Australo-Melanesian

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gallery of portraits of Aboriginal Australians (The New Student's Reference Work, 1914 edition, volume 1, p. 178.)

 

In physical anthropology, forensic anthropology and archaeogenetics, Australo-Melanesians (also Australasian, Australomelanesoid or Australoid) form a large group of populations indigenous to Maritime Southeast Asia and Oceania. 

The group includes Papuans, Aboriginal Australians, Melanesians (mainly from Fiji, New Caledonia and Vanuatu) and the populations grouped as "Negrito" (the Andamanese, the Semang and Batek people, the Maniq people, the Aeta people, the Ati people, and various other ethnic groups in the Philippines). 

The Vedda people in Sri Lanka and a number of dark-skinned tribal populations in the interior of the Indian subcontinent (mainly Dravidian-speaking groups and some Austroasiatic-speaking peoples, like Munda) are also suggested to belong to the Australoid group, but there are controversies about this inclusion. A research involving cranial morphology, made by Indian anthropologists, however, suggests that the South Asian Indian populations have different cranial characteristics from Australoid groups. This difference got possibly strengthened in recent times due to the miscegenation with peoples of different origins. A genetic study in 1985 suggested connections between tribal peoples of Southern India, Sri Lanka and Negrito populations of the Philippines and Malaysia. Nevertheless, a more recent study sustains that the Southern Indian populations are not closely related to the classic Australo-Melanesian groups.

The term "Australioid race" was introduced by Thomas Huxley in 1870 to refer to certain peoples indigenous to South and Southeast Asia and Oceania. Terms associated with outdated notions of racial types, such as those ending in "-oid" have come to be seen as potentially offensive and related to scientific racism.

According to a large craniometric study (Raghavan and Bulbeck et al. 2013) the native populations of South Asia (India and Sri Lanka) have distinct craniometric and anthropologic ancestry. Both southern and northern groups are most similar to each other and have generally closer affinities to various "Caucasoid" groups. The study further showed that the native South Asians (including the Vedda) form a distinct group and are not related to the "Australoid" group.

If there were an Australoid “substratum” component to Indians’ ancestry, we would expect some degree of craniometric similarity between Howells’ Southwest Pacific series and Indians. But in fact, the Southwest Pacific and Indian are craniometrically very distinct, falsifying any claim for an Australoid substratum in India.

— Pathmanathan Raghavan, David Bulbeck, Gayathiri Pathmanathan and Suresh Kanta Rathee, Indian Craniometric Variability and Affinities (2013)

Terminological history

Australians were marked as Negroid on the racial Meyers Konversations-Lexikon (1885-90)

 

The term "Australoid" was coined in ethnology in the mid 19th century, describing tribes or populations "of the type of native Australians". In physical anthropology, Australoid is used for morphological features characteristic of Aboriginal Australians by Daniel John Cunningham in his Text-book of Anatomy (1902).

An Australioid (sic, with an additional -i-) racial group was first proposed by Thomas Huxley in an essay On the Geographical Distribution of the Chief Modifications of Mankind (1870), in which he divided humanity into four principal groups (Xanthochroic, Mongoloid, Negroid, and Australioid). Huxley's original model included the native inhabitants of South Asia under the Australoid category. Huxley further classified the Melanochroi (Peoples of the Mediterranean race) as a mixture of the Xanthochroi (northern Europeans) and Australioids. Huxley (1870) described Australioids as dolichocephalic; their hair as usually silky, black and wavy or curly, with large, heavy jaws and prognathism, with skin of the color of chocolate and with irises that are dark brown or black.

The term "Proto-Australoid" was used by Roland Burrage Dixon in his Racial History of Man (1923). In a 1962 publication, Australoid was described as one of the five major human races alongside Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Congoid and Capoid.

In The Origin of Races (1962), Carleton Coon attempted to refine such scientific racism by introducing a system of five races with separate origins. Based on such evidence as claiming Australoids had the largest, megadont teeth, this group was assessed by Coon as being the most archaic and therefore the most primitive and backward. Coon's methods and conclusions were later discredited and show either a "poor understanding of human cultural history and evolution or his use of ethnology for a racialist agenda."

Bellwood (1985) uses the terms "Australoid", "Australomelanesoid" and "Australo-Melanesians" to describe the genetic heritage of "the Southern Mongoloid populations of Indonesia and Malaysia".

Since the 1980s, anthropological terms in "-oid" have come to be avoided in some disciplines, especially in the United States, where the term Australo-Melanesian is now preferred. In other areas, specifically in anthropological literature in India, the term Australoid continues to be preferred.

Distribution

Distribution of the races after the Pleistocene according to Carleton Coon (1962).

	Caucasoid race
	Congoid race
	Capoid race
	Mongoloid race
	Australoid race

[DJS -- Isn't the classification of humans into "races" considered scientifically obsolete?]

Besides the Australian Aboriginals, Melanesians and Negritos, the "Australoid" category is often taken to include various tribes of India. The inclusion of Indian tribes in the group is not well-defined, and is closely related to the question of the original peopling of India, and the possible shared ancestry between Indian and Australian populations of the Upper Paleolithic. The American Journal of Physical Anthropology (1996, p. 382) by American Association of Physical Anthropologists. Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi and Alberto Piazza in their text, The History and Geography of Human Genes (1994, P. 241) all use the term.

Tee suggested Australoid ancestry of the original South Asian populations has long remained an open question. It was embraced by Indian anthropologists as emphasizing the deep antiquity of Indian prehistory. Australoid hunter-gatherer and fisherman tribes of the interior of India were identified with the Nishada Kingdom described in the Mahabharata. Panchanan Mitra (1923) following Vincenzo Giuffrida-Ruggeri (1913) recognizes a Pre-Dravidian Australo-Veddaic stratum in India. Alternatively, the Dravidians themselves have been claimed as originally of Australoid stock, a view held by Biraja Sankar Guha among others.

South Indian tribes specifically described as having Australoid affinities include the Oraon, Munda, Santal, Bhil, Gondi, the Kadars of Kerala, the Kurumba and Irula of the Nilgiris, the Paniyans of Malabar, the Uralis, Kannikars, Mithuvan and Chenchus. but other Indian anthropologists of the post-colonial period, such as S. P. Sharma (1971) and D. N. Majumdar (1946, 1965), have gone as far as claiming Australoid ancestry, to a greater or lesser extent, for almost all the castes and tribes of India. Newer Indian anthropology studies about cranial morphology do not support an Australoid ancestry in South Asian populations.

