A new discovery of thousands of weapons from the Paleolithic era reveals how technological developments have evolved and spread across the world. The Paleolithic era is a period of human history, which is characterized by the development of primitive stone tools. This period covers a major portion of human prehistoric technology.

The research teams include scientists from all over the world and led by a team of researchers from Royal Holloway, University of London.

The discovery has provided the evidence that the ancient technique of Levallois, which is used for making hunting weapons, was actually invented in Africa and later spread across the world, as the human population expanded.

The tools related to this kind of technology were recovered from a site in Armenia. The researchers believe that this technology was already a part of ancient Armenian communities that thrived some 325,000 to 335,000 years ago. In this part of the world, this technique is called biface that can be described as something similar to Levallois.

The technique used to make the tools reveals that the ancient communities that existed 325,000 years ago were very creative. It also found that two different technologies were adopted to make tools.

Dr. Simon Blockley and Dr. Alison MacLeod, from the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, analyzed volcanic material that preserved the archaeological site in the village of Nor Geghi, in the Kotayk Province of Armenia. With the utilization of innovative methods, a suitable material was extracted, which helped to date the Levallois tools.

After dating the tools found in Armenia, it was found that regardless of the similarities in both the techniques, the biface technique was developed independently and not as a derivative of the Levallois.

Both techniques use a mass of stone shaped into hunting tools and weapons that resemble sharp, thin flakes. However, the difference that lies is that Levallois technique shaped the tools by striking flakes from a prepared core, while biface technique used two sides of a stone to carve out flakes to form bigger tools such as axes.