John W. K. Harris

4,300-Year-old chimpanzee sites and the origins of percussive stone technology

Archaeological research in the African rainforest reveals unexpected results in the search for the origins of hominoid technology. The ancient Panin sites from Côte dIvoire constitute the only evidence of prehistoric ape behavior known to date anywhere in the world. Recent archaeological work has yielded behaviorally modified stones, dated by chronometric means to 4,300 years of age, lodging starch residue suggestive of prehistoric dietary practices by ancient chimpanzees. The “Chimpanzee Stone Age” pre-dates the advent of settled farming villages in this part of the African rainforest and suggests that percussive material culture could have been inherited from an common human–chimpanzee clade, rather than invented by hominins, or have arisen by imitation, or resulted from independent technological convergence.

Early archaeological sites, hominid remains and traces of fire from Chesowanja, Kenya

Recent investigations of Lower Pleistocene sites at Chesowanja have yielded in situ Oldowan and Oldowan-like stone artefacts, evidence of fire and a fragmentary ‘robust’ australopithecine cranium. Burnt clay found at one artefact locality dated to >1.42±0.07 Myr is the earliest known evidence of fire associated with a hominid occupation site.

FxJj50: An early Pleistocene site in northern Kenya

Abstract 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 camp or simply a locality used for meat‐eating and tool‐making remains uncertain. Experimental work ...

Early hominin diet included diverse terrestrial and aquatic animals 1.95 Ma in East Turkana, Kenya

The manufacture of stone tools and their use to access animal tissues by Pliocene hominins marks the origin of a key adaptation in human evolutionary history. Here we report an in situ archaeological assemblage from the Koobi Fora Formation in northern Kenya that provides a unique combination of faunal remains, some with direct evidence of butchery, and Oldowan artifacts, which are well dated to 1.95 Ma. This site provides the oldest in situ evidence that hominins, predating Homo erectus, enjoyed access to carcasses of terrestrial and aquatic animals that they butchered in a well-watered habitat. It also provides the earliest definitive evidence of the incorporation into the hominin diet of various aquatic animals including turtles, crocodiles, and fish, which are rich sources of specific nutrients needed in human brain growth. The evidence here shows that these critical brain-growth compounds were part of the diets of hominins before the appearance of Homo ergaster/erectus and could have played an important role in the evolution of larger brains in the early history of our lineage.

Early Hominin Foot Morphology Based on 1.5-Million-Year-Old Footprints from Ileret, Kenya

Hominin footprints offer evidence about gait and foot shape, but their scarcity, combined with an inadequate hominin fossil record, hampers research on the evolution of the human gait. Here, we report hominin footprints in two sedimentary layers dated at 1.51 to 1.53 million years ago (Ma) at Ileret, Kenya, providing the oldest evidence of an essentially modern human–like foot anatomy, with a relatively adducted hallux, medial longitudinal arch, and medial weight transfer before push-off. The size of the Ileret footprints is consistent with stature and body mass estimates for Homo ergaster/erectus, and these prints are also morphologically distinct from the 3.75-million-year-old footprints at Laetoli, Tanzania. The Ileret prints show that by 1.5 Ma, hominins had evolved an essentially modern human foot function and style of bipedal locomotion.

Cultural beginnings : Plio-Pleistocene archaeological occurrences from the Afar, Ethiopia

In the time interval between approximately 2.5 million years and 1.5 million years ago and against a background of changing environmental conditions and the emergence of highly diversified populations of early hominids, the earliest archaeological occurrences have been documented from a number of localities in the Rift Valley of East Africa. These have been attributed to the Oldowan Industrial Complex. More recently, broadly comparable archaeological occurrences have been discovered from Hadar and the Middle Awash located in adjacent areas of the Afar, in Ethiopia. This paper summarizes the age, context and characteristics of these occurrences and offers preliminary comments on their contribution to greater understanding of early hominid adaptive patterns of behavior.RésuméLes plus anciennes découvertes archéologiques documentées proviennent de la vallée du Rift en Afrique orientale, datant dil y a entre 1,5 et 2,5 millions dannées et se trouvant au sein dune période dévolution des milieux et dapparition despèces trés diversifiées dhominides. Ces découvertes ont été attribuées au complexe industriel Oldowayen. Dernièrement, des fouilles dans lHadar et le moyen bassin de lAwash, situés dans des terres adjacentes à lAfar en Ethiopie, ont mises à découvert de trouvailles généralement comparables. Le présent article résume lâge, le contexte et les caractéristiques de ces découvertes et présente des commentaires préliminaires quant à leur rôle possible dans une comprehension approfondie de méthodes dadaptation du comportement chez les anciens hominides.

