Lower Paleolithic

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Four views of an Acheulean handaxe Biface Cintegabelle MHNT PRE 2009.0.201.1 V2.jpg
Four views of an Acheulean handaxe

The Lower Paleolithic (or Lower Palaeolithic) is the earliest subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. It spans the time from around 3.3 million years ago when the first evidence for stone tool production and use by hominins appears in the current archaeological record, [1] until around 300,000 years ago, spanning the Oldowan ("mode 1") and Acheulean ("mode 2") lithics industries.

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In African archaeology, the time period roughly corresponds to the Early Stone Age, the earliest finds dating back to 3.3 million years ago, with Lomekwian stone tool technology, spanning Mode 1 stone tool technology, which begins roughly 2.6 million years ago and ends between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago, with Mode 2 technology. [1] [2] [3]

The Middle Paleolithic followed the Lower Paleolithic and recorded the appearance of the more advanced prepared-core tool-making technologies such as the Mousterian. Whether the earliest control of fire by hominins dates to the Lower or to the Middle Paleolithic remains an open question. [4]

Gelasian

The Lower Paleolithic began with the appearance of the first stone tools in the world. Formerly associated with the emergence of Homo habilis , some 2.8 million years ago, this date has been pushed back significantly by finds of the early 2000s, [5] the Oldowan or Mode 1 horizon, long considered the oldest type of lithic industry, is now considered to have developed from about 2.6 million years ago, with the beginning Gelasian (Lower Pleistocene), possibly first used by australopithecine forebears of the genus Homo (such as Australopithecus garhi ).

However, even older tools were later discovered at the single site of Lomekwi 3 in Kenya, in 2015, dated to as early as 3.3 million years ago. As such, they would predate the Pleistocene (the Gelasian), and fall into the late Pliocene (the Piacenzian). [1]

The early members of the genus Homo produced primitive tools, summarized under the Oldowan industry, which remained dominant for nearly a million years, from about 2.5 to 1.7 million years ago. Homo habilis is assumed to have lived primarily on scavenging, using tools to cleave meat off carrion or to break bones to extract the marrow.

The move from the mostly frugivorous or omnivorous diet of hominin Australopithecus to the carnivorous scavenging lifestyle of early Homo has been explained by the climate changes in East Africa associated with the Quaternary glaciation. Decreasing oceanic evaporation produced a drier climate and the expansion of the savannah at the expense of forests. Reduced availability of fruits stimulated some proto-australopithecines to search out new food sources found in the drier savannah ecology. Derek Bickerton (2009) has designated to this period the move from simple animal communication systems found in all great apes to the earliest form of symbolic communication systems capable of displacement (referring to items not currently within sensory perception) and motivated by the need to "recruit" group members for scavenging large carcasses. [6]

Homo erectus appeared by about 1.8 million years ago, via the transitional variety Homo ergaster .

Calabrian

Homo erectus moved from scavenging to hunting, developing the hunting-gathering lifestyle that would remain dominant throughout the Paleolithic into the Mesolithic. The unlocking of the new niche of hunting-gathering subsistence drove a number of further behavioral and physiological changes leading to the appearance of Homo heidelbergensis by some 800,000-600,000 years ago. As such, Homo rose to the ranks of omnivorous predators (and possibly became hypercarnivores before Homo sapiens again transformed into hypocarnivores). As active hunters, they came in opposition to other, quadruped predators and started living in large groups.

Homo erectus migrated out of Africa and dispersed throughout Eurasia. Stone tools in Malaysia have been dated to be 1.83 million years old. [7] The Peking Man fossil, discovered in 1929, is roughly 700,000 years old.

In Europe, the Olduwan tradition (known in Europe as Abbevillian) split into two parallel traditions, the Clactonian, a flake tradition, and the Acheulean, a hand-axe tradition. The Levallois technique for knapping flint developed during this time.

The carrier species from Africa to Europe was undoubtedly Homo erectus . This type of human is more clearly linked to the flake tradition, which spread across southern Europe through the Balkans to appear relatively densely in southeast Asia. Many Mousterian finds in the Middle Paleolithic have been knapped using a Levallois technique, suggesting that Neanderthals evolved from Homo erectus (or, perhaps, Homo heidelbergensis; see below).

