Stone Tools and Homo Homo appears to have been the first humans to make stone tools they were very simple Rocks that form a conchoidal fracture can be flintknapped into predictable forms In flintknapping you hit the edge of a rock and knock off a piece The piece that comes off is called a flake Whittaker 1994 Rocks that form conchoidal fractures can be flintknapped When you strike the rock shock waves ripple through and form a cone of percussion Here a complete cone forms when plate glass is hit Whittaker 1994 A typical flake Note how the force of hitting made ripples like water in a pond This is what is meant by a conchoidal fracture ventral or inside surface Whittaker 1994 A person who makes flaked stone tools is a flintknapper The two main methods for removing flakes are 1 Percussion hard hammer percussion soft hammer percussion direct percussion indirect percussion 2 Pressure flaking type of hammer how hammer applied Percussion Your two hands are separated You bring the hammer forcefully against the core you are working Whittaker 1994 A hammerstone is used for hard hammer percussion to knock off flakes To recognize a hammerstone we look for battering marks and sometimes the fingerholds are polished A hammerstone is an artifact an object made used or altered by humans Whittaker 1994 Direct percussion is when you directly hit one rock with another rock Whittaker 1994 Indirect percussion is when you hit a bone antler or piece of wood that is held against a rock The object you hit is called a punch Pressure flaking Constant contact is kept Use a fine point Exert a lot of pressure to remove a flake Whittaker 1994 Here the person holds thick leather between the tools and his hand to protect his hand A core is a piece of rock from which you knock off at least three flakes Some tools are made from the core core tools Some tools are made from the flakes that is the flakes are further flaked into a shape Some flakes are used unaltered as tools The earliest stone tools were extremely simple direct percussion to remove a few flakes use the resultant core tool use the flakes These first tools are called Olduwan pebble choppers Wikipedia com Olduwan because they were first found at Olduvai Gorge Pebble because they are made from pebbles Chopper refers to how they were used www paleodirect com Stone Tools Richard Leakey named H habilis because it made stone tools These first tools are called the Olduwan pebble chopper Made from pebbles take flakes off one or two sides Three tool types chopper flake hammerstone Use the percussion method Making a chopper hammerstone 1 2 Pebble chopper bifacially flaked 3 hammerstone pebble choppers flakes pebble chopper Feder Park 2001 249 We call this earliest stone tool tradition Olduwan tool tradition and its presence signals the beginning of the Lower Paleolithic cultural period 2 5 mya Paleo old Old stone age Lithic stone Don t confuse with Pleistocene Ice Age cene is the end of each geological epoch name Olduwan pebble tools found associated with H habilis 1 Earliest debate was whether they were tools 2 Then whether H habilis had made them 3 More recently debate whether any australopithecines made stone tools Earliest stone tools About 3 000 have been found at various sites in eastern Africa Earliest date to 2 5 mya at Gona in the Afar region of Ethiopia Hitting one rock a core with another hammerstone resulted in flakes and core tools Both core tool and flakes used as tools Both found at Gona Dominez Rodriguez et al 2004 Gona Afar Ethiopia 2 6 2 1 mya Cut mark on horse bone Stone tools flakes Semaw et al 2003 cores H habilis At Olduvai Gorge fossil locality found ten clusters of stone stone tools and animal bones 1 6 mya in age The circles of stones are clean on the inside but outside are stone tools and animal bones Ember et al 2007 144 Could be interpreted two ways 1 Living occupation floors of a shelter Mary Leakey favors this interpretation 2 Cache sites where stored stone tools for processing meat Too dangerous to live by the kill Slept in trees or cliffs Stone tools were carried and stored there Butchering locale used repeatedly The types of animal bones indicate seasonal occupation only during the dry season Analysis of faunal remains indicates H habilis was a scavenger rather than a hunter Find Mostly lower leg bones not entire skeletons little meat Cut marks over teeth marks The cut marks are not near joints so were just cutting meat off the bone not disarticulating an entire animal How tell if a hominid hunted vs scavenged Scavenging salvaging meat from an animal killed by some other carnivore May see teeth marks from the carnivore If the teeth marks are UNDER any stone tool cut marks the carnivore chewed on the animal before the hominid cut any meat off of it Hunting The hominid killed an animal and used stone tools to cut the meat off the bone May see cut marks from stone tool used to remove meat If any cut marks are UNDER any teeth marks then the hominid hunted the meat and the carcass was later scavenged by other carnivores H habilis ate meat we can t tell how much We think they mostly scavenged meat rather than hunted animals themselves Find a variety of animals eaten most are medium sized antelopes and wild pigs but also find giraffe and elephant How can we link stone tools eating meat and bipedalism Using stone tools results in more meat in diet more manipulation and brain development sharing and cooperation We see a pattern of stone tools indicating the beginnings of culture a dynamic system of learned and shared behaviors and ideas that help humans adapt to their environments Ember et al 2007 145 We suspect that Homo habilis had language They certainly had a need for language to pass on detailed information about how to make stone tools And perhaps for more complex social situations involving sharing of meat
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