Emily Chan
A set of prehistoric stone artifacts from the last ice age was recently found to contain 15,800-year-old engravings.
The stone “plaquettes” were discovered at an ice age campsite called Gönnersdorf, which is located on the banks of the Rhine River in Germany.
Plaquettes are pieces of stone, bone, ivory, or antler with a flat surface carved with engravings or artwork.
They are often associated with European cultures from the Upper Paleolithic, a period that dates from roughly 50,000 to 12,000 years ago.
The engravings on the Gönnersdorf plaquettes depict fish and grid-like patterns that researchers have interpreted as fishing nets or traps.
According to the research team, which included experts from Durham University in the United Kingdom and the Leibniz Center for Archaeology in Germany, the engravings are the earliest known depictions of fishing with nets or traps in European prehistory.
Until now, such detailed illustrations of fishing with nets had not been recorded for the Upper Paleolithic.
In the past, indirect evidence of fishing nets with an Upper Paleolithic background was identified, but they were mostly inferred from impressions of textiles or reconstructions.
The Gönnersdorf plaquettes clearly portray images of fish alongside what appears to be nets. The team used an advanced imaging technology called reflectance transformation imaging (RTI) to detect the engravings.
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