EARLY MODERN HUMAN TOOLS

EARLY MODERN HUMAN TOOLS

20120206-hand ax brit mus.jpg
hand ax
Modern humans that lived in Blombos Cave near Capetown, South Africa 80,000 to 95,000 years ago used bone tools and sophisticated pressure-flaked points — made from stones brought more than 25 miles away — to drill holes in ocher, possibly to extract pigments to cover their faces or bodies for ritual purposes. Scientists also found bones from large fish in Blombos Cave which they believed may have been lured to an area with bait and then speared with bone points tied to wooden shafts.

Modern human tools included bone needles, fish hooks, harpoons, antler batons, and a wide assortment of scrapers, knives and engravers. Archaeological evidence from 30,000 to 10,000 B.C. shows that our ancestors were able to fracture, chip and shape rocks into a number of useful tools; use stone awls and burins (incising tools) to make barbed bone and antler harpoon points, atlatl throwing boards for spears and animal bone needles used for making animal-skin clothing.

Modern humans learned that flint heated to temperatures of 400 to 1100 degrees F and cooled slowly became more elastic and easier to work. Harpoons found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formally Zaire) were used to hunt giant catfish. They were made from bones ground to sharp points and notched with triangular teeth to grab on to slippery fish. Circular grooves to the tail helped to fasten the harpoons on sticks.

The long blades (rather than flakes) of the Upper Palaeolithic Mode 4 industries appeared during the Upper Palaeolithic between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago. The Aurignacian culture is a good example of mode 4 tool production. [Source: Wikipedia]

Websites and Resources on Hominins and Human Origins: Smithsonian Human Origins Program humanorigins.si.edu ; Institute of Human Origins iho.asu.edu ; Becoming Human University of Arizona site becominghuman.org ; Talk Origins Index talkorigins.org/origins ; Last updated 2006. Hall of Human Origins American Museum of Natural History amnh.org/exhibitions ; Wikipedia article on Human Evolution Wikipedia ; Evolution of Modern Humans anthro.palomar.edu ; Human Evolution Images evolution-textbook.org; Hominin Species talkorigins.org ; Paleoanthropology Links talkorigins.org ; Britannica Human Evolution britannica.com ; Human Evolution handprint.com ; National Geographic Map of Human Migrations genographic.nationalgeographic.com ; Humin Origins Washington State University wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules ; University of California Museum of Anthropology ucmp.berkeley.edu; BBC The evolution of man" bbc.co.uk/sn/prehistoric_life; "Bones, Stones and Genes: The Origin of Modern Humans" (Video lecture series). Howard Hughes Medical Institute.; Human Evolution Timeline ArchaeologyInfo.com ; Walking with Cavemen (BBC) bbc.co.uk/sn/prehistoric_life ; PBS Evolution: Humans pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/humans; PBS: Human Evolution Library www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library; Human Evolution: you try it, from PBS pbs.org/wgbh/aso/tryit/evolution; John Hawks' Anthropology Weblog johnhawks.net/ ; New Scientist: Human Evolution newscientist.com/article-topic/human-evolution;

Websites and Resources on Neanderthals: Wikipedia: Neanderthals Wikipedia ; Neanderthals Study Guide thoughtco.com ; Neandertals on Trial, from PBS pbs.org/wgbh/nova; The Neanderthal Museum neanderthal.de/en/ ; The Neanderthal Flute, by Bob Fink greenwych.ca. Websites and Resources on Prehistoric Art: Chauvet Cave Paintings archeologie.culture.fr/chauvet ; Cave of Lascaux archeologie.culture.fr/lascaux/en; Trust for African Rock Art (TARA) africanrockart.org; Bradshaw Foundation bradshawfoundation.com; Australian and Asian Palaeoanthropology, by Peter Brown peterbrown-palaeoanthropology.net. Fossil Sites and Organizations: The Paleoanthropology Society paleoanthro.org; Institute of Human Origins (Don Johanson's organization) iho.asu.edu/; The Leakey Foundation leakeyfoundation.org; The Stone Age Institute stoneageinstitute.org; The Bradshaw Foundation bradshawfoundation.com ; Turkana Basin Institute turkanabasin.org; Koobi Fora Research Project kfrp.com; Maropeng Cradle of Humankind, South Africa maropeng.co.za ; Blombus Cave Project web.archive.org/web; Journals: Journal of Human Evolution journals.elsevier.com/; American Journal of Physical Anthropology onlinelibrary.wiley.com; Evolutionary Anthropology onlinelibrary.wiley.com; Comptes Rendus Palevol journals.elsevier.com/ ; PaleoAnthropology paleoanthro.org.

Middle Paleolithic Tool Technologies


Neanderthal Mousterian tool

According to the University of California at Santa Barbara: “The most important point to remember about the Middle Paleolithic (about 200,000 years ago to about 40,000 years ago) stone technologies is that the emphasis shifted from core tools, like the Acheulean Handaxe, to flake tools like the Levallois point. Certainly, even at Olduvai, hominids had been taking advantage of sharp-edged flakes and even modifying them for specific tasks. The important difference in the Middle Paleolithic is that cores were being carefully shaped to produce flakes of a predetermined size and shape. The flakes were then further modified into both simple and complex tools. The two main stone tool technologies were: 1) The Levallois Technique (See Mousterian Tools Below) and 2) The Disk Core Technique. [Source: University of California at Santa Barbara =|=]

“The Disk Core Technique is not significantly different from the Levallois Technique (See Below). The technology still depends on careful core shaping and preparation in order to remove ready-to-use flakes for tools. The principal difference in the Disk Core Technique is that even more refinement and skill went into the core preparation so that more flakes could be removed from one core. Thus, the Disk Core technique is really a refinement of trends started by the Levallois technique. The exhausted cores left behind by this process often look like small disks with multiple flake scars, hence the name. =|=

“The most important thing to note about the Disk Core Technique is its efficiency. Using this technique a skilled flinknapper could produce many more usable tools from a single piece of raw material than was possible using any of the other techniques previously discussed. The process you have just seen would then be repeated, first working the other side of the core, then trimming off the rough top and bottom flake scars, perhaps removing tool flakes from the opposite end of the core. Three to five tools could probably be manufactured from a core this size by a skilled craftsman. Eventually, of course, the core would become too small and thin to produce more tools and would be discarded. This final exhausted discoidal form is all the evidence that we have of this remarkable improvement in the efficiency of lithic technology attained by Neanderthals and archaic Homo sapiens.” =|=