Monte Poggiolo, near Forlì, Italy, is the location of an Acheulian littoral handaxe industry dating from 1.8 to 1.1 million years ago. [8]

The advent of technology and both verbal and non-verbal communication due to transition to group hunting and gathering resulted in the expansion of the parts of the brain associated with these, as well as greater cognition due to it being interlinked with the two. Later, behavioral adaptations to further social life, uncertain food distribution (resulting in need to find and secure food and remember where it could be found) and ecological changes brought about by Homo led to the further expansion of the brain in the areas of problem-solving, memory etc., ultimately leading to the great behavioral flexibility, highly efficient communication, and ecological dominance of humanity. The biological pre-adaptations of the great apes and earlier primates allowed the brain to expand threefold within just 2 to 2.3 million years of the Pleistocene, in response to increasingly complex societies and changing habitats. [9] [10]

Middle Pleistocene

The appearance of Homo heidelbergensis about 600,000 years ago heralds a number of other new varieties, such as Homo rhodesiensis and Homo cepranensis about 400,000 years ago. Homo heidelbergensis is a candidate for first developing an early form of symbolic language. Whether control of fire and earliest burials date to this period or only appear during the Middle Paleolithic is an open question.

Also, in Europe, a type of human appeared that was intermediate between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens, sometimes summarized under archaic Homo sapiens, typified by such fossils as those found at Swanscombe, Steinheim, Tautavel, and Vertesszollos (Homo palaeohungaricus). The hand-axe tradition originates in the same period. The intermediate may have been Homo heidelbergensis, held responsible for the manufacture of improved Mode 2 Acheulean tool types, in Africa, after 600,000 years ago. Flakes and axes coexisted in Europe, sometimes at the same site. The axe tradition, however, spread to a different range in the east. It appears in Arabia and India, but more importantly, it does not appear in southeast Asia.

Transition to the Middle Paleolithic

From about 300,000 years ago, technology, social structures and behaviour appear to grow more complex, with prepared-core technique lithics, earliest instances of burial and changes to hunting-gathering patterns of subsistence. Homo sapiens first appeared about 300,000 years ago, as evidenced by fossils found at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco. [11]

Lower Paleolithic era by region

India

Guy Ellcock Pilgrim, a British geologist and palaeontologist, discovered 1.5 million-year-old prehistoric human teeth and part of a jaw indicating that ancient people, intelligent hominins dating as far back as 1,500,000 ybp Acheulean period, [12] lived in the Pinjore region near Chandigarh. [13] Quartzite tools of the lower Paleolithic period were excavated in this region extending from Pinjore in Haryana to Nalagarh (Solan district in Himachal Pradesh). [14] The lands of Gujarat has been continuously inhabited from the Lower Paleolithic (c. 200,000 BP) period. Several sites of stone age are discovered in riverbeds of Sabarmati, Mahi river and lower Narmada rivers of Gujarat. [15] [16]

See also

Related Research Articles

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The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic, also called the Old Stone Age, is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone tools, and which represents almost the entire period of human prehistoric technology. It extends from the earliest known use of stone tools by hominins, c. 3.3 million years ago, to the end of the Pleistocene, c. 11,650 cal BP.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stone Age</span> Prehistoric period during which stone was widely used by humans to make tools and weapons

The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make stone tools with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted for roughly 3.4 million years and ended between 4,000 BC and 2,000 BC, with the advent of metalworking. It therefore represents nearly 99.3% of human history. Though some simple metalworking of malleable metals, particularly the use of gold and copper for purposes of ornamentation, was known in the Stone Age, it is the melting and smelting of copper that marks the end of the Stone Age. In Western Asia, this occurred by about 3,000 BC, when bronze became widespread. The term Bronze Age is used to describe the period that followed the Stone Age, as well as to describe cultures that had developed techniques and technologies for working copper alloys into tools, supplanting stone in many uses.

A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric cultures that have become extinct. Archaeologists often study such prehistoric societies, and refer to the study of stone tools as lithic analysis. Ethnoarchaeology has been a valuable research field in order to further the understanding and cultural implications of stone tool use and manufacture.

<i>Homo ergaster</i> Extinct species or subspecies of archaic human

Homo ergaster is an extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Africa in the Early Pleistocene. Whether H. ergaster constitutes a species of its own or should be subsumed into H. erectus is an ongoing and unresolved dispute within palaeoanthropology. Proponents of synonymisation typically designate H. ergaster as "African Homo erectus" or "Homo erectus ergaster". The name Homo ergaster roughly translates to "working man", a reference to the more advanced tools used by the species in comparison to those of their ancestors. The fossil range of H. ergaster mainly covers the period of 1.7 to 1.4 million years ago, though a broader time range is possible. Though fossils are known from across East and Southern Africa, most H. ergaster fossils have been found along the shores of Lake Turkana in Kenya. There are later African fossils, some younger than 1 million years ago, that indicate long-term anatomical continuity, though it is unclear if they can be formally regarded as H. ergaster specimens. As a chronospecies, H. ergaster may have persisted to as late as 600,000 years ago, when new lineages of Homo arose in Africa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Olduvai Gorge</span> National Historic Site of Tanzania

