Archaeological Occurrences of Early Pleistocene Age from the Shungura Formation, Lower Omo Valley, Ethiopia

Oldowan lithic assemblages are often portrayed as a product of the need to obtain sharp flakes for cutting into animal carcases. However, ethnographic and experimental research indicates that the optimal way to produce flakes for such butchering purposes is via bipolar reduction of small cryptocrystalline pebbles rather than from larger crystalline cores resembling choppers. Ethnographic observations of stone tool-using hunter-gatherers in environments comparable with early hominins indicate that most stone tools (particularly chopper forms and flake tools) were used for making simple shaft tools including spears, digging sticks and throwing sticks. These tools bear strong resemblances to Oldowan stone tools. Bipolar reduction for butchering probably preceded chopper-like core reduction and provides a key link between primate nut-cracking technologies and the emergence of more sophisticated lithic technologies leading to the Oldowan.

Section: (A) Spearsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Insights into early lithic technologies from ethnography

Hayden¹

2015

“…By the 1970s, nearly all the scientific community agreed that the earliest evidence of culture was to be found in Africa, especially in the area of the Rift Valley. Continued fieldwork led to the discovery of even older assemblages than those in Olduvai and Koobi Fora; in Omo (figure 1), lithic assemblages were discovered in the Shungura Formation [17,18]. With a provisional age of 2.04 Myr-subsequently pushed back to 2.34 Myr [51]-the Omo sites provided some of the earliest evidence for stone toolmaking.…”

Section: The Establishment Of the Modern Chrono-stratigraphic Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The oldest lithic assemblages discovered so far are substantially younger, with the earliest evidence at Gona dated at 2.6 Myr [1]. The Gona stone tools are followed by approximately 2.3 Myr lithic assemblages in West Turkana [78], Omo [17,18] and Hadar [52]. Close to 2 Myr Oldowan assemblages are also documented in Kanjera [81], Koobi Fora [82] and Fejej [83], followed by the classic sequences at Olduvai [16], Koobi Fora [84] and others.…”

Section: A Current View Of the Earliest Stone Tool-makingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A rolled pebble or a nodule of chert, or a rough lump of almost any kind of rock is trimmed very roughly along one edge or side, so as to produce a jagged cutting edge' [22, p. 144], and a formal definition would follow, asserting that 'The Oldowan culture comprises a series of artefacts which are made either from water-worn pebbles or from lumps of rock. The piece of material to be made into a tool was then trimmed very roughly by striking off flakes in two directions so that the line of 1999 sophisticated reduction sequences reported at Lokalalei 2C [13] 1997 earliest stone tools dated at 2.5 Ma in Gona [14] 1973 first archaeological discoveries in Hadar [15] 1971 publication of excavations in Olduvai Beds I and II [16] 1969 first lithics discovered in Omo [17,18] 1961 radiometric dating of the Oldowan at Olduvai [19] 1960 discovery of Homo habilis, considered the first Oldowan toolmaker [20] 1959 discovery of Zinjanthropus boisei associated with Oldowan tools [21] 1934 formal description of the Oldowan [22,23] 1931 Louis Leakey reports 'pre-Chellean' artefacts in Olduvai [12] 1913 Hans Reck reports fossiliferous beds in Olduvai [24] intersection of these flake scars gave a jagged cutting edge along one side of the pebble or lump of rock' [23, p. 40]. The Oldowan was not automatically accepted by all researchers as evidence of the earliest human culture in Africa.…”

Section: Early Perspectives On the Origins Of Stone Tool Technologymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The origins of stone tool technology in Africa: a historical perspective

Torre

2011

The search for the earliest stone tools is a topic that has received much attention in studies on the archaeology of human origins. New evidence could position the oldest traces of stone tool-use before 3.39 Myr, substantially earlier than previously documented. Nonetheless, the first unmistakable evidence of tool-making dates to 2.6 Ma, the period in which Oldowan assemblages first appear in the East African record. However, this is not an unchangeable time boundary, and considerations about the tempo and modo of tool-making emergence have varied through time. This paper summarizes the history of research on the origins of stone knapping in Africa and places the current evidence in a historical perspective.

“…Systematic core reduction strategies do in fact prevail in early toolkits, whose relative sophistication is commonly acknowledged today [18]. The oldest stone industries are African and date to 2.6-2.3 Ma or older [19] at Gona [20,21] and Hadar [18,22] in Ethiopia, in Ethiopia's Omo Basin [12,[23][24][25] and West Turkana [19,26,27] in Kenya. Any morpho-technological dichotomy between macro-tools (hammerstones) and cutting tools (debitage) in these oldest core-flake assemblages does not appear to vary according to raw material type, making it all the more difficult to establish.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Limestone percussion tools from the late Early Pleistocene sites of Barranco León and Fuente Nueva 3 (Orce, Spain)

Barsky

Vergès

Sala

et al. 2015

In recent years, there is growing interest in the study of percussion scars and breakage patterns on hammerstones, cores and tools from Oldowan African and Eurasian lithic assemblages. Oldowan stone toolkits generally contain abundant small-sized flakes and their corresponding cores, and are characterized by their structural dichotomy of heavy- and light-duty tools. This paper explores the significance of the lesser known heavy-duty tool component, providing data from the late Lower Pleistocene sites of Barranco León and Fuente Nueva 3 (Orce, Spain), dated 1.4–1.2 Myr. Using quantitative and qualitative data from the large-sized limestone industries from these two major sites, we present a new methodology highlighting their morpho-technological features. In the light of the results, we discuss the shortfalls of extant classificatory methods for interpreting the role of percussive technology in early toolkits. This work is rooted in an experimental program designed to reproduce the wide range of percussion marks observed on the limestone artefacts from these two sites. A visual and descriptive reference is provided as an interpretative aid for future comparative research. Further experiments using a variety of materials and gestures are still needed before the elusive traces yield the secrets of the kinds of percussive activities carried out by hominins at these, and other, Oldowan sites.