Willendorf. Other accepted archaeological evidence for the use of fibers of whatever date includes the recovery of eyed needles, awls, spindle whorls, combs, shuttles, netting needles and frames, and looms or other specialized tools related to weaving. Soffer (2004 below) has suggested that one use for the ivory baton discovered on many Paleolithic sites might have been used as a batten, to tamp down weft rows on a loom, based on the recognition of usewear on the long edges. Other accepted evidence includes sickle gloss and plant residues on stone tools; and impressions of plaited fibers or textiles in ceramic vessels, unfired clay and figurines like the Venus.

[BlueJazz]

23. Wow!...I had no idea. Thanks so much for posting this. What a wealth of information.

[Surya Gayatri]

24. Thanks for all of this extra info, starroute. Fascinating!

[Warpy]

30. A lot of fiber history has been turned on its head recently

as bits and pieces have been found and interpreted by fiber artists.

Oetzi, the man who was discovered frozen in the Alps some years ago, had a finely woven cape of grasses. His other clothing was made of hides. He was reliably dated to 3300 BCE, so weaving was happening then and sporting a copper axe that wasn't supposed to be invented for many centuries after his death.

Felt has also been found, I believe, and is likely a form of cloth that predates weaving. All that needs to be done is pick animal hair off bushes during spring molting season lay it out, and shock it with alternating hot and cold water.

Textiles and spinning might turn out to be the key crafts that began civilization. Both clearly predated agriculture, at least as we know at this point.

[starroute]

31. Strings and knots go back even further

The making of string figures is one of humankind's most ancient arts and was clearly known among the first people to leave Africa. Long before the art of twisting plant fibers together was devised, vines and animal sinews served the purpose.

There are suggestions that when we first lost our body hair -- which probably happened with Homo erectus, 1.8 million years ago -- and left nothing for infants to cling to, women would have had to invent some kind of baby-sling to serve the purpose.

At the same time, those earliest hunter-gatherers would have needed to haul all kinds of stuff around. It doesn't do much good to walk upright and have your hands free if your hands are always full. Weapons for hunting and tools for skinning game, good rocks for making tools, the day's collections of plant food or shellfish, even the shamans' treasured assortment of medicinal herbs and power objects. All needed bags to hold them and belts or straps to suspend them from.

Weaving is a particularly sophisticated form of the manipulation of fibers, and it probably arose only in the late Ice Age, around the same time as nets were being devised to catch fish and small game (which led to a significant increase in life expectancy and set off the first explosive increase in human population size.) But it had a long, long prehistory.

[Control-Z]

4. Discoveries like this

usually thrill me beyond comprehension. But this just makes me sad - and worried. Our beautiful earth.

[louis-t]

28. My first thought, too. This is fascinating but

I sorta wish they hadn't been able to find it.

[TheDebbieDee]

7. I wish the article stated the width of the garment, in inches, from armpit to armpit.......

that way, we could get some idea of the size of the person/people that wore it.

[starroute]

8. If it's Iron Age and from the time of Rome, it's not 6000 years old

It looks like the arrows were 6000 years old, but the tunic is much younger -- say about 2000 years old. That would make a lot more sense in terms of its construction.

[East Coast Pirate]

11. That was my question.

I thought the Roman Empire started in 27 BC, not 4027 BC. But what the hell do I know?

[NBachers]

18. "It was made between 230 and 390 AD" - from the article

[Warpy]

13. Not necessarily

It's a bit more likely it was all contemporary, the tunic the same age as the neolithic tools.

After all, they have found brassieres from the Dark Ages, the corset being a later garment rather than an earlier one.

A lot of fiber history is being turned on its head these days.

[HooptieWagon]

26. Thnx. That was my first thought.

When I saw the 6000yo in headlines, and reference to Romans in the article, I was WTF?

[matt819]

9. Did they also find my socks?

I was wondering where all the stuff in my dryer went.

[awoke_in_2003]

17. And I can't make underwear last a year. nt

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

20. What's the big deal...

... I can get t-shirts at our local Thrift Town in better shape than that for just a couple bucks.

My wife would throw that 6000 year old tunic away before I even got a chance to wear it anyway.
She does that with my Thrift Town t-shirts sometimes too.

[Flying Squirrel]

21. There's no tag

How do you know whether to wash with like colors or dry clean only? Color-safe bleach ok? Union labor or sweatshop?

[QSkier]

22. The tunic was NOT 6000 years old, the arrows were!

From the article: "It was made between 230 and 390 AD and is one of only a handful of tunics that exists from this period. "

[razorman]

27. I hope they can find the owner. He must be chilly by now.

Meanwhile, keep it in the 'lost and found' box.