Czech Man's Stone in Barn's Foundations Is Rare Bronze Age Spearhead Mold

3/19/2026 at 10:10:58 AM

Bound the halves with copper wire! I always end up with more questions than answers on these things, how was the wire made? I suppose if I'd thought about it, clearly they could do wire for jewellery.

Never ceases to impress me how long ago we were capable of such ornate manufacturing really—most of the time I think progress has been wildly more rapid over the last century or so, and it has in some ways, but in others we're still just doing things we've been doing for millennia.

by OJFord

3/19/2026 at 11:35:10 AM

I was thinking about how they did the hollow part. The mold needs a carefully centered stopper where the shaft goes. Some sort of jig of wires to keep it in place.

by card_zero

3/19/2026 at 12:49:35 PM

There's index hole on the bottom, you can see it running across. See more Stone Moulds from Terramare (Northern Italy): Analytical Approach and Experimental Reproduction Persistent Identifier https://exarc.net/ark:/88735/10145

Fig 11. Ophiolite multiple mould for razor and spear-head.

by rnewme

3/19/2026 at 12:12:55 PM

It wouldnt have looked or felt like wire. It wouldnt be very round. Hammer a thin plate then slice a spiral with an obsidian knife. You wont by making knots with it, just wrapping it around molds. But i would think that wet cord or sinew would have worked just as well. Or they could put the mold in the ground, letting packed dirt keep the two halfs together.

by sandworm101

3/19/2026 at 11:01:00 AM

Such an interesting artefact just sat under some guy's barn... can't help but wonder how many more items like this there are out there, and how many of them we'll never find before they're accidentally destroyed.

by jrrv

3/19/2026 at 11:31:56 AM

aren't most such artifacts found by starting to dig somewhere? how many artifacts remain buried because you just start building on top without looking what's in the ground? almost every village or city in europe has a history going back millennium or more, burying countless interesting artifacts. many of which probably have already been destroyed in the process.

to find new artifacts the best hope is to look for historical sites that have not been built over already. what i find interesting here is that now with aerial and satellite images and AI search we are able to detect such sites even when they would otherwise be unnoticed by the human eye.

by em-bee

3/19/2026 at 6:36:40 PM

There is a lot of stuff underground, especially in the regions that have been settled by humans in the first millennia of agriculture.

My favorite in Czechia was a married pair that decided to build their family house on a plot not far from the Southern Moravian city of Znojmo (2007). They started digging the foundations ...

... and found out that their future home is going to be located in the outer zone of a huge necropolis from the 8th and 9th century. Several hundred silent neighbours at the least.

by inglor_cz

3/19/2026 at 2:14:10 AM

Interesting topic, but so sad to see the Smithsonian blanketed in tacky popups and scrolling ad banners, yikes

by gedy

3/19/2026 at 10:45:39 AM

In this day and age, who on HN browses the web without an ad-blocker??

by fransje26

3/19/2026 at 12:41:23 PM

I do. Never have used an ad blocker and never will.

by bookofjoe

3/19/2026 at 12:51:36 PM

What's the risk?

Personally, I only see benefits.

by simonmales

3/19/2026 at 1:05:20 PM

It's not a matter of risks for me. I haven't a clue how to install an ad blocker, being a non-techie geezer. Same for VPN etc. The only code I know is Morse and I've forgotten most of it.

Every time I remark on this subject, well meaning commenters tell me how easy it is to install/use an ad blocker.

"Just..." — in my experience, statements that begin with "Just..." end up leaving me frustrated once I've tried and failed to follow the "simple"/"easy" instructions.

Also, I note that commenters here WITH ad blockers installed sometimes STILL see ads. So why bother?

I don't understand the enmity of HN in general for online ads and advertising.

by bookofjoe

3/20/2026 at 8:04:08 PM

I feel the pain of old geezers. I grew up figuring out which pixels actually do something, like an adversarial game where UI un-designers make the useful buttons look less like buttons.

uBlock Origin is the best ad blocker. The full uBlock Origin works on Firefox, but not on Google Chrome. The cut-down uBlock Origin Lite works on Google Chrome. uBlock Origin Lite still blocks many ads. Don't fall into all-or-nothing thinking. Imagine if you could block just half of the ads on cable television :) an improvement, though not perfect.

