What is it about?
Early stone sickles and knives in North China are often linked mainly to cereal harvesting. We studied 140 stone tools from the Peiligang site and compared archaeological traces with experiments using replica tools. Upper Paleolithic flaked tools were used for a wide range of plant and animal materials. In the Early Neolithic, flakes continued to serve flexible roles, but their plant-related use was limited to soft plants and they yielded no fiber residues. In contrast, polished cutting tools were more strongly associated with plant processing and preserved fiber residues, showing that they were used to harvest and process fiber-producing plants. Experiments also showed that these tools were only slightly more efficient than flakes for cutting seed-bearing grasses, but much more effective for cutting tougher-stemmed and fiber-producing plants. Together, these findings suggest that plant fiber production was an important factor in the development of these early cutting tools, broadening our understanding of technological change during the transition to farming.
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Why is it important?
Our findings show that the emergence of polished cutting tools in early Neolithic North China cannot be explained by cereal harvesting alone. By combining experiments, use-wear, and microscopic plant residues across a Paleolithic-Neolithic sequence, we identify plant fiber production as an important but previously underappreciated factor in technological specialization. This broadens interpretations of early agricultural tools beyond food production and highlights the role of non-food plant resources, craft activities, and changing labor demands in the transition to farming.
Perspectives
I hope this article encourages people to think about early agriculture as something broader than food production alone. Plants were not only eaten; they were also used to make fibers, cordage, textiles, tools, and many other things that were part of everyday life. By paying more attention to these less visible uses of plants, I think we can gain a fuller picture of how farming societies developed and how changes in daily work, craft production, and technology were connected. More than anything, I hope this study helps bring non-food plant use into wider discussions of the origins and development of agriculture.
Ran Chen
Stanford University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Plant fiber exploitation contributed to the emergence of ground-edged cutting tools in North China, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, September 2026, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2608882123.
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