olduvai gorge
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Author(s):  
Manuel Domínguez‐Rodrigo ◽  
Lloyd A. Courtenay ◽  
Lucía Cobo‐Sánchez ◽  
Enrique Baquedano ◽  
Audax Mabulla
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Marcos Pizarro‐Monzo ◽  
Elia Organista ◽  
Lucía Cobo‐Sánchez ◽  
Enrique Baquedano ◽  
Manuel Domínguez‐Rodrigo

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (7) ◽  
pp. e0254603
Author(s):  
Fernando Diez-Martín ◽  
Lucía Cobo-Sánchez ◽  
Adrian Baddeley ◽  
David Uribelarrea ◽  
Audax Mabulla ◽  
...  

DS (David’s site) is one of the new archaeological sites documented in the same paleolandscape in which FLK 22 was deposited at about 1.85 Ma in Olduvai Gorge. Fieldwork in DS has unearthed the largest vertically-discrete archaeological horizon in the African Pleistocene, where a multi-cluster anthropogenic accumulation of fossil bones and stone tools has been identified. In this work we present the results of the techno-economic study of the lithic assemblage recovered from DS. We also explore the spatial magnitude of the technological behaviors documented at this spot using powerful spatial statistical tools to unravel correlations between the spatial distributional patterns of lithic categories. At DS, lavas and quartzite were involved in different technological processes. Volcanic materials, probably transported to this spot from a close source, were introduced in large numbers, including unmodified materials, and used in percussion activities and in a wide variety of reduction strategies. A number of volcanic products were subject to outward fluxes to other parts of the paleolandscape. In contrast, quartzite rocks were introduced in smaller numbers and might have been subject to a significantly more intense exploitation. The intra-site spatial analysis has shown that specialized areas cannot be identified, unmodified materials are not randomly distributed, percussion and knapping categories do not spatially overlap, while bipolar specimens show some sort of spatial correlation with percussion activities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 263 ◽  
pp. 106980
Author(s):  
Patricia Bello-Alonso ◽  
Joseba Rios-Garaizar ◽  
Joaquin Panera ◽  
Susana Rubio-Jara ◽  
Alfredo Pérez-González ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petar Gabrić ◽  
Marko Banda ◽  
Ivor Karavanić

A vast amount of literature suggests a co-evolutionary relationship between Palaeolithic stone toolmaking, and cognition and specifically language. However, empirical data remain limited to indirect findings of neurophysiological studies. Furthermore, most Oldowan studies have used chert and have not investigated retouch, even though quartz and lava were predominant raw materials during periods of chert unavailability, and even though chert was disproportionately more frequently used for retouch compared to other raw materials during periods of chert availability, at least in the Olduvai Gorge. The study recruited 13 young adults with no prior experience in knapping. Subjects were taught by an experienced knapper to produce quartz choppers and chert sidescrapers in either a verbal or gestural condition. Two raters rated on a 5-point scale the subjects’ performances on specific steps of the two stone toolmaking tasks. In a post-experimental interview, subjects stated which aspects of the tasks they preferred or disfavored. Subjects also performed on a neuropsychological battery encompassing visuospatial, executive functioning, and linguistic tasks. Given the small sample size, the results should be regarded as exploratory and preliminary. Our results are further limited to the early acquisition phase and may not reflect processes in modern experienced knappers. Descriptive data suggested better performance across all stone toolmaking variables in the verbal compared to gestural condition, but only flake quality on the sidescraper task was significantly different between groups. Analyses of the stone toolmaking variables suggested subjects perceived quartz and chert flaking very differently. Correlational and other analyses suggested that quartz chopper manufacture was not associated with cognitive performance. Conversely, chert flaking and retouch were strongly associated with visuospatial working memory, showing that subjects with a higher memory span produced better chert flakes and retouch. Retouch only was moderately associated with executive functioning measures, showing subjects who made fewer errors on the tasks were better on retouch. Specific aspects of chert flaking were also associated with verbal fluency performance, showing, among others, moderate and strong positive associations with the productivity and rate of production of syntactically transitive verbs on action fluency. Evolutionary implications can be drawn from our research only if we controversially assume similar results would have been obtained had we tested early hominins and not modern humans. Following this axiom, our results suggest that Oldowan hominins relied on modern-like visuospatial working memory during chert flaking and retouch, and, to a lesser degree, modern-like executive functioning during chert retouch. This is contrary to previous Oldowan studies suggesting no involvement of executive functioning during Oldowan-like flaking. Results from the linguistic tasks controversially suggest that some of the prerequisites for aspects of action language and syntactic transitivity (verb-object phrases) in modern humans were to some degree present in Oldowan hominin populations. Because Olduvai Gorge hominins readily incorporated chert for stone toolmaking in periods of chert availability, our results suggest that these cognitive capacities were phylogenetically not related to chert knapping. Finally, we propose that the quality of performance on Oldowan flaking and retouch may not reflect the full level of cognitive capacities of Oldowan populations. We provide the first direct evidence for an association between Palaeolithic stone toolmaking and cognitive performance in modern humans, while previous studies have inferred cognitive processes from neuroimaging data. We also provide the first direct evidence for an association between Palaeolithic stone toolmaking, and action language and simple syntactic transitivity in modern humans.


