An Experiment is Casting Doubt on the History of Stone Tools

Electronics, airplanes, internal combustion engines, and the wheel are the descendants of a far more rudimentary technology: stone tools. Early stone tools can seem simple. However, their creation represents a massive landmark in the history of humankind.

Archaeologists have long believed the knowledge of how to perform stone tools– what kind of products to utilize, where to locate them, and how to reshape rocks to make something helpful– was the collective initiative of many individuals working together and learning from each other. A new collection of experiments where volunteers were brought to the laboratory to make stone tools proposes that might not be the case. The results were published Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances.

Archaeologist William Snyder, one of the co-authors, tells IE “we have changed the timeline of the beginnings of cognitive humanness ahead in time by hundreds of thousands if not even one million years.”

Nonetheless, not everyone is persuaded.

Archaeological experiments generate astonishing outcomes

The scientists brought 28 participators into the lab. Each one was offered the raw materials they required to complete a basic job: cutting a string to access a reward. Working on their own, the participants had to figure out how to utilize the materials to make a device able of cutting the string. Here is the problem: they did not get any instructions on how to perform it. The scientists wished to see if these regular people could discover how to make the sort of tools old hominins were making two million years ago.

The outcomes of the experiment were stunning. Throughout the four hours, they needed to function, all 28 of the research participants (including the two individuals who had never even heard of stone tools before) independently discovered toolmaking methods that were made use of by the earliest toolmakers.

“The toolmaking techniques these individuals used were quite similar to those that would have been used over 2 million years ago. For now, we see this as solid proof of principle that one can re-innovate the methods without seeing them,” Snyder claims.

The results of the experiments are not clear-cut

Archaeologist Justin Parteger, who also researches early toolmaking but was not included in these experiments, states he is glad the scientists behind the new research are bringing fresh data to a longstanding debate– but the research’s final thoughts do not convince him.

“If I take a look at these results, I see a set of technologies that have been replicated by these people that do not match with what we find [in the archaeological record from] 2.6 million years ago,” he states. While the participators in the new study did discover the four major methods ancient toolmakers employed, the modern-day toolmakers did not show any preference for the technique most generally used more than two million years ago, during the period the researchers are interested in.

As the quantity of artifacts in the archaeological record has expanded, archaeologists are significantly turning to the quantity of various types of tools to understand ancient technology. “The archaeological record is concerning numbers and frequencies. It is not about rare events,” Parteger states. That is important here because the study participators did not produce techniques in proportions that match what is found in the period of interest for the research authors. “The majority of behavior that pops up in this experiment is actually much more like [a] 3.3 million-year-old period,” he claims. Researchers do not know much regarding that earlier period because it is represented by a unique site: Lomekwi, in northern Kenya.

“I think many people would be pleased to say that, yeah, there is probably much individual experimentation happening over 3 million years ago with hominins who are even further removed from our lineage,” he claims.

The research author disagrees, writing “[a] absent new lines of proof, the earliest unequivocal proof for technique transmission, and with it, a cumulative culture of know-how, ought to be pressed forward to a later time.” They require more experiments to determine how recently cultural transmission of knowledge started.

Read the original article on Interesting Engineering.