Microlith

The microlith revolution began when stone tools stopped being tools and started being components. These tiny geometric shapes—triangles, trapezoids, crescents, rarely more than three centimeters long—weren't used alone. They were designed to be inserted, in rows, into wooden or bone shafts, creating composite implements with interchangeable cutting edges.

The logic was revolutionary: if one segment dulled or broke, you replaced just that segment, not the entire tool. A sickle with ten microlith blades set in mastic could be repaired indefinitely. An arrow with a microlith point could be re-armed in seconds. The single-purpose tool became a platform; the cutting edge became a consumable.

The conditions for microliths emerged from blade technology. The Aurignacian and subsequent traditions had perfected the production of standardized blades from prepared cores. Microliths took this standardization further: the blades themselves became raw material, snapped and shaped into geometric inserts. The mental shift was from making tools to making systems—the shaft as infrastructure, the microlith as module.

The geographic spread reveals multiple origins. Microliths appear in Africa by 35,000 years ago, in South Asia by 30,000 years ago, in Europe by 12,000 years ago. Each emergence responded to similar pressures: the need for efficient hunting as megafauna declined, the value of repairable tools in resource-scarce environments, the benefits of composite implements for emerging plant-processing needs.

What microliths enabled was the Neolithic toolkit. The sickle—a curved handle studded with microlith blades—harvested grain faster than anything that came before. Without sickles, agriculture might have remained garden-scale; with sickles, it could feed cities. The archaeological signature of early agriculture is unmistakable: microlith blades with the distinctive silica polish that only grain stalks produce.

The arrow, too, depended on microliths. A solid stone point at arrow velocity often shatters on impact. A hafted microlith—lighter, replaceable, sometimes designed to break off in the wound—was more effective against the medium-sized game that dominated post-glacial landscapes. When megafauna vanished and forest replaced steppe, the microlith-tipped arrow became the dominant hunting technology.

By 2026, the microlith's logic saturates technology. The replaceable blade in a utility knife, the insert in a milling machine, the modular component in any complex system—all descend from the insight that emerged 35,000 years ago: make the system durable and the cutting edge disposable. The microlith was the first platform technology, the first instance of infrastructure versus application, the first recognition that maintenance is cheaper than replacement.