Overlap between the two cultures for many thousands of years would make a lot of sense because the newer technologies may not have been self-evidently better. Many considerations of time, energy, and risk would need to be factored in.
Tag: stone tools
Homo erectus from nearly 1.5 million years ago was “more behaviourally flexible” than thought
But why did we think they wouldn’t be? Isn’t there an underlying story here that is slowly being confuted (but no one wants to really discuss the history in those terms so everything must be treated as a big surprise)?
Human origins upended once again
We humans must have originated in some kind of a cement mixer, to judge from recent reports. Making stone tools (Oldowan technology) is believed to have started in East Africa 2.6 million years ago and spread from there. But archaeologists recently found stone tools and butchered animals on a high plateau in Algeria: The newly Read More…
Complex stone tools from 160,000 to 170,000 years ago found in China
The Levallois method of making stone tools was used in India 172,000 years ago: Rather than chipping flakes off a stone to create a tool, Levallois techniques work on the stone so it is the flakes themselves that become the tools. This enables several tools to be made from a single stone. Until recently, it Read More…
Stone tools found in Saudi Arabia from 300,000 years ago
At the time, Saudi Arabia was a grassy plain with many lakes: Archaeologist Patrick Roberts of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and his colleagues recently discovered a handful of stone tools in a sandy layer of soil beneath the dry traces of a shallow Pleistocene lake at Ti’s al Ghadah, Read More…