Mousterian Tools

The Mousterian industry is a lithic technology that replaced the Acheulean industry in Europe. Believed to have originated more than 300,000 years ago, it is named after the site of Le Moustier in France, where examples were first uncovered in the 1860s, and is associated with both Neanderthal and the earliest modern humans but is believed to have been refined and used primarily by the Neanderthals. Examples of Mousterian tools have been found in Europe and Africa. In Europe, when Mousterian tools are found, it is often assumed that it is a Neanderthal site. [Source: The Guardian, Wikipedia +]

Mousterian tools evolved from Acheulean tools, which are named after the site of Saint-Acheul in France and developed 1.76 million years ago. Acheulean tools were characterized not by a core, but by a biface, the most notable form of which was the hand axe. The earliest Acheulean ax appeared in the West Turkana area of Kenya and around the same time in southern Africa. Acheulean axes are larger, heavier and have sharp cutting edges that are chipped from opposite sides into a teardrop shape. Mousterian technology it adopted the Levallois technique — a distinctive type of stone knapping — to produce smaller and sharper knife-like tools as well as scrapers. According to the University of California at Santa Barbara: “The Levallois technique of core preparation and flake removal is the earliest of the core preparation technologies. The technology works in four distinct stages. First the edges of a cobble are trimmed into a rough shape. Second, the upper surface of the core is trimmed to remove cortex and to produce a ridge running the length of the core, Third, a platform preparation flake is removed from one end of the core to produce an even, flat striking platform for the blow that will detach the flake. Finally, the end of the core is struck at the prepared platform site, driving a longitudinal flake off of the core following the longitudinal ridge. [Source: University of California at Santa Barbara =|=]

“There are two distinct advantages to this technique. The first is that the flakes removed in this manner are already in a preliminary shape, and only require minor modification before being put to use. Second, more usable cutting edge per pound of raw material can be made this way than can be made by producing core tools. Note how the final shape of this tool closely corresponds to the initial shape of the core from which it was struck. Also, notice how little edge trimming was necessary in order to get a very keen cutting edge on this tool. With care, a number of flakes could be removed from one core, producing much more usable cutting edge with less waste than if the core were thinned into a tool itself.” =|=


Mousterian tool


Pressure Flaking Invented 75,000 in Africa, Not 20,000 Years Ago in Europe

A highly-skilled tool-making technique that shapes stones into sharp-edged tools was thought to have originated in Europe 20,000 years ago but in fact appears to have been invented by Africans some 75,000 years ago. The technique known as pressure-flaking involves using an animal bone or some other object to exert pressure near the edge of a stone piece and precisely carve out a small flake. Stone tools shaped by hard stone hammer strikes and then struck with softer strikes from wood or bone hammers. Edges are carefully trimmed by directly pressing the point of a tool made of bone on the stone. [Source: Discovery.com, Reuters, October 28, 2010 |~|]

Discovery.com reported: “Researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder examined stone tools dating from the Middle Stone Age, some 75,000 years ago, from Blombos Cave in what is now South Africa. The team found that the tools had been made by pressure flaking, whereby a toolmaker would typically first strike a stone with hammer-like tools to give the piece its initial shape, and then refine the blade’s edges and shape its tip. |~|

“The technique provides a better means of controlling the sharpness, thickness and overall shape of two-sided tools like spearheads and stone knives, said Paola Villa, a curator at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History and a co-author of the study published in the journal Science. “Using the pressure flaking technique required strong hands and allowed toolmakers to exert a high degree of control on the final shape and thinness that cannot be achieved by percussion,” Villa said. “This control helped to produce narrower and sharper tool tips...These points are very thin, sharp and narrow and possibly penetrated the bodies of animals better than that of other tools.” |~|

“To arrive at their conclusion that prehistoric Africans could have been the first to use pressure flaking to make tools, the researchers compared stone points, believed to be spearheads, made of silcrete — quartz grains cemented by silica — from Blombos Cave, and compared them to points that they made themselves by heating and pressure-flaking silcrete collected at the same site. |~|

“The similarities between the ancient points and modern replicas led the scientists to conclude that many of the artifacts from Blombos Cave were made by pressure flaking, which scientists previously thought dated from the Upper Paleolithic Solutrean culture in France and Spain, roughly 20,000 years ago. “Using the pressure flaking technique required strong hands and allowed toolmakers to exert a high degree of control on the final shape and thinness that cannot be achieved by percussion,” Villa said. “This finding is important because it shows that modern humans in South Africa had a sophisticated repertoire of tool-making techniques at a very early time.” The authors speculated that pressure flaking may have been invented in Africa and only later adopted in Europe, Australia and North America.” |~|

The co-authors included Vincent Mourre of the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research and Christopher Henshilwood of the University of Bergen in Norway and director of the Blombos Cave excavation. “This flexible approach to technology may have conferred an advantage to the groups of Homo sapiens who migrated out of Africa about 60,000 years ago,” the authors wrote in Science. |~|


microliths


Africans Made Microliths 71,000 Years Ago, Earlier Than Thought

In 2012, paleontologists announced that they had found small blades in a South African cave proving that man was an advanced thinker making stone tools 71,000 years ago, thousands of years earlier than thought, and the capacity for complex thought and weapons production gave modern humans an evolutionary advantage over Neanderthals, researchers said in a study published in Nature. [Source: AFP, November 8, 2012]

AFP reported: “Small, manufactured blades such as those found in hunting arrows were first thought to have appeared in South Africa between 65,000 and 60,000 years ago. Now, a team of scientists say they have found much older blades, called microliths and produced by chipping away at heat-treated stone, in a cave near Mossel Bay on South Africa's south coast "Our research... shows that microlithic technology originated early in South Africa, evolved over a vast time span (about 11,000 years) and was typically coupled to complex heat treatment," the study authors wrote. "Advanced technologies in Africa were early and enduring," they said, adding that long absences of tool-use evidence in the palaeontological record are explained by the relatively small number of sites excavated to date, not by an ebb and flow in early man's technological know-how.

“The find is evidence that early modern humans in South Africa had the ability to make complex designs and teach others to copy them, said the researchers. This would have allowed them to produce tools like arrows with a much longer killing distance than hand-cast spears. "Microlith-tipped projectile weapons increased hunting success rate, reduced injury from hunting encounters gone wrong, extended the effective range of lethal interpersonal violence," wrote the team.

