Hi-Tech Stone Age Site Found
By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery NewsJune 28, 2005 — A 2.34-million-year-old tool manufacturing site in East Africa may have been the Stone Age's center for high tech, according to French archaeologists who studied more than 2,600 artifacts excavated there.
The archaeologists believe relics at the site in Kenya, called Lokalalei 2C, display a level of tool-making sophistication among its dwellers that was unique to the Late Pliocene, which occurred between 2.6 and 2.0 million years ago.
"Planning, productivity and the existence of a real knapping method are not yet demonstrated in other sites for this time period," said co-author, Anne Delagnes, referring to the early technique of shaping stones into tools.
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"We suggest that the Lokalalei 2C knappers had a greater technical knowledge for stone tool making than most of their counterparts who lived during the Late Pliocene," she said.
The findings were recently published in the Journal of Human Evolution.
The workers were either Australopithecus — an upright, furry being that looked part ape and part human — or an early species of modern human, said Delagnes, a research director at the Institute of Prehistory and Quaternary Geology at the University of Bordeaux.
Delagnes and colleague Hélène Roche analyzed a variety of flake tools, worked cobbles, hammerstones and even retouched pieces that workers had sharpened when edges dulled after use.
The researchers also found broken tools and bits of worked rock that they refitted, or pieced together like a puzzle, to recreate what went on at the prehistoric flake tool "factory."
The process differs from prior theories that suggested our ancient ancestors did not know much about what they were doing.
According to the new study, the toolmakers first selected angular stone fragments and flakes that had a serviceable striking angle of less than 90 degrees. Broken stones suggest some careful chipping and workmanship took place offsite, before the roughly shaped pieces were brought back to Lokalalei.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20050627/stoneagetool.html
