New evidence of early hominids' technical skills
April 29, 1999
ATTENTION ASSIGNMENT EDITORS: Craig S. Feibel can be reached at (732) 932-8853 or by e-mail at feibel@rci.rutgers.edu.
TO THE POINT: Researchers literally piece together 2.3-million-year-old evidence of hominids' technical skills
NEW BRUNSWICK/PISCATAWAY, N.J. - Sitting on a spot of ground a few miles west of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya some 2.3 million years ago, a distant hominid ancestor of modern man carefully chipped away at a smooth lava rock, one flake at a time, to create a crude but effective stone tool that would enable him to cut vegetation and possibly carve small game to feed himself and his family.
Recently, an international team of researchers, including Rutgers geologist Craig S. Feibel and former Rutgers doctoral student Mzalendo Kibunjia of Kenya, pieced together the flakes from that original rock and about 60 others found in the area, and concluded that hominids of the late Pliocene Epoch may have possessed more sophisticated technical abilities than previously thought.
Writing in the May 6 issue of the British journal Nature, the six authors assert that stone tool production among hominids of that time had progressed significantly over the preceding 200,000 years. They note that evidence from the site, known as Lokalalei 2C, "appears to be of particular importance for our knowledge of the technical skill of late Pliocene hominids." The Pliocene Epoch is the interval from 5.0 million to 1.8 million years ago.
The authors base their comparisons on 2.5-million-year-old stone tools from Gona, Ethiopia. Those tools, the oldest ever found, were discovered by Rutgers researchers John W.K. Harris, professor and chairman of the anthropology department, and former graduate student Sileshi Semaw. Their findings were reported in Nature in January 1997.
Feibel, an assistant professor of anthropology and geology, and a member of Rutgers' Center for Human Evolutionary Studies, was the lone geologist and American on the archaeological team. He determined the age and geological context of the site. When the hominid, an Australopithecine, lived, the area was on the flood plain of the ancestral Omo River flowing from the Ethiopian Highlands, Feibel said. Today, it is a semiarid savanna.
Feibel said the new research "shows there was great technological sophistication 2.3 million years ago." Calling the ancient stone flakes "a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle," he said they were found in small patches on the ground, just as they had been left by prehistoric stone toolmakers. French archaeologist Anne Delagnes, one of the lead authors, refit the pieces together around what would have been the original cores that became the tools.
"What's significant about this site is that you can really see blow by blow what they did," Feibel said.
The researchers found that not only were the hominids skilled at making their tools, they cleverly selected the right rocks, or cobbles, which were found in the river bed.
"They had an appreciation of the raw material," Feibel said. "You could tell that they would pick up a cobble that was coarse-grained, hit it a couple of times and see that it wasn't good. Then they would pick up a fine-grained rock, see that it was the right quality, and keep chipping it, and knock 30 flakes off a single core."
The hominids also understood where to start chipping the natural surfaces, which weren't always easy to work with, Feibel said. They also were able to maintain the proper flaking angles, and reshape the core when necessary -- fairly sophisticated skills.
Early stone tools from other sites, notably Koobi Fora, on the other side of Lake Turkana, have been refitted, but Feibel said those at Lokalalei 2C are the oldest refits, shedding new light on the technological and motor skills of earlier hominids.
The research team was led by French archaeologist Helene Roche. Other French members included Jean-Phillipe Brugal, Vincent Mourre and Pierre-Jean Texier. They have been working together in that region since 1994. Kibunjia's dissertation in archaeology at Rutgers was based on a site in that area.
Contact: Sandra Lanman
732/932-7084, extension 621
E-mail: slanman@ur.rutgers.edu