# Introduction to Paleoanthropology/Acheulean Technology


Acheulean industry, enjoyed impressive longevity as a species and great
geographic spread. We will review several cultural innovations and
behavioral changes that might have contributed to the success of *H.
ergaster/erectus*:

-   stone-knapping advances that resulted in Acheulean bifacial tools;
-   the beginnings of shelter construction;
-   the control and use of fire;
-   increased dependence on hunting.

## The Acheulean industrial complex

(1.7 million - 200,000 years ago)

### Stone tools

By the time *Homo ergaster/erectus* appeared, Oldowan choppers and flake
tools had been in use for 800,000 years. For another 100,000 to 400,000
years, Oldowan tools continued to be the top-of-the-line implements for
early *Homo ergaster/erectus*. Between 1.7 and 1.4 million years ago,
Africa witnessed a significant advance in stone tool technology: the
development of the Acheulean industry. !Acheulean biface discovered in
Haute-Garonne,
France
The Acheulean tool kit included:

-   picks;
-   cleavers;
-   an assortment of Oldowan-type choppers and flakes, suggesting that
    the more primitive implements continued to serve important
    functions;
-   mainly characterized by bifacially flaked tools, called bifaces.

A biface reveals a cutting edge that has been flaked carefully on both
sides to make it straighter and sharper than the primitive Oldowan
chopper. The purpose of the two-sided, or bifacial, method was to change
the shape of the core from essentially round to flattish, for only with
a flat stone can one get a decent cutting edge.

One technological improvement that permitted the more controlled working
required to shape an Acheulean handax was the gradual implementation,
during the Acheulean period, of different kinds of hammers. In earlier
times, the toolmaker knocked flakes from the core with another piece of
stone. The hard shock of rock on rock tended to leave deep, irregular
scars and wavy cutting edges.

But a wood or bone hammer, being softer, gave its user much greater
control over flaking. Such implements left shallower, cleaner scars and
produced sharper and straighter cutting edges.

:   

    :   **With the Acheulean Industry, the use of stone (hard hammer)
        was pretty much restricted to the preliminary rough shaping of a
        handax, and all the fine work around the edges was done with
        wood and bone.**

Acheulean handaxes and cleavers are generally interpreted as being
implements for processing animal carcasses. Even though cleavers could
have been used to chop and shape wood, their wear patterns are more
suggestive of use on soft material, such as hides and meat. Acheulean
tools represent an adaptation for habitual and systematic butchery, and
especially the dismembering of large animal carcasses, as *Homo
ergaster/erectus* experienced a strong dietary shift toward more meat
consumption.

Acheulean tools originated in Africa between 1.7 and 1.4 million years
ago. They were then produced continuously throughout *Homo
ergaster/erectus\'* long African residency and beyond, finally
disappearing about 200,000 years ago.

Generally, Acheulean tools from sites clearly older than 400,000 to
500,000 years ago are attributed to Homo ergaster/erectus, even in the
absence of confirming fossils. At several important Late Acheulean
sites, however, the toolmakers\' species identity remains ambiguous
because the sites lack hominid fossils and they date to a period when
*Homo erectus* and archaic *Homo sapiens* (e.g., *Homo heidelbergensis*)
overlapped in time.

### Other raw materials

Stone artifacts dominate the Paleolithic record because of their
durability, but early people surely used other raw materials, including
bone and more perishable substances like wood, reeds, and skin.

A few sites, mainly European, have produced wooden artifacts, which date
usually between roughly 600,000 and 300,000 years ago:

:   

    :   Ex. At the site of Schöningen, Germany, several wooden throwing
        spears, over 2 m long. They arguably present the oldest, most
        compelling case for early human hunting.

## Diffusion of Technology

Wide variability in stone tools present with *H. erectus*. In Eastern
Asia, H. erectus specimens are associated not with Acheulean tools, but
instead with Oldowan tools, which were retained until 200,000 to 300,000
years ago.

This pattern was first pointed out by Hallam Movius in 1948. The line
dividing the Old World into Acheulean and non-Acheulean regions became
known as the Movius line. Handax cultures flourished to the west and
south of the line, but in the east, only choppers and flake tools were
found.

Why were there no Acheulean handax cultures in the Eastern provinces of
Asia?

-   history of research;
-   other explanations:
    -   quality of raw materials (fine-grained rocks rare)
    -   different functional requirements (related to environment and
        food procurement)
    -   \"bamboo culture\": bamboo tools used in place of stone
        implements to perform tasks;
-   Early dates in Java and Dmanisi explain situation

:   

    :   Acheulean developed in Africa from the preceding Oldowan
        Tradition only after 1.8 Myrs ago, but if people moved into
        eastern Asia at 1.8 million years ago or before, they would have
        arrived without Acheulean tools.