If you use Firefox, follow this link. On the right hand side, click the blue button with the label "Add to Firefox". A confirmation dialog box will pop up. Read it. Click the blue button with the text "Continue to Installation". That should install it.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...

If you use Google Chrome, follow this link. On the right hand side, click the blue button with the label "Add to Chrome". A confirmation dialog box will pop up. Read it. Click the button with the text "Add extension". That should install it.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-lite/...

by amavect

3/19/2026 at 1:20:28 PM

commenters here WITH ad blockers installed sometimes STILL see ads

very rarely.

I don't understand the enmity of HN in general for online ads and advertising

i am surprised that you noticed the one but not figured out the other. because that is also discussed at length.

advertising enables surveillance, ads cost resources, and they distract from the content.

by em-bee

3/19/2026 at 1:58:42 PM

>very rarely

Really? there's a commenter in this very thread who's having that experience. And I have seen this ad blocker FAIL issue raised here from time to time. More than "very rarely" judging from my own eyes....

>advertising enables surveillance, ads cost resources, and they distract from the content.

I'm amused whenever I see avoiding surveillance raised here. That ship has sailed. Did you notice your neighbor's Ring doorbell camera, BTW?

by bookofjoe

3/19/2026 at 3:48:12 PM

ok, maybe very rarely is too strong. i do have the experience rarely myself however. i suppose it also depends on which sites you go to. with ad surveillance even a 90% reduction is a win (my own experience is even better than that), so in my opinion it is definitely worth it.

Did you notice your neighbor's Ring doorbell camera

yes, i noticed its absence. in my home country cameras recording video beyond your own property or sound are illegal. an even in the US resistance is growing. so in my opinion that ship can still be sunk.

by em-bee

3/20/2026 at 6:35:01 AM

It's a matter of logic and capacity of the individual.

You argue online advertising but you've been exposed to offline advertising in your life a lot more. Now you are offered the choice to "turn most of it off" but you choose to spend your time replying to internet comments saying that you're stubborn and can't do it because it's hard and not 100% effective.

I'm sorry sir but your reasoning is flawed: you could have learned how to install ad block plus, noscript or whatever you want to experiment with, with all of these work out of the box, in the time needed to write your two comments.

I suppose it's worth reminding that the advertisement industry is one of the biggest economic areas of our society so the brightest of us will be coaxed into making advertising more effective, and the cat-and-mouse game between blockers and advertisers will continue forever.

You can spend the same time asking someone advice on where you're stuck, or even go ask an.. LLM.. for a simple step by step breakdown, with 1 step per line to set your pace. The options are all there at your disposal.

To complain with reason is all fine and dandy, but to not act to satiate those complaints is an area to improve on..

by x______________

3/20/2026 at 6:57:39 AM

-.-- --- ..- -.-. .- -. -.. --- .. -, .. -... . .-.. .. . ...- . .. -. -.-- --- ..-

by x______________

3/20/2026 at 12:11:03 PM

But I'm not complaining!

by bookofjoe

3/19/2026 at 1:33:04 PM

Install the "Brave" browser. It has ad blocking built in and you don't have to configure anything at all.

https://brave.com/

The button will take you to the correct download for your mobile device or desktop/laptop operating system.

One click install. No plugins, it just works.

If you don't like it, you can go back to your old browser.

Your experience without ads and tracking will be amazing. Content without distraction, annoying animations, or popups. Just the text, images, and video you want to see and nothing else. And the pages load five times faster.

by echelon

3/19/2026 at 1:54:03 PM

>Your experience without ads and tracking will be amazing.

I tried Brave for a while: meh

My experience WITH ads and tracking is amazing: every day I use the internet I marvel at how much better my life is now than it was before the www.

Clearly, many (most?) others here have the opposite point of view: À chacun son goût

by bookofjoe

3/19/2026 at 10:48:10 AM

I am using blockers! I appreciate my plugins and/or adblock home could have some issue, but point stands about the Smithsonian.

by gedy

3/19/2026 at 10:59:05 AM

I'm using uBlock, and I didn't see a single advert.

by jrrv

3/19/2026 at 7:10:10 PM

While that is indeed sad, you owe it to yourself to install Firefox (Android?) with uBlock Origin. With that setup, I'm not seeing any of that junk.

by herewulf

3/19/2026 at 12:16:27 PM

Browsing with Ublock Origin blocking all of the javascript resulted in the article appearing, but zero ads.

