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Signs of symbolic behavior emerged at the dawn of our species in Africa
More than 320,000 years ago in the Rift Valley of Africa, some early innovators adopted a new technology: They eschewed the clunky, palm-size stone hand axes that their ancestors had used for more than a million years in favor of a sleek new toolkit. Like new generations of cellphones today, their Middle Stone Age (MSA) blades and points were smaller and more precise than the old so-called Acheulean hand axes and scrapers.
These toolmakers in the Olorgesailie Basin in Kenya chose as raw materials shiny black obsidian and white and green chert, rocks they had to get from distant sources or through trade networks. In another first, they chiseled red and black rocks, probably to use as crayons to color their bodies or spears—an early sign of symbolic behavior. "This is indicative of a gear change in behavior, toolmaking, and material culture," says evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, who studies social networks.
A trio of papers released online in Science today documents this remarkable technological transition. Although other sites have yielded MSA tools, the new, securely dated chronology nudges the transition back by at least 20,000 years, matching when our species, Homo sapiens, is now thought to have emerged. By analyzing artifacts over time at one site, the papers also show that these behaviors developed as climate swings intensified, supporting the idea that environmental variability drove innovation.
Related:
Environmental dynamics during the onset of the Middle Stone Age in eastern Africa (DOI: 10.1126/science.aao2200) (DX)
Chronology of the Acheulean to Middle Stone Age transition in eastern Africa (DOI: 10.1126/science.aao2216) (DX)
Long-distance stone transport and pigment use in the earliest Middle Stone Age (DOI: 10.1126/science.aao2646) (DX)
(Score: 4, Informative) by HiThere on Friday March 16 2018, @07:18PM
The statement that "humans were the only toolmaker" was correct as a statement about what was taught in schools. It's also what was preached in popular science texts and on TV. That professional scientists might have reserved a bit of judgment is possible, but from what I've read if some of them did so, they didn't talk or write about it. They left that to the science fiction writers (some of whom, of course, were scientists when wearing their other hat). Robert Ardrey was one of the folks who first put a chink into that stone wall, and he wasn't a scientist. He didn't directly attack it the way Jane Goodall did later, but he set the stage. And, of course, he was building on the work of various ethologists...so there was a silent movement happening behind the scenes, but it didn't show up in public view until Ardrey...probably "The Naked Ape" was the moment of inflection, but that might just be the way I saw it.
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