1.5 - Earliest Industries of Africa

Summary

Introduction

Although the physical remains of early hominins are often touted as the most important aspects of the palaeoanthropological record, the evidence of our hominin ancestry in pieces of stone chipped to make sharp edges is far more plentiful. Stone artifacts represent the dawn of human material culture. Currently there is no reason to believe that our early Pliocene ancestors did not use organic tools prior to the appearance of the earliest stone industries (Panger et al. 2002). However, the durability of the stone artifact record provides archaeologists with a rich record of behaviour over millions of years. The earliest evidence of tool use in the archaeological record comes from indirect evidence of butchery practices. The new discovery of marks indicating butchery on two bones from the Dikika region of Ethiopia confirms the use of stone as a medium for tool use at 3.2 million years ago (Ma) (McPherron et al. 2010). However, the earliest evidence of chipped stone artifacts begins some 2.6 Ma. This record extends through to the Holocene. This chapter will focus almost exclusively on the human use of stone tools in Africa from 2.6 Ma until around 1.5 Ma. The assemblages of stone tools from Africa have frequently been assigned to the classic tripartite system (i.e., Earlier, Middle and Later Stone Age; Goodwin 1945) that was inherited from a European framework of stone industries (Lartet & Christy 1865–75). This chapter covers the earliest stages of stone-tool production, referred to as the Earlier Stone Age, and some of the beginnings of the Middle Stone Age. It will use major regions of Africa as a framework, mostly because the history of research in certain areas influences the study of the sequences of industries. In addition, major units of time that do not necessarily correspond with industrial names (e.g., Developed Oldowan) will provide further structure for this chapter. However, these units of time do not represent any meaningful temporal divisions.