“It would also have conferred "substantive advantages on modern humans as they left Africa and encountered Neanderthals equipped only with hand-cast spears". Neanderthals lived in parts of Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East for up to 300,000 years but appear to have vanished some 40,000 years ago. In a comment on the study, also published by Nature, anthropologist Sally McBrearty from the University of Connecticut said humans making the monoliths would have chipped small blades from stone carefully selected for its texture and heat-treated to make it easier to work with. They would then have retouched the blades into geometric shapes, probably for use in arrows to be shot from bows. This, in turn, meant the makers would have had to collect other materials such as wood, fibres, feathers, bone and sinew over a period of days, weeks or months, interrupted by other, more urgent tasks. "The ability to hold and manipulate operations and images of objects in memory, and to execute goal-directed procedures over space and time, is termed executive function and is an essential component of the modern mind," McBrearty wrote.

20120206-Bifaz_triangular.jpg
Bifaz triangular blade

Small Lethal Tools Gave Early Modern Human an Advantage?

The technology described above allowed projectiles to be thrown greater distances, increasing the killing power of the projectiles while allowing the thrower to be a safe distance away from a potential counter-attack. The key to this advance was the small microlithic blades. According to Arizona State University: “The reported technology focused on the careful production of long, thin blades of stone that were then blunted (called “backing”) on one edge so that they could be glued into slots carved in wood or bone. This created light armaments for use as projectiles, either as arrows in bow and arrow technology, or more likely as spear throwers (atlatls). These provide a significant advantage over hand cast spears, so when faced with a fierce buffalo (or competing human), having a projectile weapon of this type increases the killing reach of the hunter and lowers the risk of injury. The stone used to produce these special blades was carefully transformed for easier flaking by a complex process called “heat treatment,” a technological advance also appearing early in coastal South Africa and reported by the same research team in 2009. [Source: Arizona State University, November 7, 2012]

“Good things come in small packages,” said Kyle Brown, a skilled stone tool replicator and co-author on the paper, who is an honorary research associate with the University of Cape Town, South Africa. “When we started to find these very small carefully made tools, we were glad that we had saved and sorted even the smallest of our sieved materials. At sites excavated less carefully, these microliths may have been discarded in the back dirt or never identified in the lab.”

Prior work showed that this microlithic technology appear briefly between 65,000 and 60,000 years ago during a worldwide glacial phase, and then it was thought to vanish, thus showing what many scientists have come to accept as a “flickering” pattern of advanced technologies in Africa. The so-called flickering nature of the pattern was thought to result from small populations struggling during harsh climate phases, inventing technologies, and then losing them due to chance occurrences wiping out the artisans with the special knowledge. “Eleven thousand years of continuity is, in reality, an almost unimaginable time span for people to consistently make tools the same way,” said Marean. “This is certainly not a flickering pattern.”

Research on stone tools and Neanderthal anatomy strongly suggests that Neanderthals lacked true projectile weapons. “When Africans left Africa and entered Neanderthal territory they had projectiles with greater killing reach, and these early moderns probably also had higher levels of pro-social (hyper-cooperative) behavior. These two traits were a knockout punch. Combine them, as modern humans did and still do, and no prey or competitor is safe,” said Marean. “This probably laid the foundation for the expansion out of Africa of modern humans and the extinction of many prey as well as our sister species such as Neanderthals.”

Climate Change Spurred Tool Development in Middle Stone Age Africa?

Bifacial points found in Blombos Cave, South Africa, were manufactured 75,000 years ago by modern humans. Scientists suggest they developed these tools during a period when the climate was warmer and wetter and this had role in the points development. Geoffrey Mohan wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “A rapid shift in climate that brought wetter and warmer conditions in southern Africa during the Middle Stone Age helped propel innovation and cultural advances in early man, a study has found. Paleontologists have long known that anatomically modern human’s technological progress moved in fits and starts in various regions of the planet. [Source: Geoffrey Mohan, Los Angeles Times, May 21, 2013 \=]

“A European team suggests that one period of abrupt change, about 40,000-80,000 years ago in what now is South Africa, matches with a climate shift brought about by cyclical changes in the currents of the Atlantic Ocean. Their findings were published in Nature Communications. A period when the Atlantic no longer drew warm water toward upper latitudes, in a similar fashion to today’s gulf stream, created a colder Northern Hemisphere, a weaker Asian monsoon cycle and a band of temperate climate in South Africa, the team found. \=\

“Around this time, engraving and the manufacture of stone and bone tools and jewelry flourished in several areas of the south African cape, probably because of a climate shift that encouraged population expansion. "The occurrence of several major Middle Stone Age industries fell tightly together with the onset of periods with increased rainfall," said Ian Hall, a paleoclimatologist at Cardiff University in Wales. "When the timing of these rapidly occurring wet pulses was compared with the archaeological data sets, we found remarkable coincidences.” \=\

20120206-Biface_MHNT.jpg
biface ax

“But as the local south African climate again shifted abruptly toward less rain during a warming in the Northern Hemisphere, innovation came to an apparent halt in one area about 59,000 years ago, and shifted east and north, the researchers found. The team examined about 100,000 years of sediment cores from the mouth of the Great Kei River and matched periods of heavy sediment flow – indicating more rain – with temperature shifts gleaned from studies of Antarctic ice cores. The climate changes and shifting locations of innovation could help explain the prevailing theory that anatomically modern humans migrated from Africa, eventually replacing the Northern Hemisphere's Neanderthals.” \=\

Advanced Toolmaking Kickstarted Language?

Some scientists theorize that the brain power that developed hand-in-hand with advanced hand-toolmaking potentially paved the way for language development. Ian Sample wrote in The Guardian: “The design of stone tools changed dramatically in human pre-history, beginning more than two million years ago with sharp but primitive stone flakes, and culminating in exquisite, finely honed hand axes 500,000 years ago. The development of sophisticated stone tools, including sturdy cutting and sawing edges, is considered a key moment in human evolution, as it set the stage for better nutrition and advanced social behaviours, such as the division of labour and group hunting. "There has been a long discussion in the archaeology community about why it took so long to make more complex stone tools. Did we simply lack the manual dexterity, or were we just not smart enough to think about better techniques?" said Aldo Faisal, a neuroscientist at Imperial College London. [Source: Ian Sample, The Guardian, November 3, 2010 |=|]

“Faisal's team investigated the complexity of hand movements used by an experienced craftsman while he made replicas of simple and then more complex stone tools. Bruce Bradley, an archaeologist at Exeter University, wore a glove fitted with electronic sensors while he chipped away at stones to make a razor-sharp flake and then a more sophisticated hand axe. The results showed that the movements needed to make a hand axe were no more difficult than those used to make a primitive stone flake, suggesting early humans were limited by brain power rather than manual dexterity. |=|