by pwg

3/19/2026 at 6:09:41 AM

Funny, i didnt see any ads or popups. Horray for adblockers!

by sandworm101

3/19/2026 at 5:07:08 AM

> The Smithsonian Institution endowment is a roughly $2.6 billion investment portfolio (as of 2024) that provides permanent, private financial support for its museums, research, and educational programs. It acts as a crucial supplement to federal funding, investing in diversified assets like stocks, bonds, and private equity to generate annual payouts, which generally support staff positions

I guess $2.6B isn’t enough in the late stage capitalism era to stave off tacky.

by Mistletoe

3/19/2026 at 7:43:57 AM

Hate to be a party pooper but what kind of income do you beleive is sustaining for a national museum with extensive archives, repositories, conservation costs and ongoing collection needs, quite apart from simple building maintenance, outreach and staffing?

$2.6b generates at best of the order $200m in usable funds. I would be amazed if that is even remotely close to the operating costs of an institution like this.

by ggm

3/19/2026 at 9:52:14 AM

Reading https://www.si.edu/sites/default/files/oa/smithsonian-2024-w..., they’re spending $1.7b a year.

Interesting financial report, by the way. Lots of info about what they do with photos, lists of who donated money, and then, the real financials start at page 79 of 87 and end on page 82.

by Someone

3/19/2026 at 10:06:05 AM

has "Endowment Payout 7%" which is a fine figure, both of their total revenue and of the %return on investment you get as a sustaining proposition from a long life fund.

Half the opex is federally funded. half the costs are salaries. The SI employs a lot of people and costs far, far more than the endowment to operate.

the page 80 endowment disbursement distribution is fascinating too. they do amazingly good work across the board, from this money.

I have a tiny, weenie functional duty of care on a board over a sum 1/100 of this size and if I felt we were doing as well as them in governance, I'd be proud.

I will say, I think they should lawyer up and defend the retention of the shuttle and tell the politicians to F off but I can understand reluctance to be this bald about it.

by ggm

3/19/2026 at 3:29:16 PM

How does our military fund itself? How does the war in Iran fund itself? C'mon let's be serious: it's a public service and it should be funded by the state.

by throwaway27448

3/20/2026 at 2:45:16 AM

I think thats the point I was making. I was responding to a post which suggested the endowment should be adequate to self fund. It's clearly not. It's useful, self-directed funds.

by ggm

3/19/2026 at 12:15:36 PM

This website is unusable on mobile.

by xtiansimon

3/19/2026 at 12:39:33 PM

For you.

Here are two screenshots of the website taken a moment ago on iPhone 15 Pro Max:

https://imgur.com/a/fRyE2ha

by bookofjoe

3/19/2026 at 5:37:35 AM

Now find the spearehed, please!

Is it possible? What are the chances? Was bronze age production heigh enough?

by twooclock

3/19/2026 at 7:46:32 AM

Most ancient metalwork got recycled again and again, so while there is a chance, it would be pure luck.

BTW if you visit some archeological museum, the difference between Stone Age tools and Bronze Age tools is quite striking. In the Stone Age, each tool looks different, while by the Bronze Age, the spearheads etc. are so uniform that they could have been produced in a modern factory.

by inglor_cz

3/19/2026 at 8:59:17 AM

Yes and no. Here's a pile of 19 polished stone axes:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Malone_hoard.JPG

They're admittedly different sizes, but the intent to churn them out is clear. These things were ambiguously tools or currency: they were transported long distances and hoarded.

There was another, older, stone age industrial site in France that produced thousands of beads. The way I remember it*, there was evidence that they fed themselves by trading beads for food. It's interesting to me that a stone age lifestyle might for some people resemble factory work.

*My apologies if I'm confabulating this. I think it was in the Loire Valley. I need to track down what exactly I'm half-remembering here.

by card_zero

3/19/2026 at 3:47:41 PM

>It's interesting to me that a stone age lifestyle might for some people resemble factory work.

There was not only factory work but unpleasant factory work like making birch tar and rendering fat.

by PepperdineG

3/19/2026 at 9:50:49 AM

This is an interesting counterexample, thank you. It seems that in some places, some standardization was already present back then.

by inglor_cz

3/19/2026 at 8:06:54 PM

[dead]

by _brettfitz77