AUSTRALOPITHECINE LIFEWAYS

  • Africa- 4-1.2 mya
  • Woodland environment
  • Bipedal but still spend some times in trees
  • No language
  • Subsistence (dentition)
  • Gathering plants, seeds, berries, nuts, and grasses
  • Maybe small game- rats, lizards, hares, etc
  • Ardipithecus & Australopithecines afarensis, gracile and robust
  • A. garhi scavenged larger game
  • Stone Tools w/ A. garhi

WHY BIPEDALISM?

  • Scavenging- requires Long periods of walking (endurance)
  • Aid in seeing potential food and predators
  • Feeding on nuts and seeds requires standing
  • Carry away spoils of find

THE END OF AUSTRALOPITHECINES

THE FIRST OF OUR GENUS
THE LEAKEY LUCK

  • Louis
  • Miocene haplorhini, H.erectus
  • Mary-
  • A. boisei, A. afarensis, Laetoli footprints, H. habilis, homebases?,
  • Richard-
  • H. habilis
  • Meave-
  • A. anamensis

Homo habilis

  • Handy man
  • 1964-Louis Leakey
  • 2.4-1.8 mya
  • Earliest sites
  • Koobi For a, Kenya
  • Lower Omo, Ethiopia
  • Sterkfontein, South Africa
  • Oldowan
  • First member of genus Homo
  • Contemporary with Robust Australopithecines

Homo habilis

  • Larger cranial capacity than Australopiths
  • 631 cc average (500-800 cc range)
  • Larger brain but no increase in body size
  • larger front teeth, somewhat smaller molars than Australopiths

OLDOWAN TOOL TRADITION

  • FIRST ARCHAEOLOGICAL CULTURE
    "PALEOLITHIC"
    (divided into Lower, Middle, Upper)
  • Oldowan = Lower Paleolithic

OLDOWAN TRADITION

  • Eastern Africa
  • 1.8 mya
  • Locally available materials
  • Different Raw Materials
  • Omo, Ethiopia (quartz pebbles)
  • Koobi For a, Kenya (basalt and quartzite)
  • Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania (basalt and quartzite)

 

OLDOWAN TOOL TYPES

Types of Oldowan Sites

  • Sites with Stone Tools Only
  • Sites with Stone Tools and Bones of One Animal = "Kill" or "Butchery" Site
  • Sites with Stone Tools and Bones of Many Animals = "Living Site", "Home Base" or "Central Place"

 

Hunting vs. Scavenging Debate

Lewis Leakey

             Big Game hunters

R. Blumenshine, L. Binford, P. Shipman

            -scavenging

            -broken bones

    • location of cut marks

 

FLK North
Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania

  • "Kill or "Butchery" Site
    Sites with stone tools and bones of 1 animal
  • Extinct Elephant (Deinotherium) bones
  • Striations and cut marks on the bones

DK
Living Site
Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania

  • Sites with Stone Tools and Bones of Many Animals
  • Circle of stones- possible wall for a structure

 

Food Sharing and Glynn Isaac

•        Scavenging, but sharing food (Koobi Fora and FLK sites)

•        Provides economic stability

•        Females could stay at home with their children

•        Development of language

•        Reciprocal obligation

•        Marriage patterns and division of labor

 

Lewis Binford and “Uncle Wilbur”

•        Binford argues against the DK site as a living site and FLK as a kill site

•        Problems according to Binford

–       Scavengers, not hunters

–       Lake shores are dangerous

–       Death of animals over time

–       Low intelligence

–       No evidence for social organization

Death Sites in Modern Savannas vs Olduvai Sites

•        Low bone concentrations

–       Olduvai 3-214 times greater

•        Little mixing of bones from different animals

–       Olduvai high numbers of mixing

•        Low ecological diversity

–       Olduvai high ecological diversity

•        Vertebrae and other axial skeletal parts remain near the site and limb bones tend to be removed

–       Olduvai – small  frequency of axial elements to limb bones

•        Catastrophic mortality (drought or flood) leave diagnostic geologic evidence

–       Olduvai low articulated skeletons

Robust Australopiths v. Homo

  • Clearly two separate adaptations
  • robust Australopiths fitting hypervegetarian niche
  • Homo habilis fitting niche of meat scavenging, foraging omnivore

