Discovery

2021 ◽  
pp. 41-81
Author(s):  
Clive Gamble
Keyword(s):  
Stone Tools ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Gravel Pits ◽  
The Town

The narrative starts at breakfast in the northern French town of Abbeville on the River Somme. Prestwich and Evans are joined by the pioneering, but eccentric antiquary Jacques Boucher de Perthes. They are here to inspect his claims for stone tools found alongside the bones of extinct ice age animals. If they can verify his claim, then the time revolution has begun. The reasons why Boucher de Perthes has been ignored are touched on as the three visit the gravel pits of the town, looking at the evidence. Lunch allows them to study Boucher de Perthes’s huge collection of flints and antiquities, including his strange stone sculptures. They are interrupted by a telegram and leave for Amiens. The train journey from Abbeville to Amiens is used to reflect on how they built their scientific case from facts, not theories. Once in Amiens they are taken by Charles Pinsard to the gravel pits at St Acheul, where they find, and photograph, the evidence they came for. The circumstances of the discovery are described in their own words.

scholarly journals THE DISCOVERY OF A BIFACIAL INDUSTRY IN VIETNAM

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 3-21
Author(s):  
A. P. Derevianko ◽  
A. V. Kandyba ◽  
Khac Su Nguyen ◽  
S. A. Gladyshev ◽  
Gia Doi Nguyen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Convergent Evolution ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Homo Erectus ◽  
Lower Paleolithic ◽  
Primary Reduction ◽  
The Town

This study deals with the origin of bifacial industry in the Lower Paleolithic of Southeast Asia. We describe stone tools from the stratifi ed sites of Goda and Rocktyng near the town of Ankhe, Vietnam. The lithics represent a homogeneous industry characterized by uniform Lower Paleolithic techniques of primary and secondary reduction. Cores and tools were made of pebbles, and some tools were manufactured on fl akes. The tool-kit includes bifaces, pics, becs, carinate end-scrapers, various types of side-scrapers, choppers and chopping tools, denticulate and notched pieces. Bifaces and pics are the principal types. Primary reduction was aimed at manufacturing simple pebble cores with cortex striking platforms, whereas radial and orthogonal cores are less frequent. Tektites found with the lithics were dated by 40K/38Ar-method to 806±22 and 782±20 ka BP. We propose to name this industry the Ankhe culture. It likely emerged by convergent evolution of the pebble-fl ake industry associated with the fi rst wave of Homo erectus migration from Africa 1.8–1.6 million years BP, and is unrelated to the Acheulean tradition introduced by the second migration wave from Africa.

Acceptance

2021 ◽  
pp. 186-222
Author(s):  
Clive Gamble
Keyword(s):  
Stone Tools ◽  
Elliptical Orbit ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Racial Groups ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Evolutionary Pathway ◽  
Career Changes ◽  
The Earth ◽  
New Space ◽  
Guided Tour

By the end of the decade the time revolution was a done deal. Moulin-Quignon still reverberated, but in 1865 Lubbock produced the first guided tour of the Old Stone Age, in which he accused Lyell of plagiarism. In Pre-Historic Times he filled the new space of deep history with stone tools to show an evolutionary pathway from St Acheul to the Neolithic monuments of Avebury and Stonehenge. Tracing history back was matched by the anthropologist Edward Tylor, who traced it up. Both men were interested in the evolution of racial groups and accounting for the world’s hunters and gatherers. In a typically upbeat assessment, Lubbock saw the lesson of the past as providing hope for the future. Victorian ‘savages’ at the uttermost ends of the earth had not degenerated from a civilized state. They had the potential to evolve, as his ancestors in Europe had done. Unwritten history was making universal history possible. The decade saw deaths and career changes. Prestwich largely abandoned the time revolution, married Falconer’s niece, Grace McCall, and became an Oxford professor. Falconer and Boucher de Perthes died, while Lubbock entered Parliament in 1870. Prestwich’s fixed notion of a single ice age was challenged by James Croll, who painstakingly worked out the changes in the elliptical orbit of the Earth, and from these proposed multiple ice ages. As a bookend to the decade Evans published his fact-rich volume on ancient stone implements. The path of deep history was now set in stone.

scholarly journals Mesolithic Sites in the Upper Tobol

2022 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 897-910
Author(s):  
E. V. Podzuban
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Archaeological Site ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Forest Steppe ◽  
Arrow Head ◽  
Stone Industry ◽  
The Town

The article introduces prehistoric artifacts from the sites of Karasor-5, Karasor-6, and Karasor-7 obtained in 1998. The archaeological site of Karasor is located in the Upper Tobol region, near the town of Lisakovsk. Stone tools, pottery fragments, a ceramic item, and a bronze arrow head were collected from a sand blowout, which had destroyed the cultural layer. The paper gives a detailed description of the pottery. The stone tools were examined using the technical and typological analysis, which featured the primary splitting, the morphological parameters and size of plates, the ratio of blanks, plates, flakes, and finished tools, the secondary processing methods, and the typological composition of the tools. The nature of the raw materials was counted as an independent indicator. The pottery fragments, the bronze arrow head, and the ceramic item belonged to the Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. The stone industry of the Karasor archeological cluster proved to be a Mesolithic monument of the Turgai Trough. The technical and typological analysis revealed a close similarity with the Mesolithic sites of the Southern and Middle Trans-Urals, as well as the forest-steppe part of the Tobol-Irtysh interfluve. The stone artifacts were dated from the Mesolithic to the Early Iron Age.