Fire and its roles in early hominid lifeways

Discovery of the uses and later the invention of fire-making are fundamental to humanity. Following reports over the last decade of traces of fire found on Lower Pleistocene archaeological sites in eastern Africa, the dating of the control of fire by hominids has become a controversial issue. In this paper we critically review the contexts and, in the light of a battery of archaeometric techniques, the nature of reported instances of fire from Koobi Fora and Chesowanja in Kenya, and from Gadeb and the Middle Awash in Ethiopia. We conclude with a discussion of the roles fire may have played in the lifeways of early Pleistocene savanna-living hominids.RésuméLa découverte des usages du feu et ensuite de sa préparation est fondamentale pour lhumanité. Suite à des rapports au cours de la dernière décennie signalant des traces de feu relevées dans des sites archéologiques du Pléistocène inférieur dans lest de lAfrique, la datation du contrôle du feu par les hominiens est devenu une source de controverse. Dans cet article, nous révisons dun oeil critique les contextes et la nature des cas de feu signalés à Koobi Fora et à Chesowanja au Kenya, et à Gadeb et dans lAwash moyen en Éthiopie, à la lumière dune suite de techniques archéometriques. Suit en conclusion une discussion sur les rôles quaurait pu jouer le feu dans les modes de vie des hominiens vivant dans les savannes du Pléistocène inférieur.

New evidence for hominin carcass processing strategies at 1.5 Ma, Koobi Fora, Kenya

Reconstruction of early Pleistocene hominin carcass acquisition and processing behaviors are necessarily based at least in part on butchered fossil bones. This paper provides zooarchaeological and taphonomic analyses and behavioral interpretations of three approximately 1.5 million-year-old archaeofaunas from areas 1A and 103 in the Okote Member of the Koobi Fora Formation, northern Kenya: FwJj14A, FwJj14B, and GaJi14. These sites are all located in similar paleoenvironmental contexts, near shallow water with swampy, seasonally flooded areas, and some evidence for more wooded or gallery forest settings. Both individual specimen--and assemblage-level analyses of butchery-marked bones indicate that the hominins appear to have practiced similar butchery strategies at all of these sites, with butchery (defleshing, disarticulation, and marrow extraction) of both high- and low-ranked skeletal elements with no apparent preference for prey size, skeletal region, limb class, or limb portion. Only four tooth-marked specimens, including one likely crocodile-tooth-marked bone, are preserved in all three archaeofaunas. A paucity of limb epiphyses suggests that bone-crunching hyenids may have deleted these portions subsequent to hominin butchery. Strangely, there are no stone tools preserved with the 292 cut-marked and 27 percussion-marked faunal specimens (out of a total of 6,039 specimens), suggesting that raw material availability may have conditioned hominin lithic discard patterns at these locales. These assemblages increase our knowledge of the dietary behavior and ecology of Homo erectus, and provide support for variability in early Pleistocene hominin carcass foraging patterns.

Landscape-scale variation in hominin tool use: Evidence from the Developed Oldowan

The relationship between artifact manufacture, use, and discard in the Developed Oldowan is complex. Here we use digital-image-analysis techniques to investigate the intensity of reduction in single-platform cores of the Developed Oldowan of the Okote Member, Koobi Fora Formation. Data suggest that this method provides a more accurate measure of reduction intensity than previous applications of a unifacial-scraper model. Assemblages of single-platform cores excavated from extensive lateral exposures of the Okote Member provide insights into the relationship between raw-material availability and discard patterns. Variation in reduction intensity suggests that tools are not always discarded in patterns that would be predicted by the availability of raw material. Further, it appears that hominin transport decisions involved an assessment of the potential use-life of certain forms. Many aspects of Developed Oldowan technology conform to previously developed models of curated technologies.

LATE PLIOCENE HOMINID OCCUPATION IN CENTRAL-AFRICA - THE SETTING, CONTEXT, AND CHARACTER OF THE SENGA-5A SITE, ZAIRE

Abstract Senga 5A is a late Pliocene archaeological occurrence discovered in 1985 on the eastern bank of the Semliki River in the Western Rift Valley of eastern Zaire. Excavations in 1985 and 1986 yielded stone artifacts of an Oldowan character, fossil mammal, reptile, fish, and mollusc remains, as well as coprolites and fossil wood. The site is situated in low-energy lacustrine deposits indicative of a shallow, littoral or paludal setting. Paleoenvironmental reconstruction indicates that a savanna mosaic existed in the Upper Semliki in the late Pliocene. Dating estimates based on faunal correlation indicate an age of about 2·0–2·3 million years B.P. making it the earliest archaeological site of its size and state of preservation currently known in Africa. As the westernmost Oldowan site known in Africa, Senga 5A significantly expands our knowledge of the geographic range of early tool using hominids.