Approximately 1.4 million years ago, a hominid in what is now Ethiopia painstakingly modified a hippo bone in a hand ax, demonstrating mastery of the advanced “Acheulean technique” that had only been thought to have been developed half a million years later.
Prehistoric stone tools are quite common. Bone tools from prehistoric times are known, but they are not common, either because the hominids did not produce as many or because, being organic, they turned to dust over time.
In the entire period of the Konso Formation in southern Ethiopia, dating from 1.95 million years ago to 800,000 years ago, this hippopotamus-shaped hand ax is the only example of an ax made of bone in that site, Katsuhiro Sano from Japan’s Tohoku University, Gen Suwa from Tokyo University and colleagues reported Monday at PNAS.
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Hominins had been making tools for about 3.3 million years, starting simply using a rock as a hammer. Various other animals can also do that. The next stage of toolmaking is called Oldowan technology, which involved shaping the rough stone by cutting the flakes with another stone, which was another story. Other animals don’t do that.
Oldowan’s technology began about 2.6 million years ago and was replaced by the next stage, the Acheulean, approximately 1.75 million to 1.6 million years ago.
The most sophisticated Acheulean scale technology innovation was to shape large “blanks” with greater precision by removing scales. Also, a single blank space could produce a multitude of tools. While the first known occurrence of use of blank Acheulian was in East Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania), it spread everywhere Homo erectus It roamed and remained in use for 1.5 million years.
Naturally, there was a lot of overlap: Many sites in Africa and Eurasia show that hominids made and used both types of tools.
The source: a hippopotamus and a babyCredit: REUTERS
The aquelean technique has been thought to have been quite conservative, which could indicate a limitation in the development of the manufacturers’ perceptual abilities. However, there were advances from the first Acheulean tools, to those made in the middle of that period until the end.
Now the hippo stone tools and bone ax found in the Konso Formation in southern Ethiopia, from 1.4 million years to 1.25 million years ago, were worked bifacially, with a sophistication believed to have it appeared only half a million years later.
The technique used to make the bone hand ax produces scales with two ventral faces, indicating that its creator had a “vision” for the blank rock, and planned it. Additionally, Konso’s tools also show advanced workmanship for thinning the tip, reducing edge sinuousness and better symmetry, archaeologists say.
The number of scaly “scars” on the hippo’s femur fragment, its distribution pattern, and typical fractures of scaling activity indicate anthropogenic exertion, tearing bone in the shape of a hand ax, rather than, for example, be the result of simply hunting the hippopotamus and butcher. A tool had clearly been made here, and furthermore, the wear and tear analysis indicates that the 13-centimeter-long bone ax had been used in longitudinal movements – for cutting or sawing, archaeologists say.
The bone ax (micro-CT based render) shown placed on a hippopotamus femurCredit: Gen Suwa
According to archaeologists, this bone hand ax is the oldest known and widely scaled example from the early Pleistocene. The end result at Konso was tools that exhibited three-dimensional symmetry, a feature otherwise discovered only at much later sites in East Africa, dating from 1 million to 800,000 years ago.
There were “a handful” of other large modified bones in Konso, but none of the others were shaped like hand axes; and the other tools found there were made of stone.
The team notes that the assembly of the tool at Konso is highly variable, as is the case at other hominid sites in East Africa. This is also a good place to point out that Konso’s hominids, at the time, apparently Homo erectus, but it could have been someone else: he usually made stone tools, but he also made at least some bone tools. They may have made many bone tools, but most of their bone tools deteriorated over time, as bone does.
What could the Konso hand ax have been used for? We don’t know at this stage, but microscopic analysis revealed polishing areas and scoring patterns similar to manual stone shafts that have been identified as used for butchering, archaeologists write. Erectus was certainly a hunter. It is worth saying that there are more research use marks on stone tools than rare bone tools.
What does this all mean? That our picture of the evolution of stone tool technology and the abilities of early human predecessors is a work in progress, and that ancient hominids had far better capabilities than we thought 1.4 million years ago.
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