Physical features

Makassan man from Sulawesi, Indonesia. According to archaeologist Peter Bellwood, the vast majority of people in Indonesia and Malaysia, the region he calls the "clinal Mongoloid-Australoid zone", are "Southern Mongoloids" but have a high degree of Australoid admixture.

 

In physical anthropology, the Australo-Melanesian group is characterized primariliy by its characteristic dental morphology. In Java, "Australo-Melanesian dentitions" are found in fossils until the mid-Holocene (c. 5,000 years ago), but are replaced by modern "Southern Mongoloid dentitions" (Sundadonty) in the Neolithic, suggesting the displacement of the aboriginal Australo-Melanesian population by the Austronesian expansion.

Genetics

Numerous studies of archaeogenetics performed during 2009–2016 have suggested that Eurasian populations can be derived from an early division of the non-African lineage into an eastern and a western clade lineage before around 40,000 years ago. It has been argued, however, that this model of a primary split between eastern and western Eurasians is invalid for Oceania and Southeast Asia. The so-called "southern-route hypothesis" derives an Australasian lineage, comprising Australians, New Guineans, and possibly Southeast Asian Negritos, from an early out-of-Africa dispersal, forming an ancestral lineage which split off the other non-African lineages prior to the Eastern Eurasian vs. Western Eurasian split. A number of 2016 studies have presented a refined model of Australasian ancestry. Reviewing the evidence, Lipson and Reich (2017) present as best-fitting model a derivation of the Australasian clade from the Eastern Eurasian clade at an early time, with sustantial Denisovan admixture (of the order of 4%) before the Ausralasian clade split into the Australian and the New Guinean lineages.

Pugach et al. (2013) find an ancestral association between Aboriginal Australians, New Guineans and the Mamanwa Negritos, with an estimated divergence time of at least 35,000 years, in support of the "southern migration route" scenario. In addition, the study finds evidence of gene flow between India and Australia at a later time, an estimated 141 generations ago (i.e. roughly 3,000 to 4,000 years ago), suggesting a possible late migration wave to Australia.

A 2006 CFSL research article which assessed "3522 individuals belonging to 54 (23 belonging to the Austroasiatic, 18 to Dravidian, 7 to Tibeto-Burman and 24 to Indo-European linguistic groups) endogamous Indian populations, representing all major ethnic, linguistic and geographic groups" for genetic variations to support such classifications found no conclusive evidence. It further summed that "the absence of genetic markers to support the general clustering of population groups based on ethnic, linguistic, geographic or socio-cultural affiliations" undermines the broad groupings based on such affiliations that exist in population genetic studies and forensic databases.

Another study (Rosenbert et al.), analysing the whole genome of worldwide populations, grouped the South Asians as own distinct group. The study results suggest that there are 5 major human groups:

• Subsaharan-African (Negroid)
• West-Eurasian (Caucasoid)
• South-Asian ("Dravidoid")
• East-Asian (Mongoloid)
• Melanesian (Australoid)

Possible early presence in the Americas

A cast of the Luzia Woman's skull

 

A speculative theory of Walter Neves in the 1990s proposes that an early Australoid population may have been the earliest occupants of the New World. The theory was based on an analysis of the Luzia Woman fossil found in Brazil, and found tentative academic support.

If this hypothesis is correct, it would mean that some Australoid groups continued the Great Coastal Migration beyond Southeast Asia, along the continental shelf north in East Asia and across the Bering land bridge, reaching the Americas by about 50,000 years ago.

Genetic evidence

In 2015, two major studies of the DNA of living and ancient people detect in modern Native Americans a trace of DNA related to that of native people from Australia and Melanesia. Australasian admixture in some living Native Americans, including those of the Aleutian Islands and the Surui people of Amazonian Brazil. Evidence of Australasian admixture in Amazonian populations was found by Skoglund and Reich (2016).

Walter Neves and Mark Hubbe argue that these people descended from an early wave of migration that was separate from the one that gave rise to today’s Native Americans, and drew on a different source population in Asia.

Morphology

Christy Turner notes that "cranial analyses of some South American crania have suggested that there might have been some early migration of "Australoids." However, Turner argues that cranial morphology suggests sinodonty in all the populations he has studied.

One of the earliest skulls discovered in the Americas by archaeologists is an Upper Paleolithic specimen named the Luzia Woman. According to Neves, Luzia's Paleo-Indian predecessors lived in South East Asia for tens of thousands of years, after migrating from Africa, and began arriving in the New World, as early as 15,000 years ago. Some anthropologists have hypothesized that Paleo-Indians migrated along the coast of East Asia and Beringia in small watercraft, before or during the LGM. Neves' conclusions have been challenged researchers who argued that the cranio-facial variability could just be due to genetic drift and other factors affecting cranio-facial plasticity in Native Americans.

In November 2018, scientists of the University of São Paulo and Harvard University released a study that contradicts the alleged Australo-Melanesian physical appearance of Luzia. Using DNA sequencing, the results showed that Luzia had Mongoloid features. The bust of Luzia displaying African features was done in the 1990's. "However, skull shape isn't a reliable marker of ancestrality or geographic origin. Genetics is the best basis for this type of inference," Strauss explained."The genetic results of the new study show categorically that there was no significant connection between the Lagoa Santa people and groups from Africa or Australia. So the hypothesis that Luzia's people derived from a migratory wave prior to the ancestors of today's Amerindians has been disproved. On the contrary, the DNA shows that Luzia's people were entirely Amerindian."

Oldowan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Oldowan

Geographical range	Afro-Eurasia
Period	Lower Paleolithic
Dates	2.6 million years BP – 1.7 million years BP
Major sites	Olduvai Gorge
Preceded by	Lomekwian
Followed by	Acheulean, Riwat

The Oldowan (or Mode I) is the earliest widespread stone tool archaeological industry (style) in prehistory. These early tools were simple, usually made with one or a few flakes chipped off with another stone. Oldowan tools were used during the Lower Paleolithic period, 2.6 million years ago up until 1.7 million years ago, by ancient Hominin (early humans) across much of Africa, South Asia, the Middle East and Europe. This technological industry was followed by the more sophisticated Acheulean industry.

