New discoveries reveal systematic Production of bone tools 1.5 million years ago
Before this discovery, led by a CSIC team, it was thought that the systematic use of bone tools happened a million years later
image:
Bone tool shaped on a 1.5-million-year-old elephant humerus.
view moreCredit: CSIC
“This discovery leads us to believe that early humans expanded significantly their technological choices, which until this moment was constrained to production of stone artefacts, and now enabled incorporating new raw materials to the repertoire of potential tools”, states Ignacio de la Torre, scientist at the CSIC- Instituto de Historia and co-director of the OGAP project. “Additionally, this enhancement of the technological potential hints at advances in the cognitive capacities and mental templates of these hominins (i.e., hominids with a bipedal locomotion), who understood how to transfer technical innovations from stone flaking to bone tool production”.
Evolutionary keys
Eastern Africa contains the earliest evidences of tool use and production among the first Genus Homo ancestors. The best known is the Oldowan culture, named after the stone artefacts first discovered at Olduvai Gorge. The Oldowan spanned between 2.6 and 1.5 million years ago, and is characterised by the production of stone sharp flakes through striking two rocks against each other. This relatively simple technology led to a new culture emerging 1.7 million years ago, i.e., the Acheulean, that lasted until 150k years ago.
The Acheulean technology is well known by the conspicuous presence of handaxes, which are large, robust, often pointed and almond-shaped stone artefacts, and whose production requires remarkable technical ability. “Prior to our discovery, the technological transition from the Oldowan to the Acheulean was limited to the study of stone tools”, de la Torre points out.
For hundreds of thousand years, early humans had seen the animals they co-existed with at the African savannahs either as a hazard, for there is evidence that often humans were preys to felids and large birds–; as competitors, for our ancestors rivalled with hyenas and vultures to access carcasses hunted by large felids; or as a source of proteins, which our ancestors obtained mostly from bone marrow in prey leftovers abandoned by carnivores.
“Our discovery indicates that, from the Acheulean –period in which the T69 Complex site was formed and where humans already had a primary access to meaty resources–, no longer were animals only dangerous, competitors or just foodstuff, but also a source of raw materials for producing tools”, says de la Torre.
Our results demonstrate that at the transition between the Oldowan and the early Acheulean, East African hominins developed an original cultural innovation that entailed a transfer and adaptation of knapping skills from stone to bone.
“By producing technologically and morphologically standardized bone tools, early Acheulean toolmakers unravelled technological repertoires that were previously thought to have appeared routinely more than 1 million years later”, states de la Torre. “This innovation may have had a significant impact on the complexification of behavioural repertoires among our ancestors, including enhancements in cognition and mental templates, artefact curation and raw material procurement”, he concludes.
The OGAP project
The Olduvai Gorge Archaeology Project (OGAP) is led by Ignacio de la Torre (scientist at the Instituto de Historia, CSIC-Spanish National Research Council and head of the Pleistocene Archaeology Lab) and Jackson Njau (Indiana University, US), and includes collaborators from several institutions in Spain (CENIEH, UAB, ICREA) and abroad (UK, France, Germany, US, Canada and Tanzania, among others).
Fieldwork at Olduvai by OGAP has been primarily funded by two European Research Council grants (ORACEAF (Starting Grants, 2012-2016) and BICAEHFID (Advanced Grants, 2019-2026). Research at Olduvai has been possible thanks to the support of the Tanzanian Authorities (Tanzanian Commission of Science and Technology, the Department of Antiquities, the National Museum of Tanzania, and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority) and local collaborators, particularly Maasai communities living around the Olduvai area (which is catalogued by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site).
Journal
Nature
Article Title
Systematic bone tool production at 1.5 million years ago
The standardized production of bone tools by our ancestors pushed back one million years
CNRS
image:
Tool shaped out of an elephant’s humerus. It was discovered at site T69 in the Olduvai Gorge.
view moreCredit: Top: © d’Errico-Doyon, Bottom: © Laboratorio de Arqueología del Pleistoceno-CSIC
Twenty-seven standardised bone tools dating back more than 1.5 million years were recently discovered in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania by a team of scientists from the CNRS and l’Université de Bordeaux1, in collaboration with international and Tanzanian researchers. This discovery challenges our understanding of early hominin technological evolution, as the oldest previously known standardised bone tools date back approximately 500,000 years.2
During these excavations, the researchers identified tools shaped on-site from hippopotamus bones within the same geological layer. More surprisingly, they also found elephant bones that had been transported to the site as either tools or raw materials for tool-making. This behaviour suggests an early ability for planning and the transmission of know-how among these ancient populations.
These results were obtained via an approach combining archaeological excavations and experimental archaeology.3 The study will be published on 5 March in the journal Nature.
Notes
- Working at the From Prehistory to the Present: Culture, Environment, and Anthropology laboratory (CNRS/Ministère de la Culture/Université de Bordeaux). The project received support from the European Research Council (ERC).
- The study shows indisputable traces of the intentional cutting, shaping, and modification of bone edges, thereby giving them an elongated shape.
- Experimental archaeology involves reproducing the techniques and gestures of ancient societies to better understand the production and use of their tools, their habitats, and their everyday objects.
Journal
Nature
Article Title
Systematic bone tool production at 1.5 million years ago
Article Publication Date
5-Mar-2025
No comments:
Post a Comment