Micka in the lab on the Xixi campus of Zhejiang University
Micka scraping an animal hide by hand as ancient people did Photo provided to Hangzhoufeel
Story
By Daria Fominykh
“Are you a caveman?” “You’re such a Neanderthal!” “Stone Age thinking!” -- While most of us use these phrases as jokes to mock rudeness or ignorance, he finds Stone Age people fascinating, spending much of his time imagining what it was like to live among them.
No, Micka Baillet is not lost in fantasy. Quite the opposite--his work significantly contributes to our understanding of prehistoric humans. Micka is a French anthropologist, a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Art and Archaeology at Zhejiang University, and a guest researcher at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.
He used to focus solely on Europe, but when it came time for his postdoctoral research, he realized a radical shift in cultural and geographic context was needed for growth. Two years ago, he traveled to South China to delve into the mysterious prehistoric world of the Zhejiang and Lingnan regions, as well as northern Vietnam.
On one of the first warm, sunny days of the year, with cherry blossoms and tulips blooming under a clear blue sky, we sat by the window in Micka’s lab on Zhejiang University’s Xixi campus. The table was scattered with stones, flints, an antler, a natural piece of iron-sulfur, a large shell, bamboo, and dried tree mushrooms. Some stones had sharp edges resembling knives. Micka later demonstrated how the iron-sulfur could start a fire.
“This is a rough reconstruction of southern China’s material culture made by local Homo sapiens 30,000 years ago,” Micka said in his soft French accent, pointing to what many might dismiss as primitive tools. But what he said next was truly unexpected.
“These are replicas of objects I studied in a cave in Nanning. I made them myself, using the same tools and techniques ancient people used.” He picked up a small stone. “I used this to cut down a tree. It took about 400 strokes to fell a 10-centimeter-thick trunk. That’s how I test whether these tools actually worked.”
Micka doesn’t just excavate ancient sites--he studies artifacts, figures out their uses, and then recreates them using only materials that would have been available at the time. Whether it’s fire-making, animal butchering, or tool-making, he wants to understand every aspect of prehistoric life.
In Tonglu County, Micka contributed to the study of relics at the Shenjiafan site believed to be a “stone tool workshop” from the Liangzhu Culture period.
It might seem impossible to truly understand how people lived thousands of years ago. But for Micka, it’s a lifelong passion. And it all started with a lucky accident at age seven.
“I really don’t know why,” he laughed. “No one in my family worked in archaeology. Most were workers, but they had a romantic view of the past. Maybe that’s why, as a kid, I noticed real prehistoric weapons on the ground of my school--where hundreds of kids had played football for decades.” He shared this excitedly, mixing in some Chinese from the ChineseSurfing classes he takes weekly.
Later, he learned that his school had been built on an ancient archaeological site. The artifact he found was sent to the National Museum of Prehistory.
Since age ten, Micka has joined excavations every summer. As a university student specializing in prehistory, he learned to work with animal hides--scraping them by hand and turning them into leather using only stone tools. During his PhD and postdoctoral years, he lived not on campus but in a treehouse deep in a French forest--his base for ten years. “No shower, no running water, no internet,” he smiled. “But it was perfect to dive into prehistory. In the forest, I could fully focus--something hard to do in a big city like Bordeaux or Hangzhou.”
So how does he solve the mysteries of ancient relics? Micka explains: “I already have the artifacts--I just need to figure out the missing pieces, like the techniques used to make fire.” Holding up a chipped pebble, he continued, “In France, prehistoric people used stones like this to start fires. Under a microscope, I found wear marks and traces of reddish pigment. Chemical analysis revealed it was sulfur. That’s the key to reconstructing invisible practices.”
Most people wouldn’t notice, but Micka can “read” these traces. Simply striking two stones doesn’t create a spark--one must contain sulfur. Without this knowledge, ancient fire-starting would have been impossible. And modern matches? They might never have existed.
Using everyday objects, Micka seeks to uncover regional techniques that ancient people used--ones that may have gone unnoticed elsewhere. His ultimate goal? To create a “cultural map” of Eurasia from the prehistoric era. What intrigues him most is a central question: did early Homo sapiens form distinct cultural regions, or did people across vast distances behave in fundamentally similar ways?
Now, Micka plans to continue comparing lifestyles and techniques across Eurasia, tracing the earliest hints of culture. And hopefully, we’ll hear exciting discoveries from him in the years to come.