Tens of thousands of years before written history, small bands of hunter-gatherers moved through the volcanic highlands of what is now Armenia with a purposefulness that defies older assumptions about prehistoric simplicity. A new analysis of 1,770 stone artifacts from Ararat-1 Cave — spanning a window between 33,000 and 52,000 years ago — reveals that these people carried prized obsidian tools across distances of up to 200 kilometers while fashioning disposable implements from local stone, a distinction that speaks to genuine strategic thinking. The cave itself, it turns out, was not a home b