The 30,000 -year -old toolbox shows what the old hunter has worn in a pocket

A set of stone tools found in the Czech Republic seems to be the personal toolbox of a hunter-chief who lived around 30,000 years ago. The 29 artefacts, which include blades and points intended for hunting, skin, basic butcher’s shop, offer a rare overview of the daily life of old hunters, explains Dominik Chlachula at the Czech Academy of Brno.

In 2009, a village road collapsed in the mountains of Pavlovske Vchy in the south-east of the country, opening abandoned cellars that archaeologists began to study. In 2021, they found a deeper level of the site, called Milovice IV, containing charcoal dated between 29,550 and 30,250 years. There, the researchers found horses and reindeer bones, and – more recently – a packet of stone tools, always positioned as if they had been wrapped in a leather pouch that had long since broken down.

The tools have shown significant signs of use, explains Chlachula. Most of the blades were used to cut and scratch the bones, wood and skins, and bore marks that have been attached to a handle. Some of the points had fractures or microscopic traces of impact, and it was apparently used as a tip of a spear or an arrow.

Several of the pieces had been recycled from older and different tools, which suggests that a good stone was rare or that the hunter was aware of not waste resources, he said.

Other analyzes have revealed that around two -thirds of the tools had been made from icy deposit stones found at least 130 kilometers to the north – and much further if you use winding trails to reach them. Most of the others seemed to come from western Slovakia, about 100 kilometers southeast. Whether the owner acquired the stones directly from deposits or through a sales network remains unknown, explains Chlachula.

Many parts were too worn or broken to be used, he explains. But it is possible that the hunter kept them in the hope of recycling them – or even for their sentimental value.

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