2021 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
pp. 101255
Author(s):  
Ignacio de la Torre ◽  
Alfonso Benito-Calvo ◽  
Carmen Martín-Ramos ◽  
Lindsay J. McHenry ◽  
Rafael Mora ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
T. Proffitt ◽  
A. Bargalló ◽  
I. de la Torre

AbstractThe identification of Oldowan hominin knapping skill levels has been a focus of numerous studies, with apparent variation in technical abilities identified between a number of Early Stone Age archaeological sites. Raw material variability, however, can play a significant role in the outcomes of knapping events as well as in the accuracy of analysis. Implications of such variability are yet to be fully understood. Here we present an experimental study to assess the effects that varying raw materials have on the identification of technological attributes typically associated with varying skill levels and whether it is possible to identify knapper skill levels across multiple raw materials. Variation was tested between raw materials from Olduvai Gorge across and between skill levels. The results suggest that knapping skill levels manifest differently in the material record across raw materials. In addition, we suggest that raw material has a significant effect on identifying knapper skill variation. This has implications for future research concerned with identifying knapper skill within and between early assemblages of differing raw materials.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julio Mercader ◽  
Pam Akuku ◽  
Nicole Boivin ◽  
Revocatus Bugumba ◽  
Pastory Bushozi ◽  
...  

AbstractRapid environmental change is a catalyst for human evolution, driving dietary innovations, habitat diversification, and dispersal. However, there is a dearth of information to assess hominin adaptions to changing physiography during key evolutionary stages such as the early Pleistocene. Here we report a multiproxy dataset from Ewass Oldupa, in the Western Plio-Pleistocene rift basin of Olduvai Gorge (now Oldupai), Tanzania, to address this lacuna and offer an ecological perspective on human adaptability two million years ago. Oldupai’s earliest hominins sequentially inhabited the floodplains of sinuous channels, then river-influenced contexts, which now comprises the oldest palaeolake setting documented regionally. Early Oldowan tools reveal a homogenous technology to utilise diverse, rapidly changing environments that ranged from fern meadows to woodland mosaics, naturally burned landscapes, to lakeside woodland/palm groves as well as hyper-xeric steppes. Hominins periodically used emerging landscapes and disturbance biomes multiple times over 235,000 years, thus predating by more than 180,000 years the earliest known hominins and Oldowan industries from the Eastern side of the basin.


2021 ◽  
Vol 561 ◽  
pp. 110059 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jackson K. Njau ◽  
Nicholas Toth ◽  
Kathy Schick ◽  
Ian G. Stanistreet ◽  
Lindsay J. McHenry ◽  
...  

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