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Toolmaking folk
went east early
By Bruce Bower
Finds unearthed in southeastern India
offer a cutting-edge revision of hominid
migrations out of Africa more than
1 million years ago that spread pivotal
toolmaking methods.
Makers of a specific style of teardrop-shaped stone hand ax, flat-edged cleavers
and other implements that originated in
Africa around 1. 6 million years ago (SN:
1/31/09, p. 11) reached South Asia not
long afterward, between 1. 5 million and
1 million years ago, say archaeologist
Shanti Pappu of the Sharma Center for
Heritage Education in Tamil Nadu, India,
and colleagues.
Rather than waiting until around
500,000 years ago to head into South
Asia, as many researchers have thought,
the African hand ax crowd wasted relatively little time before hightailing it to
India, Pappu’s team concludes in the
March 25 Science.
Archaeologists categorize stone
hand axes and related implements as
Acheulian tools. Most researchers regard
Homo erectus, a species that originated
around 2 million years ago, as the original brains behind Acheulian innovations.
“Acheulian toolmakers were clearly
present in South Asia more than
1 million years ago,” Pappu says. Several
previous excavations in different parts of
India have also yielded Acheulian tools,
but these finds lack firm age estimates.
No fossil remains of hominids — members of the human evolutionary family — turned up among the ne w tool finds.
H. erectus must have rapidly moved
from East Africa to South Asia, proposes
archaeologist Robin Dennell of the University of Sheffield in England. Pappu’s
new finds raise the possibility that
800,000-year-old hand axes found in
southeastern China (SN: 3/4/00, p. 148)
indicate the presence of H. erectus
groups that came from South Asia—or
at least exposure of Chinese hominids to
Acheulian techniques, Dennell writes in a
commentary in the same issue of Science.
Until now, scientific consensus
held that Acheulian toolmakers,
In this scenario, another species of Acheulian-savvy hominids, Homo heidelbergensis,
then took Acheulian tools
from Africa to both South
Asia and Europe about
500,000 years ago.
Harvard anthropologist
Philip Rightmire isn’t surprised by the
sign of an earlier arrival of H. erectus
in India. Other evidence suggests that
H. erectus left Africa and reached several
destinations in Asia beginning at least
1. 8 million years ago, wielding simple
chopping tools. “For now, it’s enough
to say that Homo erectus intro-
duced Acheulian tools to India,”
Rightmire says.
The latest finds come from
the Attirampakkam site, which
has yielded more than 3,500
Acheulian artifacts, including 76 hand axes and cleavers.
Measurements of radioactive
isotopes in six quartz tools
unearthed there indicated
that these finds had been
buried about 1. 5 million
years ago.
A stone ax from India
suggests African
hominids moved east
earlier than thought.
l
b
h cies of Acheulian-savvy homi- Homo heidelbergensis , then took Acheulian tools
, ing 76 hand axes and cleavers. ng 76 hand axes and cleavers.
Measurements of radioactive
A new glimpse of early Americans
Artifacts show Texas site was occupied 15,000 years ago
By Rachel Ehrenberg
Everything’s bigger in Texas, even the
piles of debris and tools left near a stream
15,000 years ago by some of the earliest
known inhabitants of North America.
The new trove of 56 stone tools and
thousands of flaky rock bits from an
archaeological site north of Austin is the
largest and oldest artifact assemblage of
its kind discovered to date, says Michael
Waters of Texas A&M University in College Station. Waters and a large team of
colleagues describe the collection of
artifacts, dubbed the Buttermilk Creek
Complex, in the March 25 Science.
Across North America, a distinctive
type of fluted blade shows up in layers of
dirt dating to between 13,100 and 12,800
years ago. This “Clovis point” has been
called the first great American inven-
tion, a technology that spread quickly
around the continent. Scientists used
to think that the inventors and users of
the point, which was probably fastened
to wooden spears, were the first inhab-
itants of North America, arriving via an
ancient land bridge with Siberia.