“Early humans were adept at making stone flakes, but these were so thin they were liable to break while being used. The movements needed to make advanced tools were no more difficult, but they had to be executed more intelligently, to produce a tool that had a fat, sturdy body with a sharp cutting edge. |=|

“The oldest and simplest stone tools, known as Oldowan flakes, were uncovered alongside the fossilised remains of Homo habilis, a forerunner of modern humans, in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. Stone hand axes have been uncovered next to bones of Homo erectus, the ancient human species that led the migration out of Africa. Hand axes are usually worked symmetrically on both sides into a teardrop shape. |=|

“Brain scans of modern stone-tool makers show that key areas in the brain's right hemisphere become more active when they switch from making stone flakes to more advanced tools. Intriguingly, some of these brain regions are involved in language processing. "The advance from crude stone tools to elegant handheld axes was a massive technological leap for our early human ancestors. Handheld axes were a more useful tool for defence, hunting and routine work," said Faisal, whose study appears in the journal PLoS ONE. "Our study reinforces the idea that toolmaking and language evolved together as both required more complex thought, making the end of the lower paleolithic a pivotal time in our history. After this period, early humans left Africa and began to colonise other parts of the world." |=|

World’s Oldest Known Axe — 49,000 Years Old — Found in Australia


Australian ax

In 2016, scientists claimed that a small fragment found in cave, dated to 49,000 years ago, was part of the world’s oldest ax. Michael Slezak wrote in The Guardian: “It is about the size of a thumbnail and might look like any old piece of rock, but scientists say it is a fragment of the oldest axe ever discovered, created up to 49,000 years ago. Found in Australia, it further undermines ideas that Europe was the birthplace of technology, revealing people developed complex tools not long after they set foot in Australia. [Source: Michael Slezak, The Guardian May 10, 2016 |=|]

“The fragment was excavated in the early 1990s from a cave in the Windjana Gorge national park in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, but only examined recently. New analysis and dating suggests it is a fragment of the cutting edge of an axe that would have had a handle, used between 46,000 and 49,000 years ago. The find pre-dates another axe found in Arnhem Land in Australia dated to 35,000 years ago, and independently invented axes in Japan dated to about 38,000 years ago. |=|

“The fact that the discovery is just a fragment does not matter, according to Peter Hiscock from the University of Sydney, who made the recent discovery. “The great thing about it is it’s really distinctive – it has both polished surfaces coming together on the chip. While you don’t have the axe, you actually have a really good record of what the contact edge looks like.” Although there is no handle, Hiscock says it is not a simple “hand axe” – a sharp tool held directly in the hand – because it has been polished and made of a heavy material, which would not help much for a tool intended to be used by a hand. |=|

“The researchers say the axe was probably invented in Australia, since there is no evidence of similar tools in south-east Asia, from where the migrants came. “This is the earliest evidence of hafted axes [axes with a handle] in the world. Nowhere else in the world do you get axes at this date,” said Sue O’Connor from the the Australian National University, who originally excavated the tool in the 1990s. “In Japan such axes appear about 35,000 years ago. But in most countries in the world they arrive with agriculture 10,000 years ago,” she said. |=|

“Hiscock says the find adds further weight to the idea that humans colonised the world not because they were endowed with some particular skill they could apply everywhere, but because they were creative and could innovate. “We’re looking at people who moved through south-east Asia, where they probably used a lot of bamboo, which is sharp and hard and fantastic for tools. But when they get to Australia, there’s no bamboo so they’re inventing new tools to help them adapt to the exploitation of this new landscape. It’s a fascinating inversion of what European scholars thought in the 19th century. Their presumption was that all the innovations happened in Europe and far-flung places like Australia were simplistic and had little innovation. And it’s turned out that there’s a long history of discovery of axes of progressively earlier ages. This is the place where that sort of technology was invented and it only reached Europe relatively recently.” |=|

Aurignacian Tools


The Aurignacian Culture (42,000 to 27,000 years ago) is named after the French site that tools associated with it were found. The site has tools, weapons and adornment associated with it. The Aurignacian Period, Gravettian (26,000 to 22,000 years ago), Solutrean (22,000 to 17,000 years ago) and Magdalenian (17,000 to 12,000 years ago) cultures are all named French sites. Each site has tools, weapons and adornment associated with it.

Aurignacian tools are named after the French site of Auriganc where the tools were first found. They consisted of blades and advanced bone tools. Because the oldest Aurignacian tools predate the earliest modern human fossils in Europe, some scientists think they have been made by Neanderthals. The people of this culture also produced some of the earliest known cave art,

The long blades (rather than flakes) of the Upper Palaeolithic Mode 4 industries appeared during the Upper Palaeolithic between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago. The Aurignacian culture is a good example of mode 4 tool production. [Source: Wikipedia]

The Aurignacian industry is characterized by worked bone or antler points with grooves cut in the bottom and included tools, double end scrapers, burins, pins and awls. Their flint tools include fine blades and bladelets struck from prepared cores rather than using crude flakes. The most durable and physical evidence the Aurignacian culture left behind are stone tools. They refined their core and blade lithic technology to a high level.

Stone tools from the Aurignacian culture are known as Mode 4, characterized by blades (rather than flakes, typical of mode 2 Acheulean and mode 3 Mousterian) from prepared cores. Also seen throughout the Upper Paleolithic is a greater degree of tool standardization and the use of bone and antler for tools. Based on the research of scraper reduction and paleoenvironment, the early Aurignacian group moved seasonally over greater distance to procure reindeer herds within cold and open environment than those of the earlier tool cultures. The burin — a tool with a narrow sharp face at the tip used for engraving and other purposes — is often found at Aurignacian sites

Aurignacian tools appeared when it is believed modern humans developed language and boats. This was a period when humans reached points all over the globe. Many of the sites where Aurignacian tools are found also contain art: sculptures or cave paintings.