scholarly journals A Summary of the History of the Caddo People

1993 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank F. Schambach
Keyword(s):  
Stone Tools ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
East Texas ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
The Past ◽  
World Today ◽  
Plains Indians ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Northern Michigan

I am pleased and very honored that you have invited me here today to tell you something about the past of the Caddo people as it is known to archaeologists. This is a subject that has been both my occupation and my major preoccupation for more than 25 years. The story that I and other archaeologists have been piecing together over many years is long, complex, and endlessly fascinating. It is a heritage that anyone could be proud of. Let me give you some of the highlights. The story began over 11,500 years ago--or about 9,500 B.C.--when the first people arrived in the historic Caddo territory of Northwest Louisiana, Southwest Arkansas, East Texas, and Southeast Oklahoma. There were not many of them, perhaps only a hundred or so in this whole area at first. And the world they lived in was very different from the world today. It was cold, about like northern Maine or northern Michigan today, with forests of spruce and birch, because the Ice Age was still going on. They were probably dressed like Eskimos in carefully sewn parkas, trousers, and boots. We know this because many of the stone tools they left behind are tools for preparing hides and for making the bone needles necessary to sew them into clothing. They probably lived in skin tepees like those of the historic Plains Indians, but smaller, because they did not have horses to carry their gear from place to place. They did have dogs and they probably trained them to work as pack animals.

Arguments over the Ice Age

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Great Activity ◽  
Chipped Stone ◽  
Glacial Chronology ◽  
Glacial Epoch ◽  
Coherent Sequence ◽  
The Web

The acceptance of human antiquity in the mid-nineteenth century fed a desire to know more about the age of these chipped stone tools from the drift. In 1863, Canon William Greenwell (1820–1918), the antiquary, archaeologist, and collector from Durham, declared: ‘The great question which has yet to be settled is this—at what period was the drift in which the flints are found deposited? And side by side with this was another important query—down to what time did these now extinct animals occupy any part of our continent?’ This chapter seeks to untangle the web of time that was spun around the stone implements of Britain over the last four decades of the nineteenth century. Greenwell’s great question was a popular one, and ‘what period’ was often answered by connecting the implementiferous drifts to the Glacial epoch. The mid-glacial submergence, entertained by geologists like Ramsay and Phillips, provided a convenient division between pre-glacial and post-glacial times. On each side of this great division, detailed patterns were being drawn in stratigraphy and bones. As decisions were made about the pre-glacial or post-glacial date of sediments from river drifts and caves, rich in tools and bones, the glacial chronology was, meanwhile, being revised and subdivided too. During the latter decades of the nineteenth century there was great activity and little agreement about the order of events in these distant times. Researchers immersed in different material, gathered from different geographical areas, and asking different questions would not find it easy—or even desirable—to mesh their findings into a single coherent sequence. Attempts to date the stone tools of Britain entered a contentious arena. The chronological indicators scrutinised by these researchers—river drifts, glacial drifts, and bones—offered few clear answers to Greenwell’s question. The sands, gravels, clays, and brickearths of Quaternary times were so scattered, patchy, and variable that even Prestwich found it diffcult to understand their sequence.

scholarly journals Zur Entstehung des Talkessels von La Paz/Bolivien und Umgebung

1979 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Villarroel ◽  
K. Graf
Keyword(s):  
Ice Age ◽  
Interglacial Period ◽  
Mountain Range ◽  
Last Interglacial ◽  
La Paz ◽  
Late Pliocene ◽  
Last Interglacial Period ◽  
Last Ice Age ◽  
Landscape Units ◽  
The Town

Abstract. The town of La Paz is situated between the Bolivian Highland (Altiplano) and the Central Mountain Range. These two landscape units were mostly formed during the Tertiary. But at their intermediate bordering zone, geomorphological forms have 'later been reshaped. At the end of the Pliocene, a peneplain was formed (the Altiplano of today) and got covered by volcanic ashes. Since the fossilization of mammals (Posnanskytherium) in the late Pliocene, a tektonical uplift of about 3300 ft. has taken place, and huge moraines built up covering the whole city area of today. The enormous La Paz Valley was eroded above all during the last interglacial period. During the last ice age, the glaciers reached the present upper city border only and melted away very rapidly 9800 years ago at the latest.

scholarly journals SAVING ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN DERBENT IN 2015: EXCAVATION AREA XXXIII

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 177-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
M S Gadzhiev ◽  
A I Taimazov ◽  
A L Budaichiev ◽  
A M Abdulaev ◽  
A K Abiev
Keyword(s):  
Stone Tools ◽  
Household Waste ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Total Thickness ◽  
Waste Dump ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
The North ◽  
The Town ◽  
Excavation Area