Oldowan is pre-dated by Lomekwian tools at a single site dated to 3.3 mya (million years ago). It is not clear if the Lomekwian industry bears any relation to the Oldowan.

The term Oldowan is taken from the site of Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, where the first Oldowan lithics were discovered by the archaeologist Louis Leakey in the 1930s. However, some contemporary archaeologists and palaeoanthropologists prefer to use the term Mode 1 tools to designate pebble tool industries (including Oldowan), with Mode 2 designating bifacially worked tools (including Acheulean handaxes), Mode 3 designating prepared-core tools, and so forth.

Classification of Oldowan tools is still somewhat contentious. Mary Leakey was the first to create a system to classify Oldowan assemblages, and built her system based on prescribed use. The system included choppers, scrapers, and pounders. However, more recent classifications of Oldowan assemblages have been made that focus primarily on manufacture due to the problematic nature of assuming use from stone artefacts. An example is Isaac et al.'s tri-modal categories of "Flaked Pieces" (cores/choppers), "Detached Pieces" (flakes and fragments), "Pounded Pieces" (cobbles utilized as hammerstones, etc.) and "Unmodified Pieces" (manuports, stones transported to sites). Oldowan tools are sometimes called "pebble tools", so named because the blanks chosen for their production already resemble, in pebble form, the final product.

It is not known for sure which hominin species created and used Oldowan tools. Its emergence is often associated with the species Australopithecus garhi and its flourishing with early species of Homo such as H. habilis and H. ergaster. Early Homo erectus appears to inherit Oldowan technology and refines it into the Acheulean industry beginning 1.7 million years ago.

Dates and ranges

The oldest known Oldowan tools have been found in Gona, Ethiopia, and are dated to about 2.6 mya.

The use of tools by apes including chimpanzees and orangutans can be used to argue in favour of tool-use as an ancestral feature of the hominin family. Tools made from bone, wood, or other organic materials were therefore in all probability used before the Oldowan. Oldowan stone tools are simply the oldest recognisable tools which have been preserved in the archaeological record. 

There is a flourishing of Oldowan tools in eastern Africa, spreading to southern Africa, between 2.4 and 1.7 mya. At 1.7 mya., the first Acheulean tools appear even as Oldowan assemblages continue to be produced. Both technologies are occasionally found in the same areas, dating to the same time periods. This realisation required a rethinking of old cultural sequences in which the more "advanced" Acheulean was supposed to have succeeded the Oldowan. The different traditions may have been used by different species of hominins living in the same area, or multiple techniques may have been used by an individual species in response to different circumstances. 

Sometime before 1.8 mya Homo erectus had spread outside of Africa, reaching as far east as Java by 1.8 mya and in Northern China by 1.66 mya. In these newly colonised areas, no Acheulean assemblages have been found. In China, only "Mode 1" Oldowan assemblages were produced, while in Indonesia stone tools from this age are unknown.

By 1.8 mya early Homo was present in Europe, as shown by the discovery of fossil remains and Oldowan tools in Dmanisi, Georgia. Remains of their activities have also been excavated in Spain at sites in the Guadix-Baza basin and near Atapuerca. Most early European sites yield "Mode 1" or Oldowan assemblages. The earliest Acheulean sites in Europe only appear around 0.5 mya. In addition, the Acheulean tradition does not seem to spread to Eastern Asia. It is unclear from the archaeological record when the production of Oldowan technologies ended. Other tool-making traditions seem to have supplanted Oldowan technologies by 0.25 mya.

Tools

Manufacture

To obtain an Oldowan tool, a roughly spherical hammerstone is struck on the edge, or striking platform, of a suitable core rock to produce a conchoidal fracture with sharp edges useful for various purposes. The process is often called lithic reduction. The chip removed by the blow is the flake. Below the point of impact on the core is a characteristic bulb with fine fissures on the fracture surface. The flake evidences ripple marks.

The materials of the tools were for the most part quartz, quartzite, basalt, or obsidian, and later flint and chert. Any rock that can hold an edge will do. The main source of these rocks is river cobbles, which provide both hammer stones and striking platforms. The earliest tools were simply split cobbles. It is not always clear which is the flake. Later tool-makers clearly identified and reworked flakes. Complaints that artifacts could not be distinguished from naturally fractured stone have helped spark careful studies of Oldowon techniques. These techniques have now been duplicated many times by archaeologists and other knappers, making misidentification of archaeological finds less likely. 

Use of bone tools by hominins also producing Oldowan tools is known from Swartkrans, where a bone shaft with a polished point was discovered in Member (layer) I, dated 1.8–1.5 mya. The Osteodontokeratic industry, the "bone-tooth-horn" industry hypothesized by Raymond Dart, is less certain.

Shapes and uses

Oldowan-tradition stone chopper.

 

Mary Leakey classified the Oldowan tools as Heavy Duty, Light Duty, Utilized Pieces and Debitage, or waste. Heavy-duty tools are mainly cores. A chopper has an edge on one side. It is unifacial if the edge was created by flaking on one face of the core, or bifacial if on two. Discoid tools are roughly circular with a peripheral edge. Polyhedral tools are edged in the shape of a polyhedron. In addition there are spheroidal hammer stones.

Light-duty tools are mainly flakes. There are scrapers, awls (with points for boring) and burins (with points for engraving). Some of these functions belong also to heavy-duty tools. For example, there are heavy-duty scrapers.

Utilized pieces are tools that began with one purpose in mind but were utilized opportunistically.

Oldowan tools were probably used for many purposes, which have been discovered from observation of modern apes and hunter-gatherers. Nuts and bones are cracked by hitting them with hammer stones on a stone used as an anvil. Battered and pitted stones testify to this possible use. 

Heavy-duty tools could be used as axes for woodworking. Both choppers and large flakes were probably used for this purpose. Once a branch was separated, it could be scraped clean with a scraper, or hollowed with pointed tools. Such uses are attested by characteristic microscopic alterations of edges used to scrape wood. Oldowan tools could also have been used for preparing hides. Hides must be cut by slicing, piercing and scraping them clean of residues. Flakes are most suitable for this purpose. 