It is believed that early modern humans were trading quality stone as early as 100,000 years ago. Shells have been found hundreds of miles from where they originated. Unlike most of their ancestors who made stone tools from localized sources, modern humans quarried fine-grained and colorful flints from as far away as 250 miles away from they lived and most likely formed trade networks to efficiently distribute these flints to a large number of people. Based on the presence of tools found at one site that were made from materials found at a distant site it appears that other hominids, including relatively primitive Australopithecus , also engaged in trade or migrated to sites to obtain quality stone. [Source: John Pfieffer, Smithsonian magazine, October 1986]

Gravettian Tools

The Gravettian Culture (36,000 to 22,000 years ago) is named after the French site that tools associated with it were found. The site has tools, weapons and adornment associated with it. Gravettian tools include hand-held spears, which made the hunting of large animals more feasible. The Gravettian culture is named after the site of La Gravette in Southwestern France. [Source: Wikipedia +]

The Gravettian culture is archaeologically the last European culture many consider unified. It had mostly disappeared by 22,000 years ago, close to the Last Glacial Maximum, although some elements lasted until c. 17,000 years ago. At this point, it was replaced abruptly by the Solutrean in France and Spain, and developed into or continued as the Epigravettian in Italy, the Balkans, Ukraine and Russia. The Gravettian culture is famous for Venus figurines, which were typically made as either ivory or limestone carvings. +

Clubs, stones and sticks were the primary hunting tools during the Upper Paleolithic period. Bone, antler and ivory points have all been found at sites in France; but proper stone arrowheads and throwing spears did not appear until the Solutrean period (~20,000 Before Present). Due to the primitive tools, many animals were hunted at close range. The typical artefact of Gravettian industry, once considered diagnostic, is the small pointed blade with a straight blunt back. They are today known as the Gravette point, and were used to hunt big game. Gravettians used nets to hunt small game, and are credited with inventing the bow and arrow. Gravettian burin was a tool with a narrow sharp face at the tip used for engraving and other purposes.

The Gravettians were hunter-gatherers who lived in a bitterly cold period of European prehistory, and Gravettian lifestyle was shaped by the climate. Pleniglacial environmental changes forced them to adapt. West and Central Europe were extremely cold during this period. Archaeologists usually describe two regional variants: the western Gravettian, known mainly from cave sites in France, Spain and Britain, and the eastern Gravettian in Central Europe and Russia. The eastern Gravettians, which include the Pavlovian culture, were specialized mammoth hunters,[8] whose remains are usually found not in caves but in open air sites. Moravianska Venus


Gravettian awl


Gravettian culture thrived on their ability to hunt animals. They utilized a variety of tools and hunting strategies. Compared to theorized hunting techniques of Neanderthals and earlier human groups, Gravettian hunting culture appears much more mobile and complex. They lived in caves or semi-subterranean or rounded dwellings which were typically arranged in small "villages". Gravettians are thought to have been innovative in the development of tools such as blunted black knives, tanged arrowheads and boomerangs. Other innovations include the use of woven nets and stone-lamps. Blades and bladelets were used to make decorations and bone tools from animal remains. Sites including CPM II, CPM III, Casal de Felipe, and Fonte Santa (all in Spain) have evidence the use of blade and bladelet technology during the period. The objects were often made of quartz and rock crystals, and varied in terms of platforms, abrasions, endscrapers and burins. They were formed by hammering bones and rocks together until they formed sharp shards, in a process known as lithic reduction. The blades were used to skin animals or sharpen sticks.

Gravettian culture extended across a large geographic region, but is relatively homogeneous until about 27,000 years ago. They developed burial rites, which included the inclusion of simple, purpose built, offerings and or personal ornaments owned by the deceased, placed within the grave or tomb. Surviving Gravettian art includes numerous cave paintings and small, portable Venus figurines figurines made from clay or ivory, as well as jewelry objects. The fertility deities mostly date from the early period, and consist of over 100 known surviving examples. They conform to a very specific physical type of large breasts, broad hips and prominent posteriors. The statuettes tend to lack facial details, with limbs that are often broken off.

There is evidence of trade of amber and exotic stones in Europe in 28,000 B.C. Based on the large variety of artifacts found, A large cave called Mas-d'-Azil in southern France was regarded as a gathering place for people to exchange gods and gifts and possible find mates.


Solutrean tools


Solutrean Tools

The Solutrean Period (22,000 to 17,000 years ago) is named after the French site — the Crôt du Charnier site in Solutré-Pouilly, in Saône-et-Loire. — that tools associated with it were found. The site has tools, weapons and adornment associated with it. The people of Solutré specialised in the hunting of horses and they appeared to have occupied the site periodically, presumably in the hunting season. It does not include living areas occupied for long periods, but there are specialised areas of activity, especially the processing of game after the hunt.[Source: Donsmaps.com ==]

According to Donsmaps.com: “Some tools - pointes à face plane, laurel leaves, shouldered points - were made by a sophisticated retouch that was obtained by a new technique called pressure flaking, on flint which had been heat treated to make it much more workable. To make these lanceolate (leaf-shaped) points, the Solutrean people developed an exceptionally deft technique of pressure flaking – pressing with a soft tool such as an antler tine or bone point – instead of striking directly with a soft or hard hammer. There are other examples of this technique in prehistoric implements but the Solutrean people raised this technique to an artform where their arrowheads and spearpoints were as efficient as possible and like many optimum designs - an aircraft's wing, say – they also exhibit a form of beauty. ==

“The Solutrean technology is largely isolated in the prehistoric record. It was preceded by an industry based on Acheulian bifaces and scraper tools and it was succeeded by the widespread adoption of microlith technology in the Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods. It was the dominant technology for the relatively short space of time from 21 000 years ago to circa 15 000 years ago.”

Magdalenian Tools


Magdalenian Tools

The Magdalenian Period (17,000 to 12,000 years ago) is named after the French site — La Madeleine, a rock shelter in the Vézère valley, in the Dordogne region of France — that tools associated with it were found. The site has tools, weapons and adornment associated with it. The culture existed toward the end of the last ice age.

According to Les Eyzies Tourist Information: “The Magdalenien is characterised by regular blade industries struck from carinated cores. Typologically the Magdalenian is divided into six phases which are generally agreed to have chronological significance. The earliest phases are recognised by the varying proportion of blades and specific varieties of scrapers, the middle phases marked by the emergence of a microlithic component (particularly the distinctive denticulated microliths) and the later phases by the presence of uniserial (phase 5) and biserial ‘harpoons’ (phase 6) made of bone, antler and ivory. [Source: leseyzies-tourist.info +/]

“By the end of the Magdalenian, the lithic technology shows a pronounced trend towards increased microlithisation. The bone harpoons and points are the most distinctive chronological markers within the typological sequence. As well as flint tools, the Magdalenians are best known for their elaborate worked bone, antler and ivory which served both functional and aesthetic purposes including bâtons de commandement. Examples of Magdalenian mobile art include figurines and intrically engraved projectile points, as well as items of personal adornment including sea shells, perforated carnivore teeth (presumably necklaces) and fossils. +/

“The sea shells and fossils found in Magdalenian sites can be sourced to relatively precise areas of origin, and so have been used to support hypothesis of Magdalenian hunter-gatherer seasonal ranges, and perhaps trade routes. Cave sites such as the world famous Lascaux contain the best known examples of Magdalenian cave art. The site of Altamira in Spain, with its extensive and varied forms of Magdalenian mobillary art has been suggested to be an agglomeration site where multiple small groups of Magdalenian hunter-gatherers congregated.” +/

Blades and Needles


Magdalenian needles

Unlike the chunky flaked tools made by Neanderthals, early modern humans made long blades, sharpened on both sides that showed signs of precise geometry and were crafted to standardized sizes. These blades were used in hunting — as spear points on throwing and thrusting spears — and ax heads for chopping and dismembering carcasses.