The article presents the results of archaeological research carried out within the framework of saving operations in excavation area XXXIII, located outside the medieval shahristan of Derbent - within 130 meters from the northern defensive wall of the town. The excavations have revealed thick cultural strata (four layers with a total thickness of up to 2.4 m), with a large number of fragments of glazed and unglazed pottery, fragments of glass vessels and bracelets, copper coins, stone tools, etc., belonging to Arab and pre-Mongol periods (8th - early 13th centuries). The dating of the layers was based on ceramic complexes of the layers (especially on glazed ceramics) and on chronologically indicative individual finds (glass bracelets, bronze tip of the belt, coins from layers 3 and 4 - coinage of the Umayyads and early Abbasids). They give evidence of active use of this area of the medieval town located to the north of the architecturally marked shahristan. Despite the presence of thick cultural strata with numerous artifacts interbedded with ash-coal and organic interlayers, no architectural, economic and household constructions (rubbish-heaps, grain pits, bread-baking stoves - tandoors, waterways, wells, hearths, etc.) have been identified in this area. The character of the layers allows drawing the conclusion that household waste dump was located here - outside the shahristan. Termination of functioning of this site near Derbent, as well as many other objects in the town, should be associated with the Mongol invasions in the early 13th century, which resulted in significant reduction of the population and of the territory of the town. In the excavation area were revealed two levels of medieval Muslim burials representing two chronological periods: 15th - 17th centuries (burials 1, 2) and late 8th - early 9th centuries (burials 3-27).

Building Love’s Canal

Love Canal ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard S. Newman
Keyword(s):  
Mark Twain ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Hydroelectric Power ◽  
Business Plans ◽  
Niagara Falls ◽  
Model City ◽  
Industrial Expansion ◽  
The World ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Town

The fall from environmental grace that Mark Twain described was a product of sweeping industrialization at the close of the 19th century. Spurred by the advent of hydroelectric power, a whole new group of commercial schemers flooded the Falls in search of wealth, power, and prestige. “This is an electrical era,” a Niagara booster bragged. “Back in the centuries that are past, we had the stone age, the ice age, etc., but the electrical age is purely the utilization of natural forces by the genius of man.” “Naturally,” he noted, “the first development of electric power was at the source of the greatest quantity of power anywhere to be found on earth, the Falls of Niagara.” That meant Niagara Falls would remain a watchword of industrial expansion far into the future. Among the legion of businessmen, engineers, and investors flocking to the fin de siècle Falls was an unheralded entrepreneur named William Love. After surveying the area in the early 1890s, Love was smitten. The environment he encountered was beautiful and bountiful. He soon unleashed bold plans to build both the world’s greatest hydroelectric power canal and “a model manufacturing city” that might someday encompass millions of people. By offering cheap power to businesses and an array of modern amenities to residents, Love’s Model City would become “the most complete, perfect and beautiful” urban locale “in the world.” As Love told anyone who would listen, his plan was destined to succeed. History knows Love for his dramatic failure. The economic crisis of 1893 undercut investments in Model City, while Love’s tangled business plans killed construction of his power canal. By the early 1900s, Love was long gone. In Model City, located a few miles from the Falls, little remained of his epic vision, save for a few small buildings. Yet in the town of Lasalle, an environmental ruin associated with Model City remained a prominent part of the landscape for many years: “Love’s Canal.” Before Love’s funding evaporated, his workers excavated a portion of a power canal and waterfall that would have been higher and more powerful than the natural Falls.

scholarly journals Karasor-2 Site in the Upper Tobol

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 636-647
Author(s):  
E. V. Podzuban
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Archaeological Site ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Time Range ◽  
Cultural Layer ◽  
The West ◽  
Cultural Affiliation ◽  
Stone Industry ◽  
The Town

The present article introduces a collection of prehistoric material culture finds obtained at the Karasor-2 site during a stationary study of the Karasor archaeological site in 1998. A group of Karasor monuments is located near the town of Lisakovsk in the Upper Tobol river valley, which is in the northern Turgai depression. The territory of the Turgai depression connects the West Siberian and Turan plains. The Turgai depression borders on the Trans-Ural Plateau in the west and on the Kazakh hillocky area and the spur of the Ulutau mountains in the east. The local nature and geography destroy the cultural layer on the monuments. Thus, the finds represented by fragments of ceramics and stone products at the Karasor-2 site were collected from the surface, as the cultural layer had been destroyed. The article gives descriptive characteristics of the ceramics, while the stone tools were studied with the technical and typological method. Since the ceramic fragments are too small, the dating and cultural affiliation of the artifacts was based on the results of the technical and typological analysis of the stone tools. Most likely, the stone finds date back to the Mesolithic and Late Eneolithic periods. Most tools are similar to the stone industry of the Tersek culture and belong to the Eneolithic Age. The author believes that the time range of the stone tools and ceramics is from the Late Mesolithic to the Bronze Age.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document