Lawrence Keeley, following in the footsteps of Sergei Semenov, conducted microscopic studies (with a high-powered optical microscope) on the edges of tools manufactured de novo and used for the originally speculative purposes described above. He found that the marks were characteristic of the use and matched marks on prehistoric tools. Studies of the cut marks on bones using an electron microscope produce a similar result.

Abbevillian

Abbevillian is a currently obsolescent name for a tool tradition that is increasingly coming to be called Oldowan. The label Abbevillian prevailed until the Leakey family discovered older (yet similar) artifacts at Olduvai Gorge (a.k.a. Oldupai Gorge) and promoted the African origin of man. Oldowan soon replaced Abbevillian in describing African and Asian lithics. The term Abbevillian is still used but is now restricted to Europe. The label, however, continues to lose popularity as a scientific designation. 

In the late 20th century, discovery of the discrepancies in date caused a crisis of definition. If Abbevillian did not necessarily precede Acheulean and both traditions had flakes and bifaces, how was the difference to be defined? It was in this spirit that many artifacts formerly considered Abbevillian were labeled Acheulean. In consideration of the difficulty, some preferred to name both phases Acheulean. When the topic of Abbevillian came up, it was simply put down as a phase of Acheulean. Whatever was from Africa was Oldowan, and whatever from Europe, Acheulean.

The solution to the definition problem is stated in the article on Acheulean. The difference is to be defined in terms of complexity. Simply struck tools are Oldowan. Retouched, or reworked tools are Acheulean. Retouching is a second working of the artifact. The manufacturer first creates an Oldowan tool. Then he reworks or retouches the edges by removing very small chips so as to straighten and sharpen the edge. Typically but not necessarily the reworking is accomplished by pressure flaking. 

The pictures in the introduction to this article are mainly labeled Acheulean, but this is the now false Acheulean, which also includes Abbevillian. The artifacts shown are clearly in the Oldowan tradition. One or two of the more complex bifaces may have edges made straighter by a large percussion or two, but there is no sign of pressure flaking as depicted. The pictures included with this subsection show the difference.

Tool users

Current anthropological thinking is that Oldowan tools were made by late Australopithecus and early Homo. Homo habilis was named "skillful" because it was considered the earliest tool-using human ancestor. Indeed, the genus Homo was in origin intended to separate tool-using species from their tool-less predecessors, hence the name of Australopithecus garhi, garhi meaning "surprise", a tool-using Australopithecine discovered in 1996 and described as the "missing link" between the Australopithecus and Homo genera. There is also evidence that some species of Paranthropus utilized stone tools.

Artistic interpretation of a female member of the Australopithecus genus. The emergence of Oldowan tools is often associated with the species Australopithecus garhi.

 

There is presently no evidence to show that Oldowan tools were the sole creation of members of the Homo line or that the ability to produce them was a special characteristic of only our ancestors. Research on tool use by modern wild chimpanzees in West Africa shows there is an operational sequence when chimpanzees use lithic implements to crack nuts. In the course of nut cracking, sometimes they will create unintentional flakes. Although the morphology of chimpanzees' hammer is different from Oldowan hammer, chimpanzees' ability to use stone tools indicates that the earliest lithic industries were probably not produced by only one kind of hominin species.

The makers of Oldowan tools were mainly right-handed. "Handedness" (lateralization) had thus already evolved, though it is not clear how related to modern lateralization it was, since other animals show handedness as well.

In the mid-1970s, Glynn Isaac touched off a debate by proposing that human ancestors of this period had a "place of origin" and that they foraged outward from this home base, returning with high-quality food to share and to be processed. Over the course of the last 30 years, a variety of competing theories about how foraging occurred have been proposed, each one implying certain kinds of social strategy. The available evidence from the distribution of tools and remains is not enough to decide which theories are the most probable. However, three main groups of theories predominate.

• Glynn Isaac's model became the Central Forage Point, as he responded to critics that accused him of attributing too much "modern" behavior to early hominins with relatively free-form searches outward.
• A second group of models took modern chimpanzee behavior as a starting point, having the hominids use relatively fixed routes of foraging, and leaving tools where it was best to do so on a constant track.
• A third group of theories had relatively loose bands scouring the range, taking care to move carcasses from dangerous death sites and leaving tools more or less at random.

Each group of models implies different grouping and social strategies, from the relative altruism of central base models to the relatively disjointed search models.

Hominins probably lived in social groups that had contact with others. This conclusion is supported by the large number of bones at many sites, too large to be the work of one individual, and all of the scatter patterns implying many different individuals. Since modern primates in Africa have fluid boundaries between groups, as individuals enter, become the focus of bands, and others leave, it is also probable that the tools we find are the result of many overlapping groups working the same territories, and perhaps competing over them. Because of the huge expanse of time and the multiplicity of species associated with possible Oldowan tools, it is difficult to be more precise than this, since it is almost certain that different social groupings were used at different times and in different places.

There is also the question of what mix of hunting, gathering and scavenging the tool users employed. Early models focused on the tool users as hunters. The animals butchered by the tools include waterbuck, hartebeest, springbok, pig and zebra. However, the disposition of the bones allows some question about hominin methods of obtaining meat. That they were omnivores is unquestioned, as the digging implement and the probable use of hammer stones to smash nuts indicate. Lewis Binford first noticed that the bones at Olduvai contained a disproportionately high incidence of extremities, which are low in food substance. He concluded other predators had taken the best meat, and the hominins had only scavenged. The counter view is that while hunting many large animals would be beyond the reach of an individual human, groups could bring down larger game, as pack hunting animals are capable of doing. Moreover, since many animals both hunt and scavenge, it is possible that hominins hunted smaller animals, but were not above driving carnivores from larger kills, as they probably were driven from kills themselves from time to time.

Sites and archaeologists

Africa

Ethiopia

Oldowan choppers dating to 1.7 million years BP, from Melka Kunture, Ethiopia

Afar Triangle

Sites in the Gona river system in the Hadar region of the Afar triangle, excavated by Helene Roche, J. W. Harris and Sileshi Semaw, yielded some of the oldest known Oldowan assemblages, dating to about 2.6 million years ago. Raw material analysis done by Semaw showed that some assemblages in this region are biased towards a certain material (e.g.: 70% of the artifacts at sites EG10 and EG12 were composed of trachyte) indicating a selectivity in the quality of stone used. Recent excavations have yielded tools in association with cut-marked bones, indicating that Oldowan were used in meat-processing or -acquiring activities.

