Kathy Schick

In this dramatic reconstruction of the daily lives of the earliest tool-making humans, two leading anthropologists reveal how the first technologies--stone, wood, and bone tools--forever changed the course of human evolution. Drawing on two decades of fieldwork around the world, authors Kathy Schick and Nicholas Toth take readers on an eye-opening journey into humankind's distant past--traveling from the savannahs of East Africa to the plains of northern China and the mountains of New Guinea--offering a behind-the-scenes look at the discovery, excavation, and interpretation of early prehistoric sites. Based on the authors' unique mix of archaeology and practical experiments, ranging from making their own stone tools to theorizing about the origins of human intelligence," Making Silent Stones Speak" brings the latest ideas about human evolution to life.

A Paleoindian campsite has been uncovered in stratified prehistoric deposits in Caverna da Pedra Pintada at Monte Alegre in the Brazilian Amazon. Fifty-six radiocarbon dates on carbonized plant remains and 13 luminescence dates on lithics and sediment indicate a late Pleistocene age contemporary with North American Paleoindians. Paintings, triangular bifacial spear points, and other tools in the cave document a culture distinct from North American cultures. Carbonized tree fruits and wood and faunal remains reveal a broad-spectrum economy of humid tropical forest and riverine foraging. The existence of this and related cultures east of the Andes changes understanding of the migrations and ecological adaptations of early foragers.

Beginning in May 1990, a long-term collaborative investigation between palaeolithic archaeologists and cognitive psychologists has focused upon the stone tool-making and tool-using abilities of a captive bonobo (Pan paniscus). To date, this bonobo (named Kanzi) has acquired the basic skills required to produce usable flakes and fragments by hard-hammer percussion (as well as by his own innovation of throwing), although his skills in flaking stone are not yet as well developed as those exhibited by the earliest known tool-making hominids of the Oldowan industry. This research strategy allows direct comparisons and contrasts to be made between the products of modern human stone tool-makers, prehistoric proto-human tool-makers and non-human primates that have not evolved a flaked stone technology in the wild. This enables us to investigate what possible cognitive and biomechanical conditions of pre …

Archaeological and palaeontological evidence from the Early Stone Age (ESA) documents parallel trends of brain expansion and technological elaboration in human evolution over a period of more than 2 Myr. However, the relationship between these defining trends remains controversial and poorly understood. Here, we present results from a positron emission tomography study of functional brain activation during experimental ESA (Oldowan and Acheulean) toolmaking by expert subjects. Together with a previous study of Oldowan toolmaking by novices, these results document increased demands for effective visuomotor coordination and hierarchical action organization in more advanced toolmaking. This includes an increased activation of ventral premotor and inferior parietal elements of the parietofrontal praxis circuits in both the hemispheres and of the right hemisphere homologue of Broca's area. The …

Archaeological sites are neither pure nor pristine products of human hands. Rather, they have been formed and shaped through the action of a complex combination of human and non-human agencies. Archaeological site formation will be viewed here as a continuous, ongoing process that extends throughout the period or periods of site occupation, through the duration of its abandonment, throughout the incorporation of its material residues in soil or sediment if this occurs, and on to the time of its discovery and excavation. A wide range of processes intervene in the formation of a'site throughout any of these phases, affecting its ultimate composition, the condition and relative preservation of its component materials, and their spatial configurations and associations.Concern with a holistic, process-oriented perspective is part of a widespread shift within archaeological research within the past 15 years. It is in part an outgrowth and outcome of ideas generated by the" New Archaeology" of the 1960's, stressing as it did the recognition of patterns in archaeological residues. Such patterns, generally concerning physical attributes of artifacts (Spaulding's" formal dimensions": 1960) or their overall spatial relationships and associations (" spatial dimensions"), theoretically represented and revealed aspects of palaeoethnographic behavior patterns (eg, Binford 1962, 1968; Clarke 1968; Deetz 1965, 1968a, 1968b; Hill 1968, 1970).

Excavation in the Upper Member of the Koobi Fora Formation in Kenya has revealed a cluster of stone artefacts and broken up bones which accumulated 1–5 million years ago on the banks of a water course. The assemblage had been preserved by layers of silt. The stone artefacts consist of flakes and flake fragments plus simple flaked cobbles. It has been possible to conjoin individual pieces linking about 10 per cent of the artefacts and 4 per cent of the identifiable bones in pairs or sets. In some cases it seems likely that the specimens were fractured on the spot. Some of the fracture patterns on the bones suggest breakage with hammers, and apparent cut marks have also been found on some bones. There are signs of the presence of scavenging carnivores as well as of tool‐making hominids, and both could have contributed to the workings of a complex input‐output system. Whether the site was a home‐base …

A long-term collaborative study by palaeolithic archaeologists and cognitive psychologists has continued in its investigations into the stone tool-making and tool-using abilities of a captive bonobo (a 180 pound male, named Kanzi, aged 12 years at the time of experiments reported here). A major focus of this study has been examination of the lithic reduction strategy over time and detailed analysis of the artefacts Kanzi has produced in 2 years of experimentation since our original report. Kanzi has exhibited marked improvement in his stone-working skills, although to date the artefacts he has produced still contrast with early hominid-produced artefacts in a number of attributes. Statistical analysis revealed that Kanzi is clearly preferentially selecting larger, heavier pieces of debitage (flakes and fragments) for use as tools.