In sum, while the Acheulean tradition, with its handaxes and cleavers,
was an important lithic advance by Homo ergaster over older
technologies, it constituted only one of several adaptive patterns used
by the species. Clever and behaviorally flexible, H. ergaster was
capable of adjusting its material culture to local resources and
functional requirements.

## Subsistence patterns and diet

Early discoveries of Homo ergaster/erectus fossils in association with
stone tools and animal bones lent themselves to the interpretation of
hunting and gathering way of life. Nevertheless this interpretation is
not accepted by all scholars and various models have been offered to
make sense of the evidence.

### First Scenario: Scavenging

Recently, several of the original studies describing *Homo
ergaster/erectus* as a hunter-gatherer have come under intense
criticism. Re-examination of the material at some of the sites convinced
some scholars (L. Binford) that faunal assemblages were primarily the
result of animal activity rather than hunting and gathering.

Animal bones showed cut marks from stone tools that overlay gnaw marks
by carnivores, suggesting that *Homo ergaster/erectus* was not above
scavenging parts of a carnivore kill.

According to these scholars, at most sites, the evidence for scavenging
by hominids is much more convincing than is that for actual hunting.

### Which scenario to choose?

The key point here is not that *Homo ergaster/erectus* were the first
hominid hunters, but that they depended on meat for a much larger
portion of their diet than had any previous hominid species.

Occasional hunting is seen among nonhuman primates and cannot be denied
to australopithecines (see *A.
garhi*).
But apparently for *Homo ergaster/erectus* hunting took an unprecedented
importance, and in doing so it must have played a major role in shaping
both material culture and society.

## Shelter and fire

For years, scientists have searched for evidence that *Homo
ergaster/erectus* had gained additional control over its environment
through the construction of shelters, and the control and use of fire.
The evidence is sparse and difficult to interpret.

### Shelter

Seemingly patterned arrangements or concentrations of large rocks at
sites in Europe and Africa may mark the foundations of huts or
windbreaks, but in each case the responsible agent could equally well be
stream flow, or any other natural process.

Therefore there appears to be no convincing evidence that *Homo
ergaster/erectus* regularly constructed huts, windbreaks, or any other
sort of shelter during the bulk of its long period of existence. Shelter
construction apparently developed late in the species\' life span, if at
all, and therefore cannot be used as an explanation of *H. ergaster\'s*
capacity for geographic expansion.

### Fire

Proving the evidence of fire by *Homo ergaster/erectus* is almost
equally problematic. Some researchers have suggested that the oldest
evidence for fire use comes from some Kenyan sites dated about 1.4 to
1.6 million years ago. Other scholars are not sure. The problem is that
the baked earth found at these sites could have been produced as easily
by natural fires as by fires started - or at least controlled - by *H.
ergaster/erectus*.

Better evidence of fire use comes from sites that date near the end of
*Homo erectus\'* existence as a species. Unfortunately, the identity of
the responsible hominids (either Homo erectus or archaic Homo sapiens)
is unclear.

The evidence at present suggests that fire was not a key to either the
geographic spread or the longevity of these early humans.

## Out-of-Africa 1: Behavioral aspects

Researchers proposed originally that it was not until the advent of
handaxes and other symmetrically shaped, standardized stone tools that
*H. erectus* could penetrate the northern latitudes. Exactly what, if
anything, these implements could accomplish that the simple Oldowan
flakes, choppers and scrapers that preceded them could not is unknown,
although perhaps they conferred a better means of butchering.

But the Dmanisi finds of primitive hominids and Oldowan-like industries
raise once again the question of what prompted our ancestors to leave
their natal land.

Yet, there is one major problem with scenarios involving departure dates
earlier than about 1.7-1.4 million years ago, and that is simply that
they involve geographic spread before the cultural developments
(Acheulean industry, meat eating, fire, shelter) that are supposed to
have made it possible.

A shift toward meat eating might explain how humans managed to survive
outside of Africa, but what prompted them to push into new territories
remains unknown at this time.

Perhaps they were following herds of animal north. Or maybe it was as
simple and familiar as a need to know what lay beyond that hill or river
or tall savanna grass. Also an early migration could explain
technological differences between western and eastern Homo erectus
populations.

The link between butchering tools and moves into northern latitudes is
the skinning and preparation of hides and furs, for reworking 1. into
portable shelters, and 2. into clothing. more skilful skinning meant
that skins would be better preserved, while fire would lead to meat
preservation (smoking) by the simple need to hang cuts of butchered meat
high up out of reach of any scavenging animals within smoke filled caves
or other dwellings. Having smoked meat then allowed deeper incursions
into otherwise hostile terrain, or a long-term food supply available in
harsh winters. With readily available and storable energy resources, and
protective clothing, they could push out into harsh northern latitudes
with comparative ease.

## Summary

Overall, the evidence suggests that *Homo ergaster* was the first
hominid species to resemble historic hunter-gatherers not only in a
fully terrestrial lifestyle, but also in a social organization that
featured economic cooperation between males and females and perhaps
between semi-permanent male-female units.