Omo River basin

The second oldest known Oldowan tool site comes from the Shungura formation of the Omo River basin. This formation documents the sediments of the Plio-Pleistocene and provides a record of the hominins that lived there. Lithic assemblages have been classified as Oldowan in members E and F in the lower Omo basin. Although there have been lithic assemblages found in multiple sites in these areas, only the Omo sites 57 and 123 in member F are accepted as hominin lithic remains. The assemblages at Omo sites 71 and 84 in member E do not show evidence of hominin modification and are therefore classified as natural assemblages.

The tools are never found in direct association with the hominins, but archaeologists believe that they would be the strongest candidates for tool manufacture. There are no hominins in those layers, but the same layers elsewhere in the Omo valley contain Paranthropus and early Homo fossils. Paranthropus occurs in the preceding layers. In the last layer at 1.4 million years ago is only Homo erectus.

Egypt

Along the Nile River, within the 100-foot terrace, evidence of Chellean or Oldowan cultures has been found.

Algeria

In November 2018 Science published a report of Oldowan artefacts in a secure dating context of 1.9 to 2.4 million years from four levels in the foothills of the Atlas mountains near the Algerian coast. 

Kenya

Kanjera South, part of the Kanjera site complex, is located on the Homa Peninsula. The site is estimated around 2 million years old. One of the significant excavations, in the area, is Leakey’s expedition in 1932-35. In 1995, Oldowan and Plio-Pleistocene faunal remains surfaced from the site. There has been fieldwork to understand the geochronology of Kanjera.

East Turkana

The numerous Koobi Fora sites on the east side of Lake Turkana are now part of Sibiloi National Park. Sites were initially excavated by Richard Leakey, Meave Leakey, Jack Harris, Glynn Isaac and others. Currently the artifacts found are classified as Oldowan or KBS Oldowan dated from 1.9–1.7 mya, Karari (or "advanced Oldowan") dated to 1.6–1.4 mya, and some early Acheulean at the end of the Karari. Over 200 hominins have been found, including Australopithecus and Homo.

Tanzania

Olduvai Gorge

Chopper from Olduvai Gorge, some 1.8 million years old

 

The Oldowan industry is named after discoveries made in the Olduvai Gorge of Tanzania in east Africa by the Leakey family, primarily Mary Leakey, but also her husband Louis and their son, Richard. Mary Leakey organized a typology of Early Pleistocene stone tools, which developed Oldowan tools into three chronological variants, A, B and C. Developed Oldowan B is of particular interest due to changes in morphology that appear to have been driven mostly by the short term availability of a chert resource from 1.65 mya to 1.53 mya. The flaking properties of this new resource resulted in considerably more core reduction and a higher prevalence of flake retouch. Similar tools had already been found in various locations in Europe and Asia for some time, where they were called Chellean and Abbevillian.

The oldest tool sites are in the East African Rift system, on the sediments of ancient streams and lakes. This is consistent with what we surmise of the evolution of man. Genetic studies tell us that the human line (the hominins) possibly diverged from the chimpanzee line (the hominids), and the native territory of the latter is the forests of Central Africa nearby. Fossil chimpanzees have been found in Kenya.

The forests of central and western Africa are a stable environment containing food in abundance for animals such as chimpanzees, and any species living in such an environment would have been under little pressure to evolve further. Eastern Africa is a land of often harsh and unstable environments, and resources are correspondingly scarcer and more difficult to get. Species living in the latter environment would be under greater pressure to evolve and change as needed to survive. A facility for tool-using would contribute to the species' chances of survival.

Even though Olduvai Gorge is the type site, Oldowan tools from here are not the oldest known examples. They occur in Beds I–IV. Bed I, dated 1.85 mya to 1.7 mya, contains Oldowan and fossils of Paranthropus boisei as well as Homo habilis, as does Bed II, 1.7–1.2 mya. H. habilis gives way to Homo erectus at about 1.6 mya but P. boisei goes on. Oldowan continues to Bed IV at 800,000 to 600,000 before present (BP).

South Africa

Abbé Breuil was the first recognized archaeologist to go on record to assert the existence of Oldowan tools. While his description was for "Chello-Abbevillean" tools, and post-dated Leakey's finds at Olduvai Gorge by at least ten years, his descriptions nonetheless represented the scholarly acceptance of this technology as legitimate. These findings were cited as being from the location of the Vaal River, at Vereeniging, and Breuil noted the distinct absence of a significant number of cores, suggesting a "portable culture". At the time, this was considered very significant, as portability supported the conclusion that the Oldowan tool-makers were capable of planning for future needs, by creating the tools in a location which was distant from their use.

Swartkrans

The Swartkrans site is a cave filled with layered fossil-bearing limestone deposits. Oldowan is found in Members (layers) I–III, 1.8–.5 mya, in association with Paranthropus robustus and Homo habilis. The Member I assemblage also includes a shaft of pointed bone polished at the pointed end. 

Member I contained a high percentage of primate remains compared to other animal remains, which did not fit the hypothesis that H. habilis or P. robustus lived in the cave. C. K. Brain conducted a more detailed study and discovered the cave had been the abode of leopards, who preyed on the hominins.

Sterkfontein

Another site of limestone caves is Sterkfontein, found in South Africa. This site contains a large number of not only Oldowan tools, but also early Acheulean technology. 

Europe

Georgia

Stone tool (Oldowan style) from Dmanisi paleontological site (right, 1.8 mya, replica), to be compared with the more "modern" Acheulean style (left)

 

In 1999 and 2002, two Homo erectus skulls (H. georgicus) were discovered at Dmanisi in southern Georgia. The archaeological layer in which the human remains, hundreds of Oldowan stone tools, and numerous animal bones were unearthed is dated approximately 1.6-1.8 million years ago. The site yields the earliest unequivocal evidence for presence of early humans outside the African continent.

Bulgaria

At Kozarnika, in the ground layers, dated to 1.4-1.6 Ma, archaeologists have discovered a human molar tooth, lower palaeolithic assemblages that belong to a core-and-flake non-Acheulian industry and incised bones that may be the earliest example of human symbolic behaviour.