Blades may have been made by toolmakers who chopped flakes off cylindrical pieces of flint with a bone punch and a hammer stone — something that requires great skill. Spear points were made of chipped flint and sandstone-sharpened slivers of bone. Antlers engraved with a flint burin may have been fashioned into a spear thrower. [Source: John Pfieffer, Smithsonian magazine, October 1986]

The first needles appeared about 20,000 years ago. For small precision tools such as needles less brittle materials than stone were required. "People of the Upper Paleolithic," wrote John Pfieffer in Smithsonian magazine, "could probably produced sufficiently fine splinters, but putting eyes in needles would have been something else again. That called for a less-brittle raw material — bone or ivory. (the Neanderthals used little if any bone, confining themselves almost exclusively to stone.) The trick was to incise two deep parallel grooves in a suitable piece of bone , pry out the narrow strip between grooves, shape it and then bore an eye hole with a tiny flint perforator — a process that [takes about] three minutes."

Microlithic Industries

Mode 5 stone tools involve the production of microliths, which were used in composite tools, mainly fastened to a haft. Examples include the Magdalenian culture. Such a technology makes much more efficient use of available materials like flint, although required greater skill in manufacturing the small flakes. [Source: Wikipedia +]

In prehistoric Japan, ground stone tools appear during the Japanese Paleolithic period, that lasted from around 40,000 BC to 14,000 BC. Elsewhere, ground stone tools became important during the Neolithic period beginning about 10,000 BC. These ground or polished implements are manufactured from larger-grained materials such as basalt, jade and jadeite, greenstone and some forms of rhyolite which are not suitable for flaking. The greenstone industry was important in the English Lake District, and is known as the Langdale axe industry. +

Ground stone implements included adzes, celts, and axes, which were manufactured using a labour-intensive, time-consuming method of repeated grinding against an abrasive stone, often using water as a lubricant. Because of their coarse surfaces, some ground stone tools were used for grinding plant foods and were polished not just by intentional shaping, but also by use. Manos are hand stones used in conjunction with metates for grinding corn or grain. Polishing increased the intrinsic mechanical strength of the axe. Polished stone axes were important for the widespread clearance of woods and forest during the Neolithic period, when crop and livestock farming developed on a large scale. They are distributed very widely and were traded over great distances since the best rock types were often very local. They also became venerated objects, and were frequently buried in long barrows or round barrows with their former owners. +

During the Neolithic period, large axes were made from flint nodules by chipping a rough shape, a so-called "rough-out". Such products were traded across a wide area. The rough-outs were then polished to give the surface a fine finish to create the axe head. Polishing not only increased the final strength of the product but also meant that the head could penetrate wood more easily. There were many sources of supply, including Grimes Graves in Suffolk, Cissbury in Sussex and Spiennes near Mons in Belgium to mention but a few. In Britain, there were numerous small quarries in downland areas where flint was removed for local use, for example.

Many other rocks were used to make axes from stones, including the Langdale axe industry as well as numerous other sites such as Penmaenmawr and Tievebulliagh in Co Antrim, Ulster. In Langdale, there many outcrops of the greenstone were exploited, and knapped where the stone was extracted. The sites exhibit piles of waste flakes, as well as rejected rough-outs. Polishing improved the mechanical strength of the tools, so increasing their life and effectiveness. Many other tools were developed using the same techniques. Such products were traded across the country and abroad.

Japan, Home of the Oldest Polished Tools in the World


Tools from Japan

Japan is the home of the oldest known ground stone tools and polished stone tools in the world, dated to around 30,000 B.C. This technology typically associated with the beginning of the Neolithic Period, around 10,000 B.C., in the rest of the world. It is not known why such tools were created so early in Japan, although the period is associated with a warmer climate worldwide. [Source: Wikipedia +]

Keiji Imamura wrote in “Prehistoric Japan, New Perspectives on Insular East Asia", “In prehistoric Japan, ground stone tools appear during the Japanese Paleolithic period. Elsewhere, ground stone tools became important during the Neolithic period. These ground or polished implements are manufactured from larger-grained materials such as basalt, jade and jadeite, greenstone and some forms of rhyolite which are not suitable for flaking. [Source: Prehistoric Japan, New Perspectives on Insular East Asia", Keiji Imamura, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu]

Aileen Kawagoe wrote in the Heritage of Japan website: “Because of this originality, the Japanese Paleolithic period in Japan does not exactly match the traditional definition of Paleolithic based on stone technology (chipped stone tools). Japanese Paleolithic tool implements thus display Mesolithic and Neolithic traits as early as 30,000 B.C. Polished stone tools are strongly associated with the Neolithic period, although they have been around since the Paleolithic era and such products were traded across a wide area. Polishing rough-cut stone axes not only increased the intrinsic mechanical strength of the axe but also meant that the head could penetrate wood more easily. Polished stone axes were important for the widespread clearance of woods and forest during the Neolithic period, when crop and livestock farming developed on a large scale. Such axe heads were needed in large numbers for forest clearance and the establishment of settlements and farmsteads. By comparison the oldest polished stones in China — axes, adzes, cutters with polished blades — came from the 22,000- to 24,000-year-old Bailiandong site in southern China. In Europe, polished stone axes and adzes appeared in Bohemia in the present-day Czech Republic first in the Early Neolithic with the Lbk Culture. [Source: Aileen Kawagoe, Heritage of Japan website, heritageofjapan.wordpress.com ]

“Elsewhere, polished stone axes and adzes appeared in Bohemia (Czech territory in Central Europe) first in the Early Neolithic with the Lbk Culture (Source: Stone axes as tools, valuables and symbols (3300-1900 B.C.) by Jan Turek). Early Neolithic polished stone tools were also recovered from the village of Dobroslavtsi, in the Sofia basin in Southwestern Bulgaria (Source). Polished stone tool techniques of grinding, pounding, hammering and abrading activities were seen in the Early Neolithic of north-western Europe (Linearbandkeramik and Villeneuve-Saint-Germain cultures, 5100-4700 B.C.) The origins of and the diffusion and spread of polished stone tools in the world is still currently an ongoing topic of comparative study by experts and scholars.”

