The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced on Wednesday its research on the earliest evidence of warfare and organized arming, showing mass production of weapons as far back as 7,200-years-ago, in the Southern Levant area.

“Yet again, archaeology teaches us that history does repeat itself” IAA director Eli Escusido said in a press release, referring to the ongoing war between Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas in Gaza.

“The IAA researchers’ understandings open a window to a deeper understanding of the life and relationships between groups of people in prehistoric periods,” Escuido added.

The research was led by an IAA team consisting of Dr. Gil Haklay, Enno Bron, Dr. Dina Shalem, Dr. Ianir Milevski and Nimrod Getzov. It was based upon the examination of 424 slingstones from the Early Chalcolithic period (c. 5800–4500 BCE) uncovered at the Israeli archaeological sites ‘En Esur in the northern Sharon plain, and at ‘En Zippori in the Lower Galilee.

“The stones, that were intended to be projected from a sling, are smoothed, with a specific biconical aerodynamic form, enabling exact and effective projection,” the archaeological team said in the press release.

The collection of hundreds of slingstones were mostly manufactured from hard limestone-dolomite and almost identical. The researchers discovered a near uniformity in length, width and height.

“These stones are, in fact, the earliest evidence of warfare in the Southern Levant. The similarity of the slingstones points to large-scale industrial production. The effort put into the aerodynamic form and the smoothing of the stones’ surface indicate that they were intended to be exact and deadly weapons,” the researchers described the meaning behind their discovery.

Their findings point to an organized preparation for battle, which the researchers theorized may have been a community effort toward the slingstone ammunition production, adding that it seemed to have indicated a change in the Early Chalcolithic period.

The press release explained, “If so, there was an escalation in preparations for warfare, involving a change from individual to large-scale production, employing many people,” saying it was “possibly between local powers.”

“Similar slingstones have been found at other sites in the country, mainly from the Hula Valley and the Galilee in the north to the northern Sharon, but this is the first time that they have been found in excavations in such large concentrations,” the team added.

The research was published as “Up in Arms: Slingstone Assemblages from the Late Prehistoric Sites of ‘En Ẓippori and ‘En Esur,” in the academic journal Atiqot, pages 1-22.

Source - i24news/X - Image - Emil Aladjem/Israel Antiquities Authority