Russia

Ainikab-1 and Muhkay-2 (North Caucasus, Daghestan) are the extraordinary sites in relation to date and the culture. Geological and geomorphological data, palynological studies and paleomagnetic testing unequivocally point to Early Pleistocene (Eopleistocene), indicating the age of the sites as being within the range of 1.8 – 1.2 Ma.

Spain

Extremely archaic handaxe from the Quaternary fluvial terraces of Duero river (Valladolid, Spain) dated to Oldowan/Abbevillian period (Lower Paleolithic).

 

Typical Acheulean handaxe with tear form, from a superficial site in the Zamora province (Spain), in the Duero river.

 

Oldowan tools have been found at the following sites: Fuente Nueva 3, Barranco del Leon, Sima del Elefante, Atapuerca TD 6.

France

Oldowan tools have been found at: Lézignan-la-Cèbe, 1.5 mya; Abbeville, 1–.5 mya; Vallonnet cave, French Riviera; Soleihac, open-air site in Massif Central. Oldowan tools have also been found at Tautavel in the foothills of the Pyrenees. These were discovered by Henry de Lumbley alongside human remains (cranium). The tools are of limestone and quartz.

Elsewhere

Oldowan tools have been found in Italy at the Monte Poggiolo open air site dated to approximately 850 kya, making them the oldest evidence of human habitation in Italy. In Germany tools have been found in river gravels at Kärlich dating from 300 kya. In the Czech Republic tools have been found in ancient lake deposits at Przeletice and a cave site at Stranska Skala, dated no later than 500 kya. In Hungary tools have been found at a spring site at Vértesszőlős dating from 500 kya.

Asia

Oldowan tools have been found at sites in South Asia and Southwest Asia. In November 2008 tens of sites of Oldowan tools industry were found on the island of Socotra (Yemen).

In Pakistan tools have been found dating from 1.9 mya at Riwat. In Iran tools have been found dating from the Late Pliocene or Early Pleistocene at Kashafrud. In Israel tools have been found dating from 1.4 mya at el 'Ubeidiya.

Acheulean

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Acheulean

Geographical range	Africa, Europe, and Asia
Period	Lower Paleolithic
Dates	1.76–0.13 Mya
Type site	Saint-Acheul (Amiens)
Preceded by	Oldowan
Followed by	Mousterian, Clactonian, Micoquien

Acheulean hand-axes from Kent. The types shown are (clockwise from top) cordate, ficron, and ovate.

 

Depiction of a Terra Amata hut in Nice, France as postulated by Henry de Lumley dated to 400 thousand years ago. Acheulean-culture shelter construction has been discovered in Japan dating back to 500 thousand years ago.

 

Acheulean (/əˈʃuːliən/; also Acheulian and Mode II), from the French acheuléen, is an archaeological industry of stone tool manufacture characterized by distinctive oval and pear-shaped "hand-axes" associated with Homo erectus and derived species such as Homo heidelbergensis. 

Acheulean tools were produced during the Lower Palaeolithic era across Africa and much of West Asia, South Asia, and Europe, and are typically found with Homo erectus remains. It is thought that Acheulean technologies first developed about 1.76 million years ago, derived from the more primitive Oldowan technology associated with Homo habilis. The Acheulean includes at least the early part of the Middle Paleolithic. Its end is not well defined, depending on whether Sangoan (also known as "Epi-Achaeulean") is included, it may be taken to last until as late as 130,000 years ago. In Europe and Western Asia, early Neanderthals adopted Achaeulean technology, transitioning to Mousterian by about 160,000 years ago.

History of research

The type site for the Acheulean is Saint-Acheul, a suburb of Amiens, the capital of the Somme department in Picardy, where artifacts were found in 1859.

John Frere is generally credited as being the first to suggest a very ancient date for Acheulean hand-axes. In 1797, he sent two examples to the Royal Academy in London from Hoxne in Suffolk. He had found them in prehistoric lake deposits along with the bones of extinct animals and concluded that they were made by people "who had not the use of metals" and that they belonged to a "very ancient period indeed, even beyond the present world". His ideas were, however, ignored by his contemporaries, who subscribed to a pre-Darwinian view of human evolution.

Later, Jacques Boucher de Crèvecœur de Perthes, working between 1836 and 1846, collected further examples of hand-axes and fossilised animal bone from the gravel river terraces of the Somme near Abbeville in northern France. Again, his theories attributing great antiquity to the finds were spurned by his colleagues, until one of de Perthe's main opponents, Dr Marcel Jérôme Rigollot, began finding more tools near Saint Acheul. Following visits to both Abbeville and Saint Acheul by the geologist Joseph Prestwich, the age of the tools was finally accepted.

In 1872, Louis Laurent Gabriel de Mortillet described the characteristic hand-axe tools as belonging to L'Epoque de St Acheul. The industry was renamed as the Acheulean in 1925.

Dating the Acheulean

An Acheulean handaxe, Haute-Garonne France – MHNT

 

Providing calendrical dates and ordered chronological sequences in the study of early stone tool manufacture is often accomplished through one or more geological techniques, such as radiometric dating, often potassium-argon dating, and magnetostratigraphy. From the Konso Formation of Ethiopia, Acheulean hand-axes are dated to about 1.5 million years ago using radiometric dating of deposits containing volcanic ashes. Acheulean tools in South Asia have also been found to be dated as far as 1.5 million years ago. However, the earliest accepted examples of the Acheulean currently known come from the West Turkana region of Kenya and were first described by a French-led archaeology team. These particular Acheulean tools were recently dated through the method of magnetostratigraphy to about 1.76 million years ago, making them the oldest not only in Africa but the world. The earliest user of Acheulean tools was Homo ergaster, who first appeared about 1.8 million years ago. Not all researchers use this formal name, and instead prefer to call these users early Homo erectus.

From geological dating of sedimentary deposits, it appears that the Acheulean originated in Africa and spread to Asian, Middle Eastern, and European areas sometime between 1.5 million years ago and about 800 thousand years ago. In individual regions, this dating can be considerably refined; in Europe for example, it was thought that Acheulean methods did not reach the continent until around 500,000 years ago. However more recent research demonstrated that hand-axes from Spain were made more than 900,000 years ago.

