{"id":5529,"date":"2025-03-08T13:21:51","date_gmt":"2025-03-08T13:21:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/?p=5529"},"modified":"2025-03-08T13:21:57","modified_gmt":"2025-03-08T13:21:57","slug":"systematic-bone-tool-production-at-1-5-million-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/08\/systematic-bone-tool-production-at-1-5-million-years-ago\/","title":{"rendered":"Systematic bone tool production at 1.5 million years ago"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Recent evidence indicates that the emergence of stone tool technology occurred before the appearance of the genus&nbsp;<em>Homo<\/em><sup><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-025-08652-5#ref-CR1\">1<\/a><\/sup>&nbsp;and may potentially be traced back deep into the primate evolutionary line. Conversely, osseous technologies are apparently exclusive of later hominins from approximately 2 million years ago (Ma), whereas the earliest systematic production of bone tools is currently restricted to European Acheulean sites 400\u2013250 thousand years ago. Here we document an assemblage of bone tools shaped by knapping found within a single stratigraphic horizon at Olduvai Gorge dated to 1.5\u2009Ma. Large mammal limb bone fragments, mostly from hippopotamus and elephant, were shaped to produce various tools, including massive elongated implements. Before our discovery, bone artefact production in pre-Middle Stone Age African contexts was widely considered as episodic, expedient and unrepresentative of early&nbsp;<em>Homo<\/em>&nbsp;toolkits. However, our results demonstrate that at the transition between the Oldowan and the early Acheulean, East African hominins developed an original cultural innovation that entailed a transfer and adaptation of knapping skills from stone to bone. By producing technologically and morphologically standardized bone tools, early Acheulean toolmakers unravelled technological repertoires that were previously thought to have appeared routinely more than 1 million years later.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Here is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-025-08652-5\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the full article<\/a>, in Nature, by Ignacio de la Torre, et.al.&nbsp; Again, do not forget Cowen\u2019s 17th Law: \u201cMost things have origins much earlier than what you thought.\u201d&nbsp; Via <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/CharlesCMann\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Charles C. Mann<\/a>.&nbsp; So exactly which of our other, broader views do we need to update?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/marginalrevolution.com\/marginalrevolution\/2025\/03\/systematic-bone-tool-production-at-1-5-million-years-ago.html\">https:\/\/marginalrevolution.com\/marginalrevolution\/2025\/03\/systematic-bone-tool-production-at-1-5-million-years-ago.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>https:\/\/marginalrevolution.com\/marginalrevolution\/2025\/03\/systematic-bone-tool-production-at-1-5-million-years-ago.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pfIY-1rb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5529"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5530,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5529\/revisions\/5530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}