Polished Stone Tools in China


Polished tools from Japan

The earliest polished stone tools in China, dated to 24,000-22,000 years ago, were found at the Bailiandong site in southern China. They include axes, adzes, cutters with polished blades. But these only had polished blades. Fully polished stone tools would appear only thousands of years later (Source: “Early polished stone tools in South China evidence of transition from Palaeolithic to Neolithic“, “UDK 903(510)633/634?Documenta Praehistorica XXXI).

Stone tools of Southern China have been broken down into three stages of development: 1) blade polished only; 2) entire tool finely ground with blade polished; 3) entirely polished. The oldest polished tools in the world were discovered in Japan. See Japan, History.

To read more about the transition from the Paleolithic to Neolithic Bailiandong culture in Southern China, see “C AMS dating the transition from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic of Southern China," by SixunYuan et al. According to a report, inhabitants of the Xiaohexi site, in Inner Mongolia, the earliest prehistoric settlement in the northeast, knew how to make polished stone tools 8,500 years ago."Source: Aileen Kawagoe, Heritage of Japan website, heritageofjapan.wordpress.com]

Microblades Linked with Mobile Adaptations in North-Central China

In 2013, Phys.org reported: “Though present before the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, around 24,500–18,300 years ago), microblade technology is uncommon in the lithic assemblages of north-central China until the onset of the Younger Dryas (YD, around 12,900–11,600 years ago). Dr. GAO Xing, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his team discussed the origins, antiquity, and function of microblade technology by reviewing the archaeology of three sites with YD microlithic components, Pigeon Mountain (QG3) and Shuidonggou Locality 12 (SDG12) in Ningxia Autonomous Region, and Dadiwan in Gansu Providence, suggesting the rise of microblade technology during Younger Dryas in the north-central China was connected with mobile adaptations organized around hunting, unlike the previous assumption that they served primarily in hunting weaponry. Researchers reported online in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. [Source: Phys.org, June 13, 2013 ==]

“The late Pleistocene featured two severe, cold–dry climatic downturns, the Last Glacial Maximum and Younger Dryas that profoundly affected human adaptation in North China. During the LGM archaeological evidence for human occupation of northern China is scant and North China's earliest blade-based lithic industry, the Early Upper Paleolithic (EUP) flat-faced core-and-blade technology best known from Shuidonggou Locality 1 (SDG1) on the upper Yellow River, was replaced by a bipolar percussion technology better suited to lower quality but more readily available raw material. ==

“Researchers presented evidence that the initial rise in microblade use in North China occurs after 13,000 years ago, during the YD, from three key sites in west-central northern China: Dadiwan, Pigeon Mountain and Shuidonggou Locality 12 (SDG12). In this region composite microblade tools are more commonly knives than points. These data suggest the rise of microblade technology in Younger Dryas north-central China was mainly the result of microblades used as insets in composite knives needed for production of sophisticated cold weather clothing needed for a winter mobile hunting adaptation like the residentially mobile pattern termed ”serial specialist." Limited time and opportunities compressed this production into a very narrow seasonal window, putting a premium on highly streamlined routines to which microblade technology was especially well-suited. ==

“It has been clear for some time that while microblades may have been around in north-central China since at least the LGM, they become prominent (i.e., chipped stone technology becomes ”microlithic”) only much later, with the YD. This sequence suggests a stronger connection between microblades and mobility than between microblades and hunting. If microblades were only (or mainly) for edging weapons, their rise to YD dominance would suggest an equally dramatic rise in hunting, making it difficult to understand why a much more demanding microblade technology would develop to facilitate the much less important pre-YD hunting. In any event, the SDG12 assemblage is at odds with the idea of a hunting shift. No more or less abundant than in pre-YD assemblages (e.g., QG3), formal plant processing tools suggest a continued dietary importance of YD plants, and there is no evidence for hunting of a sort that would require microblade production (i.e., of weaponry insets) on anything like the scale in which they occur. A shift to serial specialist provides a better explanation. ==

“Serial specialists are frequently forced to accomplish significant amounts of craftwork in relatively short periods of time. Microblade technology is admirably suited to such streamlined mass-production, and this is exactly what the SDG12 record indicates. The intensity with which SDG12 was used and the emphasis on communal procurement suggests a fairly short-term occupation by groups that probably operated independently during the rest of the year, almost certainly during the winter. SDG12 was most likely occupied immediately before that in connection with a seasonal ”gearing up” for winter, perhaps equivalent to the ethnographically recorded “sewing camps” of the Copper Inuit and Netsilik Inuit. == Yi Mingjie of the IVPP, one of the authors of the study, said: “Our study indicates that YD hunter-gatherers of north-central China were serial specialists, more winter mobile than their LGM predecessors, because LGM hunter-gatherers lacked the gear needed for frequent winter residential mobility, winter clothing in particular, and microblade or microlithic technology was central to the production of this gear. Along with general climatic amelioration associated with the Holocene, increasing sedentism after 8000 years ago diminished the importance of winter travel and the microlithic technology needed for the manufacture of fitted clothing." ==

Dr. Robert L. Bettinger of the University of California – Davis, another author said: “We do not argue that microblades were not used as weapon insets (clearly they were), or that microblade technology did not originally develop for this purpose (clearly it might have). We merely argue that the YD ascendance of microblade technology in north-central China is the result of its importance in craftwork essential to a highly mobile, serial specialist lifeway, the production of clothing in particular. While microblades were multifunctional, this much is certain: of the very few microblade-edged tools known from north-central China all are knives, none are points. If microblades were mainly for weapons it should be the other way around”,

Bamboo Tools: Why There's a Scarcity of Stone Tools un East Asia?

Kathleen Tibbetts of SMU wrote: “The long-held theory that prehistoric humans in East Asia crafted tools from bamboo was devised to explain a lack of evidence for advanced prehistoric stone tool-making processes. But can complex bamboo tools even be made with simple stone tools? A new study suggests the “bamboo hypothesis” is more complicated than conceived, says SMU archaeologist Metin I. Eren. [Source: Kathleen Tibbetts, Southern Methodist University (SMU), April 12, 2011 |::|]

“Research until now has failed to address a fundamental question: Is it even possible to make complex bamboo tools with simple stone tools? Now an experimental archaeological study – in which a modern-day flint knapper replicated the crafting of bamboo knives – confirms that it is possible to make a variety of bamboo tools with the simplest stone tools. |::|

“However, rather than confirming the long-held “bamboo hypothesis," the new research shows there's more to the theory, says Eren, the expert knapper who crafted the tools for the study.