Relative dating techniques (based on a presumption that technology progresses over time) suggest that Acheulean tools followed on from earlier, cruder tool-making methods, but there is considerable chronological overlap in early prehistoric stone-working industries, with evidence in some regions that Acheulean tool-using groups were contemporary with other, less sophisticated industries such as the Clactonian and then later with the more sophisticated Mousterian, as well. It is therefore important not to see the Acheulean as a neatly defined period or one that happened as part of a clear sequence but as one tool-making technique that flourished especially well in early prehistory. The enormous geographic spread of Acheulean techniques also makes the name unwieldy as it represents numerous regional variations on a similar theme. The term Acheulean does not represent a common culture in the modern sense, rather it is a basic method for making stone tools that was shared across much of the Old World.

The very earliest Acheulean assemblages often contain numerous Oldowan-style flakes and core forms and it is almost certain that the Acheulean developed from this older industry. These industries are known as the Developed Oldowan and are almost certainly transitional between the Oldowan and Acheulean.

Acheulean stone tools

Stages

In the four divisions of prehistoric stone-working, Acheulean artefacts are classified as Mode 2, meaning they are more advanced than the (usually earlier) Mode 1 tools of the Clactonian or Oldowan/Abbevillian industries but lacking the sophistication of the (usually later) Mode 3 Middle Palaeolithic technology, exemplified by the Mousterian industry.

The Mode 1 industries created rough flake tools by hitting a suitable stone with a hammerstone. The resulting flake that broke off would have a natural sharp edge for cutting and could afterwards be sharpened further by striking another smaller flake from the edge if necessary (known as "retouch"). These early toolmakers may also have worked the stone they took the flake from (known as a core) to create chopper cores although there is some debate over whether these items were tools or just discarded cores.

The Mode 2 Acheulean toolmakers also used the Mode 1 flake tool method but supplemented it by using bone, antler, or wood to shape stone tools. This type of hammer, compared to stone, yields more control over the shape of the finished tool. Unlike the earlier Mode 1 industries, it was the core that was prized over the flakes that came from it. Another advance was that the Mode 2 tools were worked symmetrically and on both sides indicating greater care in the production of the final tool.

Mode 3 technology emerged towards the end of Acheulean dominance and involved the Levallois technique, most famously exploited by the Mousterian industry. Transitional tool forms between the two are called Mousterian of Acheulean Tradition, or MTA types. The long blades of the Upper Palaeolithic Mode 4 industries appeared long after the Acheulean was abandoned.

As the period of Acheulean tool use is so vast, efforts have been made to classify various stages of it such as John Wymer's division into Early Acheulean, Middle Acheulean, Late Middle Acheulean and Late Acheulean for material from Britain. These schemes are normally regional and their dating and interpretations vary.

In Africa, there is a distinct difference in the tools made before and after 600,000 years ago with the older group being thicker and less symmetric and the younger being more extensively trimmed.

Manufacture

The primary innovation associated with Acheulean hand-axes is that the stone was worked symmetrically and on both sides. For the latter reason, handaxes are, along with cleavers, bifacially worked tools that could be manufactured from the large flakes themselves or from prepared cores.

Tool types found in Acheulean assemblages include pointed, cordate, ovate, ficron, and bout-coupé hand-axes (referring to the shapes of the final tool), cleavers, retouched flakes, scrapers, and segmental chopping tools. Materials used were determined by available local stone types; flint is most often associated with the tools but its use is concentrated in Western Europe; in Africa sedimentary and igneous rock such as mudstone and basalt were most widely used, for example. Other source materials include chalcedony, quartzite, andesite, sandstone, chert, and shale. Even relatively soft rock such as limestone could be exploited. In all cases the toolmakers worked their handaxes close to the source of their raw materials, suggesting that the Acheulean was a set of skills passed between individual groups.

Some smaller tools were made from large flakes that had been struck from stone cores. These flake tools and the distinctive waste flakes produced in Acheulean tool manufacture suggest a more considered technique, one that required the toolmaker to think one or two steps ahead during work that necessitated a clear sequence of steps to create perhaps several tools in one sitting.

A hard hammerstone would first be used to rough out the shape of the tool from the stone by removing large flakes. These large flakes might be re-used to create tools. The tool maker would work around the circumference of the remaining stone core, removing smaller flakes alternately from each face. The scar created by the removal of the preceding flake would provide a striking platform for the removal of the next. Misjudged blows or flaws in the material used could cause problems, but a skilled toolmaker could overcome them.

Once the roughout shape was created, a further phase of flaking was undertaken to make the tool thinner. The thinning flakes were removed using a softer hammer, such as bone or antler. The softer hammer required more careful preparation of the striking platform and this would be abraded using a coarse stone to ensure the hammer did not slide off when struck.

Final shaping was then applied to the usable cutting edge of the tool, again using fine removal of flakes. Some Acheulean tools were sharpened instead by the removal of a tranchet flake. This was struck from the lateral edge of the hand-axe close to the intended cutting area, resulting in the removal of a flake running along (parallel to) the blade of the axe to create a neat and very sharp working edge. This distinctive tranchet flake can be identified amongst flint-knapping debris at Acheulean sites.

Use

Acheulean hand-axe from Egypt. Found on a hill top plateau, 1400 feet above sea level, 9 miles NNW of the city of Naqada, Egypt. Paleolithic. The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, London

 

Loren Eiseley calculated that Acheulean tools have an average useful cutting edge of 20 centimetres (8 inches), making them much more efficient than the 5-centimetre (2 in) average of Oldowan tools.

Use-wear analysis on Acheulean tools suggests there was generally no specialization in the different types created and that they were multi-use implements. Functions included hacking wood from a tree, cutting animal carcasses as well as scraping and cutting hides when necessary. Some tools, however, could have been better suited to digging roots or butchering animals than others.

Alternative theories include a use for ovate hand-axes as a kind of hunting discus to be hurled at prey. Puzzlingly, there are also examples of sites where hundreds of hand-axes, many impractically large and also apparently unused, have been found in close association together. Sites such as Melka Kunturé in Ethiopia, Olorgesailie in Kenya, Isimila in Tanzania, and Kalambo Falls in Zambia have produced evidence that suggests Acheulean hand-axes might not always have had a functional purpose.

