The Earlier Stone Age In South Africa: Site Context And The Influence Of Cave Studies

Taphonomy, the study of the processes leading to the fossilization of organic remains, is one of the most important avenues of inquiry in human origins research. Breathing Life into Fossils: Taphonomic Studies in Honor of C.K. (Bob) Brain is a major contribution to taphonomic studies in paleoanthropology and natural history. This book emanates from a Stone Age Institute conference celebrating the life and career of naturalist Bob Brain, a pioneer in bringing taphonomic perspectives to human evolutionary studies. Contributions by leading researchers provide a state-of-the-art look at the maturing field of taphonomy and the unique perspectives it provides to research into human origins. This important volume reveals approaches taken to the study of bone accumulations at prehistoric sites in Africa, Eurasia, and America, and provides fascinating insights into patterns produced by carnivores, by hunter-gatherers, and by our early human ancestors

The Earlier Stone Age In South Africa: Site Context And The Influence Of Cave Studies

Taphonomy, the study of the processes leading to the fossilization of organic remains, is one of the most important avenues of inquiry in human origins research. Breathing Life into Fossils: Taphonomic Studies in Honor of C.K. (Bob) Brain is a major contribution to taphonomic studies in paleoanthropology and natural history. This book emanates from a Stone Age Institute conference celebrating the life and career of naturalist Bob Brain, a pioneer in bringing taphonomic perspectives to human evolutionary studies. Contributions by leading researchers provide a state-of-the-art look at the maturing field of taphonomy and the unique perspectives it provides to research into human origins. This important volume reveals approaches taken to the study of bone accumulations at prehistoric sites in Africa, Eurasia, and America, and provides fascinating insights into patterns produced by carnivores, by hunter-gatherers, and by our early human ancestors

The evolution and cultural transmission of percussive technology: integrating evidence from paleoanthropology and primatology

We bring together the quite different kinds of evidence available from palaeoanthropology and primatology to better understand the origins of Plio-Pleistocene percussive technology. Accumulated palaeoanthropological discoveries now document the Oldowan Complex as the dominant stone tool making culture between 2.6-1.4 Ma, the earlier part of this contemporaneous with pre-Homo hominins. The principal types of artefacts and other remains from 20 Early Stone Age (Oldowan and earliest Acheulean) localities in Africa and elsewhere are reviewed and described. To better understand the ancestral behavioural foundations of this early lithic culture, we examine a range of recent findings from primatology. In particular, we attempt to identify key shared characteristics of Homo and Pan that support inferences about the preparedness of our common ancestor for the innovation of stone tool culture. Findings of particular relevance include: (i) the discovery of an expanding repertoire of percussive and other tool use based on directed use of force among wild chimpanzees, implicating capacities that include significant innovatory potential and appreciation of relevant causal factors; (ii) evidence of material cultural diversity among wild chimpanzees, indicating a readiness to acquire and transmit tool use innovations; and (iii) experimental studies of social learning in chimpanzees and bonobos that now encompass the acquisition of nut cracking through observation of skilled use of hammers and anvils by conspecifics, the diffusion within and between groups of alternative styles of tool use, and the adoption of free-hand stone-to-stone percussion to create useful flakes for cutting to gain access to food resources. We use the distributions of the inferred cultural traits in the wild to assess how diffusion relates to geographic distances, and find that shared traits drop by 50% from the approximately eight characteristic of close neighbours over a distance of approximately 700 km. This pattern is used to explore the implications of analogous processes operating in relation to Early Stone Age sites. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.</p

Chronostratigraphy and age modeling of Pleistocene drill cores from the Olduvai Basin, Tanzania (Olduvai Gorge Coring Project)

The Olduvai Gorge Coring Project drilled a total of 611.72 m of core (575.48 m recovered) of mostly fluvio-lacustrine and fan-delta volcaniclastic Pleistocene strata at three sites in the Olduvai Basin, Tanzania, in 2014. We have developed a chronostratigraphic framework for three of the cores based on 40Ar/39Ar dating of core and outcrop volcanic and volcaniclastic units, core paleomagnetic stratigraphy, and tephrochemical correlation between cores and from core to outcrop. This framework is then used to constrain Bayesian stratigraphic age models which permit age estimates for desired core levels with realistic confidence intervals. The age models reveal that the deepest core level reached at 245 mbs is ~2.24 Ma, ~210 kyr older than the oldest strata exposed at Olduvai Gorge. Strata net accretion rates in this early phase of basin history were relatively rapid (57–69 cm/kyr), but decreased within ~250 kyr to ~15 cm/kyr in Lower Bed I. Rates rebounded partially in Upper Bed I, but subsequently declined to \u3c10 cm/kyr by Middle to Upper Pleistocene. The age models also provide new estimates for the basal contacts of upper Olduvai Gorge stratigraphic units that have been previously difficult to calibrate: Bed III at 1.14 ± 0.05 (95% confidence interval), Bed IV at 0.93 ± 0.08, Masek at 0.82 ± 0.06, and Ndutu at 0.50 ± 0.04 Ma. Finally, based on recently acquired seismic imaging identifying basement another 135 m beneath the bottom of the deepest core, extrapolation of net accretion rates suggests that sedimentation began at this site in the Olduvai Basin at ~2.5 Ma