Among the flint artefacts presented in the exhibition, a distinctive collection of specimens dating to the Middle Stone Age – the Mesolithic. These specimens vary in shape and function, including cores, tools for processing leather, wood, and bone, as well as weapon components such as arrowheads. The only common element among them is their size – usually no more than 5 cm in length. This was primarily due to the environment in which their makers lived and the type of hunter-gatherer economy they pursued. Areas that were sparsely covered with vegetation during the cold periods of the late Ice Age began to be overgrown with increasingly lush forests as the climate warmed – similar to the primeval forests we find today in strict national parks. Natural flint outcrops, easily found by reindeer hunters, became increasingly less accessible as the vegetation expanded. Difficulties in obtaining raw materials forced European hunting communities to gradually miniaturize their stone objects. The forms of some tools also changed. Previous cutting tools made from single blades were replaced by those composed of several small cutting inserts set in wooden or bone frames. Leaf-shaped arrowheads were replaced with trapezoidal inserts formed from small pieces, specially broken and blunted on the sides of the blades. This process optimization allowed the production of three to five smaller arrowheads instead of one. Harpoons, incorporating variously shaped microlithic geometric inserts, were used for fishing in rivers. An additional stimulus that may have influenced the miniaturization of Mesolithic communities’ toolmaking was undoubtedly their economic activity, which consisted essentially of collecting naturally growing plants, supplemented by hunting forest game. This type of economy did not require significant interference with the surrounding natural environment. There was no need to clear large areas of land to prepare farmland. Advanced woodworking techniques were not employed, so there was no need to develop large-scale woodworking tools. Recorded axes, known as “awls,” equivalent to later Neolithic axes, at some Mesolithic sites confirm that Middle Stone Age people possessed the ability to fell and process large trees—for example, for the production of dugout canoes—but this was never as common as among later communities based on agriculture or animal husbandry. This state of affairs is also confirmed by archaeological research on hunter-gatherer communities in the Polish Lowlands, dating back to the end of the Stone Age. Alongside new civilizational achievements, such as pottery, a nearly unchanged Mesolithic inventory of flint tools still exists.