Recently, it has been suggested that the Acheulean tool users adopted the handaxe as a social artifact, meaning that it embodied something beyond its function of a butchery or wood cutting tool. Knowing how to create and use these tools would have been a valuable skill and the more elaborate ones suggest that they played a role in their owners' identity and their interactions with others. This would help explain the apparent over-sophistication of some examples which may represent a "historically accrued social significance".

One theory goes further and suggests that some special hand-axes were made and displayed by males in search of mate, using a large, well-made hand-axe to demonstrate that they possessed sufficient strength and skill to pass on to their offspring. Once they had attracted a female at a group gathering, it is suggested that they would discard their axes, perhaps explaining why so many are found together.

Hand-axe as a left over core

Stone knapping with limited digital dexterity makes the center of gravity the required direction of flake removal. Physics then dictates a circular or oval end pattern, similar to the handaxe, for a leftover core after flake production. This would explain the abundance, wide distribution, proximity to source, consistent shape, and lack of actual use, of these artifacts.

Money

Mimi Lam, a researcher from the University of British Columbia, has suggested that Acheulean hand-axes became "the first commodity: A marketable good or service that has value and is used as an item for exchange."

Distribution

The geographic distribution of Acheulean tools – and thus the peoples who made them – is often interpreted as being the result of palaeo-climatic and ecological factors, such as glaciation and the desertification of the Sahara Desert.

Acheulean Biface from Saint Acheul

 

Acheulean stone tools have been found across the continent of Africa, save for the dense rainforest around the River Congo which is not thought to have been colonized by hominids until later. It is thought that from Africa their use spread north and east to Asia: from Anatolia, through the Arabian Peninsula, across modern day Iran and Pakistan, and into India, and beyond. In Europe their users reached the Pannonian Basin and the western Mediterranean regions, modern day France, the Low Countries, western Germany, and southern and central Britain. Areas further north did not see human occupation until much later, due to glaciation. In Athirampakkam at Chennai in Tamil Nadu the Acheulean age started at 1.51 mya and it is also prior than North India and Europe.

Until the 1980s, it was thought that the humans who arrived in East Asia abandoned the hand-axe technology of their ancestors and adopted chopper tools instead. An apparent division between Acheulean and non-Acheulean tool industries was identified by Hallam L. Movius, who drew the Movius Line across northern India to show where the traditions seemed to diverge. Later finds of Acheulean tools at Chongokni in South Korea and also in Mongolia and China, however, cast doubt on the reliability of Movius's distinction. Since then, a different division known as the Roe Line has been suggested. This runs across North Africa to Israel and thence to India, separating two different techniques used by Acheulean toolmakers. North and east of the Roe Line, Acheulean hand-axes were made directly from large stone nodules and cores; while, to the south and west, they were made from flakes struck from these nodules.

Biface (trihedral) Amar Merdeg, Mehran, National Museum of Iran

Acheulean tool users

For further details of the known environment and people during the time when Acheulean tools were being made, see Palaeolithic and Lower Palaeolithic.

 

Most notably, however, it is Homo ergaster (sometimes called early Homo erectus), whose assemblages are almost exclusively Acheulean, who used the technique. Later, the related species Homo heidelbergensis (the common ancestor of both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens) used it extensively. Late Acheulean tools were still used by species derived from H. erectus, including Homo sapiens idaltu and early Neanderthals.

The symmetry of the hand-axes has been used to suggest that Acheulean tool users possessed the ability to use language; the parts of the brain connected with fine control and movement are located in the same region that controls speech. The wider variety of tool types compared to earlier industries and their aesthetically as well as functionally pleasing form could indicate a higher intellectual level in Acheulean tool users than in earlier hominines. Others argue that there is no correlation between spatial abilities in tool making and linguistic behaviour, and that language is not learned or conceived in the same manner as artefact manufacture.

Lower Palaeolithic finds made in association with Acheulean hand-axes, such as the Venus of Berekhat Ram, have been used to argue for artistic expression amongst the tool users. The incised elephant tibia from Bilzingsleben in Germany, and ochre finds from Kapthurin in Kenya and Duinefontein in South Africa, are sometimes cited as being some of the earliest examples of an aesthetic sensibility in human history. There are numerous other explanations put forward for the creation of these artefacts, however; and there is no unequivocal evidence of human art until around 50,000 years ago, after the emergence of modern Homo sapiens.

The kill site at Boxgrove in England is another famous Acheulean site. Up until the 1970s these kill sites, often at waterholes where animals would gather to drink, were interpreted as being where Acheulean tool users killed game, butchered their carcasses, and then discarded the tools they had used. Since the advent of zooarchaeology, which has placed greater emphasis on studying animal bones from archaeological sites, this view has changed. Many of the animals at these kill sites have been found to have been killed by other predator animals, so it is likely that humans of the period supplemented hunting with scavenging from already dead animals.

Excavations at the Bnot Ya'akov Bridge site, located along the Dead Sea rift in the southern Hula Valley of northern Israel, have revealed evidence of human habitation in the area from as early as 750,000 years ago. Archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem claim that the site provides evidence of "advanced human behavior" half a million years earlier than has previously been estimated. Their report describes an Acheulean layer at the site in which numerous stone tools, animal bones, and plant remains have been found.

Azykh cave located in Azerbaijan is another site where Acheulean tools were found. In 1968, a lower jaw of a new type of hominid was discovered in the 5th layer (so-called Acheulean layer) of the cave. Specialists named this type “Azykhantropus”.

Only limited artefactual evidence survives of the users of Acheulean tools other than the stone tools themselves. Cave sites were exploited for habitation, but the hunter-gatherers of the Palaeolithic also possibly built shelters such as those identified in connection with Acheulean tools at Grotte du Lazaret and Terra Amata near Nice in France. The presence of the shelters is inferred from large rocks at the sites, which may have been used to weigh down the bottoms of tent-like structures or serve as foundations for huts or windbreaks. These stones may have been naturally deposited. In any case, a flimsy wood or animal skin structure would leave few archaeological traces after so much time. Fire was seemingly being exploited by Homo ergaster, and would have been a necessity in colonising colder Eurasia from Africa. Conclusive evidence of mastery over it this early is, however, difficult to find.