The end of
Homo habilis

  • Oldowan tools
  • Home bases
  • Scavenging

HOMO ERGASTER

  • Earliest appearance in East Africa
  • 1.8-1.7 mya
  • East Turkana
  • Nariokotome/West Lake Turkana
  • Specimens from east Africa not as buttressed in the skull (brow, nucal) as Asian forms
  • Also have thinner cranial bones
  • and with Acheulian technology
  • Differences are sufficient, some argue, that the African speci-mens ought to be designated as separate species, Homo ergaster

Nariokotome, West Turkana, Kenya

  • WT 15,000 - most complete H. ergaster fossil skeleton ever found (1984-85)
  • 12-year-old boy whose 5 ft. 3 in. stature would have reached more than 6 ft. at maturity
  • Life span 20-30, compared to 15-20 for australopiths
  • Bergman’s Rule-Adaptation to tropical environment
  • postcranial remains similar to modern humans
  • Small pelvis and hence birth canal

BRAIN CAPACITY

  • Significant increase in brain size from habilis
  • 900 cc
  • At birth estimates 200 cc to fit through birth canal
  • Intensification of infant care necessary
  • Family units

ACHEULIAN

  • Lower Paleolithic
  • Acheulian
  • 1.6- 200,000 ya
  • Chert and obsidian tools
  • Bifacial-flake removal on both sides of the tool
  • hand-axes, cleavers- pear shaped
  • bifaces found throughout Africa and late in Europe show remarkable similarity

TOOL PREPARATION

  • two-stage process
    • blank preparation with hammerstone
    • Refined with a softer stone or antler
    • shaping and thinning on edges
  • required good raw material, foresight, and planning
  • reflects (symbolic?) communication of method and form

Handaxe Function

  • Experimental Archaeology
  • Elephants died of natural causes
  • Cutting
  • Sawing
  • Scraping

Homo ergaster capable of Big Game Hunting, or still just Scavenging?

BIG GAME HUNTING

  • Olorgesaile, Kenya
  • dates to ca. 800,000 BP
  • Acheulian hand axes
  • over 400
  • Over 1 ton of stone material transported to the site
  • Preferred high quality material-chert and obsidian
  • Closest sources 43-48 km rather than local sources of quarzite

 

HUNTING

  • Theory
  • Hunted by Encircling Troop at night
  • now-extinct giant baboon
  • 44 adult and ~15 juveniles
  • Bone type distribution
  • Broken long bones
  • Also remains of Antelope & Hippo

EARLIEST FIRE

  • Koobi Fora, Kenya
  • 1.6 mya fireplace
  • Residue mixture of burned trees and grass species
  • Phytoliths-microscopic bits of silica produced in plant cells
  • Mostly palm wood burns easily
  • 2,000 stone tools/160 chert tools burned- used to start fire?

OUT OF AFRICA

  • Intelligence
  • Control of fire
  • Environmental fluctuations- lower sea levels allowed travel to SE Asia

 

ASIA
 Early hominids in Trinil, Java ca. 1.8-1.6 mya

•Eugene Dubois-1858

•Influenced by Darwin

•1st Homo erectus found

•Controversy-Ancestral home outside of Europe

The “Movius Line”

•A geographic boundary that separates two paleolithic cultures- Acheulian and East Asian Chopping Complex

Asian Chopping Tool Complex

Chopping tools

Zhoukoudien  
Dragon Bone Hill, China

•Medicinal cures- John G. Andersson & Davidson Black

•700,000-200,000 ya

•Imported stone-quartz and flint

•200,000 stone tools-scrapers and choppers

•Remains of 40 individuals

•Homo erectus

•WWII


ZHOUKOUDIEN
Gathering and Fire

•Charred seeds of hackberry fruits

•Earliest direct evidence of gathering

•Hearths- Dense layers of ash, baked sediments and

•Burnt bone

CANNIBALISM & RITUAL

•Faces and underside missing

•Brains extracted and eaten

 

•Almost certainly carnivore activity- similar to hyena kill remains

European Evidence
Torralba and Ambrona, Spain
Terra Amata, France

            Burnt bones, soil and charcoal

•50 prehistoric elephants

•26 horses

•25 deer

•6 rhinos

•10 wild cattle

•Seasonal hunting

•Fire

TERRA AMATA, FRANCE

•350,000 BP

•Salvage project

•6 x 13 meter structures

•Hearths

•Handaxes and cleavers

TERRA AMATA, FRANCE

•Long distance stone resources

•Burned bone-red deer

•Ibex, wild boar and cattle

•Fish, oysters, mussel shell

Homo erectus/ergaster

  • New stone tool technologies
  • Expanded environments
  • Long distance resources
  • Fire
  • Hunting