The Olduvai Gorge or Oldupai Gorge in Tanzania is one of the most important paleoanthropological localities in the world; the many sites exposed by the gorge have proven invaluable in furthering understanding of early human evolution. A steep-sided ravine in the Great Rift Valley that stretches across East Africa, it is about 48 km long, and is located in the eastern Serengeti Plains within the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in the Olbalbal ward located in Ngorongoro District of Arusha Region, about 45 kilometres from Laetoli, another important archaeological locality of early human occupation. The British/Kenyan paleoanthropologist-archeologist team of Mary and Louis Leakey established excavation and research programs at Olduvai Gorge that achieved great advances in human knowledge and are world-renowned. The site is registered as one of the National Historic Sites of Tanzania.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">African archaeology</span> Archaeology conducted in Africa

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References

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  2. ↑ "Early Stone Age Tools". What does it mean to be human?. Smithsonian Institution. 2014-09-29. Retrieved 2014-09-30.
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  4. ↑ "Lower Paleolithic". Dictionary com. Archived from the original on July 16, 2020. Retrieved December 30, 2016.
  5. ↑ Semaw, S.; Rogers, M. J.; Quade, J.; Renne, P. R.; Butler, R. F.; Domínguez-Rodrigo, M.; Stout, D.; Hart, W. S.; Pickering, T.; et al. (2003). "2.6-Million-year-old stone tools and associated bones from OGS-6 and OGS-7, Gona, Afar, Ethiopia". Journal of Human Evolution. 45 (2): 169–177. doi:10.1016/S0047-2484(03)00093-9. PMID   14529651.
  6. ↑ Bickerton, Derek (2009). Adam's Tongue: How Humans Made Language, How Language Made Humans. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN   978-1-4299-3029-1.[ page needed ]
  7. ↑ "Malaysian scientists find stone tools "oldest in Southeast Asia"". Tehran Times. AFP. 1 February 2009.
  8. ↑ Despriée, Jackie; Voinchet, Pierre; Tissoux, Hélène; Bahain, Jean-Jacques; Falguères, Christophe; Courcimault, Gilles; Dépont, Jean; Moncel, Marie-Hélène; Robin, Sophie; Arzarello, Marta; Sala, Robert; Marquer, Laurent; Messager, Erwan; Puaud, Simon; Abdessadok, Salah (June 2011). "Lower and Middle Pleistocene human settlements recorded in fluvial deposits of the middle Loire River Basin, Centre Region, France". Quaternary Science Reviews. 30 (11–12): 1474–1485. Bibcode:2011QSRv...30.1474D. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2011.02.011.
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  10. ↑ Henke-von der Malsburg, Johanna; Kappeler, Peter M.; Fichtel, Claudia (December 2020). "Linking ecology and cognition: does ecological specialisation predict cognitive test performance?". Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. 74 (12): 154. doi: 10.1007/s00265-020-02923-z . S2CID   229402432.
  11. ↑ Gibbons, Ann (9 June 2017). "Oldest members of our species discovered in Morocco". Science. 356 (6342): 993–994. doi:10.1126/science.356.6342.993. PMID   28596316.
  12. ↑ Pappu, Shanti; Gunnell, Yanni; Akhilesh, Kumar; Braucher, Régis; Taieb, Maurice; Demory, François; Thouveny, Nicolas (25 March 2011). "Early Pleistocene Presence of Acheulian Hominins in South India". Science. 331 (6024): 1596–1599. Bibcode:2011Sci...331.1596P. doi:10.1126/science.1200183. PMID   21436450. S2CID   206531024.
  13. ↑ Pilgrim, Guy E. (1915). New Siwalik Primates and Their Bearing on the Question of the Evolution of Man and the Anthropoidea. pp. 2–61. ISBN   978-0-404-16675-5.
  14. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20190108145555/http://revenueharyana.gov.in/Portals/0/hr-gaz-ch-5.pdf. Archived from the original (PDF) on 8 January 2019.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)[ full citation needed ]
  15. ↑ Frederick Everard Zeuner (1950). Stone Age and Pleistocene Chronology in Gujarat. Deccan College, Postgraduate and Research Institute.
  16. ↑ Patel, Ambika B. (31 August 1999). "4. Archaeology of Early Historic Gujarat". Iron technology in early historic India a case study of Gujarat (Thesis). Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. pp. 72–105. hdl:10603/71979. Retrieved 14 October 2017 – via Shodhganga.
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