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posted by martyb on Friday March 16 2018, @02:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the Moog-want-spear...-Gork-want-axe? dept.

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)


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  • (Score: 2) by t-3 on Friday March 16 2018, @10:13PM (2 children)

    by t-3 (4907) on Friday March 16 2018, @10:13PM (#653829)

    For copper, there used to be quite a bit of it in the upper peninsula of Michigan, in the area known as "Copper Country" (the Keewenaw Peninsula). The natives used it extensively, but IIRC they didn't forge anything. I also recall being taught about Tenochtitlan being near a mountain of silver that was used by the Aztecs and plundered by the Spanish.

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  • (Score: 2) by Arik on Friday March 16 2018, @10:25PM (1 child)

    by Arik (4543) on Friday March 16 2018, @10:25PM (#653831) Journal
    "For copper, there used to be quite a bit of it in the upper peninsula of Michigan, in the area known as "Copper Country" (the Keewenaw Peninsula)."

    That sounds right. The mississipians used cold-worked copper in burial goods, and they were still technically 'stone age' in toolkit though of course that's very much later nonetheless. I think there was some silver too, impure, copper-silver alloys maybe? But the lack of ability to purify and refine the ores limited the scope severely.

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @10:38PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @10:38PM (#653833)

      From what I recall of "Michigan History" in school, the Keewenaw was notable for exceptional purity, basically as pure as copper gets out of the ground.