Fossils and artifacts recovered from the middle Awash Valley of Ethiopia9s Afar depression sample the Middle Pleistocene transition from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens. Ar/Ar ages, biostratigraphy, and tephrachronology from this area indicate that the Pleistocene Bodo hominid cranium and newer specimens are approximately 0.6 million years old. Only Oldowan chopper and flake assemblages are present in the lower stratigraphic units, but Acheulean bifacial artifacts are consistently prevalent and widespread in directly overlying deposits. This technological transition is related to a shift in sedimentary regime, supporting the hypothesis that Middle Pleistocene Oldowan assemblages represent a behavioral facies of the Acheulean industrial complex.

The nature of stone artifact concentrations at early Plio-Pleistocene sites in East Africa is evaluated with regard to hominid transport behaviors responsible for their formation. These archaeological occurrences indicate ranging behaviors involving deliberate and repeated transport of flaked stone artifacts. The stone transported to archaeological sites within the time range of Homo habilis indicates planned transport of tools or material for tool manufacture to an extent far beyond transport behaviors reported among living apes, even stone hammer-using chimpanzees. Analysis of technological evidence in a lithic assemblage at a Plio-Pleistocene site at Koobi Fora (c. 1·5 ya) indicates on-site manufacturing activities and transport of flaked stone both to and from the site locale. Possible explanations for transport of stone artifacts are discussed in view of hominid strategies of environmental exploitation and resource …

This study introduces to archaeology a new experimental technique for examining the relationship between stone tool-making and brain function. The principal focus of this exploratory study was the development of effective methods for the identification and examination of the regions of the modern human brain recruited during the manufacture of simple (Oldowan or Mode I) stone tools. The functional brain imaging technique employed, Positron Emission Tomography (PET), examines task-related brain activity by assessing changes in regional cerebral blood flow during specific tasks. The single-subject study reported here represents a heuristic, initial exploration of this subject. Results indicate that during stone tool-making there was heavy activation of cortical and subcortical regions of the brain associated with motor and somatosensory processing. Especially interesting was the high degree of activation in areas …

In attempting to understand the course of human evolution and the nature of hominid adaptation over the past few million years, it is necessary to consider prevailing evidence from all parts of the world. Eastern Asia provides a range of important questions and challenges with regard to this evolutionary puzzle. Although evidence for earlier ape evolution is present in China (for example, at Lufeng in Yunnan Province), the earliest evidence for hominid presence appears to be in the Early Pleistocene, apparently the result of a migration of hominids to and subsequent adaptation within Eastern Asia. The archeological record provides a closer look at some technological aspects of this adaptation during the Early and Middle Pleistocene, showing both distinctive contrasts and intriguing continuities relative to the rest of the Old World.

Attempting to infer levels of cognitive and communicative complexity in early hominids from analyzing the prehistoric technological record is akin to trying to reconstruct the social organization and sexual habits of early hominids by analyzing assemblages of fossil bones from palaeontological localities. Making larger-scale, inductive inferences regarding levels of hominid cognition (or social organization) is problematic since our only models for these are drawn from modern human and non-human species, which are themselves the products of thousands or millions of years of evolution along unique trajectories and of a myriad of selective processes. Thus the accuracy of such inferences from the evidence at hand is largely dependent upon one factor: how closely the extinct forms resemble modern analogs which can be carefully analyzed from a comparative perspective. For early hominids that lived in the late Pliocence and early Pleistocene, our modern analogs are not that good. The challenge to palaeoarchaeology is to identify what patterns of material culture in the prehistoric record have implications for intelligence and language (or proto-language). While the evolution of brain functions proceeds along Darwinian lines, with changes in gene frequencies leading to changes in phenotypic traits that can be advantageous, deleterious, or neutral in given environments, the evolution of technology (and much of culture) proceeds along Lamarckian lines, according to which acquired traits are inherited through learning. This means that it is possible for technologies to change literally overnight if innovations that improve a prehistoric hominid's …

The activity of 17 hand muscles was monitored by electromyography (EMG) in three subjects during hard hammer percussion manufacture of Oldowan tools. Two of the subjects were archaeologists experienced in the replication of prehistoric stone tools. Simultaneous videotapes recorded grips associated with the muscle activities. The purpose of the study was to identify the muscles most likely to have been strongly and repeatedly recruited by early hominids during stone tool‐making. This information is fundamental to the identification of skeletal features that may reliably predict tool‐making capabilities in early hominids. The muscles most frequently recruited at high force levels for strong precision pinch grips required to control the hammerstone and core are the intrinsic muscles of the fifth finger and the thumb/index finger regions. A productive search for skeletal evidence of habitual Oldowan tool‐making …

<h3 class="gsh_h3">Publisher Summary</h3>This chapter reviews methodological and theoretical advances in the field of the archaeology of prohuman culture in the first million years. The ultimate goal of the study of protohuman archaeology is to document what happened over time and space and to explain why it happened. Since 1975, studies of the early archaeological record have gone far beyond the mere excavation of sites and the description and quantification of their lithic and faunal assemblages. In re-exploring many of the issues at hand in studies of early archeology, such as evidence for hominid diet, the nature and origin of artifact and bone accumulations, the nature of early stone technologies, and the use of resources available on the landscape, a wide-ranging search for applicable comparative models has intensified. The number of “prime” early Paleolithic sites, well excavated and well documented, with the association of …