The researchers found that crudely knapped stone choppers made from round rock “cobbles” performed remarkably well for chopping down bamboo. In addition, bamboo knives were efficiently crafted with stone tools. While the knives easily cut meat, they weren't effective at cutting animal hides, however, possibly discouraging their use during the Stone Age, say the authors. Some knives made from a softer bamboo species entirely failed to produce and hold a sharp edge. |::|

“The ‘bamboo hypothesis’ has been around for quite awhile, but was always represented simply, as if all bamboo species, and bamboo tool-making were equal," says Eren, a doctoral candidate in anthropology in SMU's Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences. “Our research does not debunk the idea that prehistoric people could have made and used bamboo implements, but instead suggests that upon arriving in East and Southeast Asia they probably did not suddenly start churning out all of their tools on bamboo raw materials either." |::|

World's Oldest Fishhooks in Okinawa

In September 2016, scientists announced that they found the oldest known fishhooks in the world on a limestone cave on the Japanese island of Okinawa according to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS). Believed to be about 23,000 years old, the hooks are carved from sea snail shells and are thought to have been used to catch crabs and freshwater snails from a stream on the island. This find displaces another set of ancient fishhooks found in East Timor in 2011. The East Timorese hooks were dated between 16,000 and 23,000 years old. The Okinawan ones were carbon datied to between 22,380 and 22,770 years of age. [Source: The Week, Bonnie Kristian September 18, 2016]

The Guardian reported: “ Researchers say the fish-hooks, made from the shells of sea snails and found in the Sakitari cave, show the development of fishing technology at an earlier stage than previously thought and more widespread than previously known...Researchers, from a range of Japanese institutes and universities, have been excavating three areas of the Sakitari cave, a limestone structure on the southern coast of Okinawa, since 2009 and have published their findings in the PNAS journal. [Source: Kate Lyons, The Guardian, September 18, 2016 /=]

“It was previously believed resources were too scarce on the island for it to have supported life for long periods of time. But the excavation of the cave found evidence of eels, frogs, fish, birds and small mammals, which had been charred, suggesting consumption by humans, in various layers of rock. Researchers believe this and the other findings of their excavation indicates the island has been nearly continuously occupied since 35,000 years ago. As well as the fish-hooks and remains of animals, researchers also found human remains, seashell beads, as well as something they believe might have been a grindstone. The discovery of the charred remains of the crab is also significant, say the researchers, in that it provides evidence of seasonal eating habits. The size of the crab remains indicate they were captured in the autumn when they were larger and were migrating downstream for reproduction, which is “also the season when they are the most delicious”. /=\

Hominin Practiced Recycling?

In 2013, Associated Press reported: “There is mounting evidence that hundreds of thousands of years ago, our prehistoric ancestors learned to recycle the objects they used in their daily lives, say researchers gathered at an international conference in Israel. "For the first time we are revealing the extent of this phenomenon, both in terms of the amount of recycling that went on and the different methods used," said Ran Barkai, an archaeologist and one of the organizers of the four-day gathering at Tel Aviv University” in October 2013. [Source: Associated Press, October 11, 2013 +++]

“Just as today we recycle materials such as paper and plastic to manufacture new items, early hominins would collect discarded or broken tools made of flint and bone to create new utensils, Barkai said. The behavior "appeared at different times, in different places, with different methods according to the context and the availability of raw materials," he told The Associated Press. From caves in Spain and North Africa to sites in Italy and Israel, archaeologists have been finding such recycled tools in recent years. The conference, titled "The Origins of Recycling," gathered nearly 50 scholars from about 10 countries to compare notes and figure out what the phenomenon meant for our ancestors. +++

“Recycling was widespread not only among early humans but among our evolutionary predecessors such as Homo erectus, Neanderthals and other species of hominins that have not yet even been named, Barkai said. Avi Gopher, a Tel Aviv University archaeologist, said the early appearance of recycling highlights its role as a basic survival strategy. While they may not have been driven by concerns over pollution and the environment, hominins shared some of our motivations, he said. "Why do we recycle plastic? To conserve energy and raw materials," Gopher said. "In the same way, if you recycled flint you didn't have to go all the way to the quarry to get more, so you conserved your energy and saved on the material." +++

“Some participants argued that scholars should be cautious to draw parallels between this ancient behavior and the current forms of systematic recycling, driven by mass production and environmental concerns. "It is very useful to think about prehistoric recycling," said Daniel Amick, a professor of anthropology at Chicago's Loyola University. "But I think that when they recycled they did so on an 'ad hoc' basis, when the need arose."” +++

Examples of Hominin Recycling?

According to Associated Press: “Some cases may date as far back as 1.3 million years ago, according to finds in Fuente Nueva, on the shores of a prehistoric lake in southern Spain, said Deborah Barsky, an archaeologist with the University of Tarragona. Here there was only basic reworking of flint and it was hard to tell whether this was really recycling, she said. "I think it was just something you picked up unconsciously and used to make something else," Barsky said. "Only after years and years does this become systematic." [Source: Associated Press, October 11, 2013 +++]

“That started happening about half a million years ago or later, scholars said. For example, a dry pond in Castel di Guido, near Rome, has yielded bone tools used some 300,000 years ago by Neanderthals who hunted or scavenged elephant carcasses there, said Giovanni Boschian, a geologist from the University of Pisa. "We find several levels of reuse and recycling," he said. "The bones were shattered to extract the marrow, then the fragments were shaped into tools, abandoned, and finally reworked to be used again." +++

“At other sites, stone hand-axes and discarded flint flakes would often function as core material to create smaller tools like blades and scrapers. Sometimes hominins found a use even for the tiny flakes that flew off the stone during the knapping process. At Qesem cave, a site near Tel Aviv dating back to between 200,000 and 420,000 years ago, Gopher and Barkai uncovered flint chips that had been reshaped into small blades to cut meat - a primitive form of cutlery. Some 10 percent of the tools found at the site were recycled in some way, Gopher said. "It was not an occasional behavior; it was part of the way they did things, part of their way of life," he said. +++

“He said scientists have various ways to determine if a tool was recycled. They can find direct evidence of retouching and reuse, or they can look at the object's patina - a progressive discoloration that occurs once stone is exposed to the elements. Differences in the patina indicate that a fresh layer of material was exposed hundreds or thousands of years after the tool's first incarnation.” +++

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Nature, Scientific American. Live Science, Discover magazine, Discovery News, Ancient Foods ancientfoods.wordpress.com ; Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, AP, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson (Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated September 2018


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