Robert Enzmann

In today’s Look What I Found, we have an Ice Age Languages document from the Archive! Dr. Enzmann spent 40 years translating a language that was inscribed into thousands of small stones during the Bølling ice ages around 12,500 BC. The image above is one of them, about the size of your palm, from Gönnersdorf, Germany, and astonishingly provides insight into how people living through the Bølling ice age utilized their surroundings to safely heat their homes – not caves, but actual homes!

On the other side of this small stone, there is a hole in the center. This was used as a palm stone, mostly during hunting trips. A person sets the stone in the palm of their hand and puts a stick in the hollow. Either they or a second person uses a fire bow, like a bow and arrow, with the horsehair cord wrapped around the stick, drawing it back and forth, spinning the stick faster than can be done by hand. Add a little dried horse dung, and that will spark up quite nicely!

There is so much to learn about how people kept their homes safe and functional tens of thousands of years before indoor plumbing and electricity. You can purchase Dr. Enzmann’s book, ‘Ice Age Language,’ here.