The Oldowan Tool Industry: The Oldest Culture
What is CULTURE? Socially transmitted behavior that is passed from generation to generation
In animals, foraging using tools is generally “tool-assisted” not “tool-dependent”
Ratchet effect: build on knowledge over time, can lead to radical transformations in ideas, technologies--
CUMULATIVE CULTURAL CHANGE
Ratchet effect is generally not obvious in non-human technologies….
Why Study the Oldowan?
Oldest evidence of technology
Major adaptive event in human evolution?
Major Dietary shift?
Archeological sites: restructuring of hominin activities on landscape
Associated with environmental change, turnover of hominin taxa
Interpreting the Oldest Archeological Sites = Oldowan, 1.6 – 2.6 Ma
Type Site for Oldowan: Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania
Oldowan sites like FLK Zinj have stone tools and animal bones in silts and clays—geology shows that water
action did not form the sites
Original investigators of Oldowan sites viewed them as being similar to hunter-gatherer camps or “home
bases”
Fundamental Features of Contemporary Foraging Societies
• Hunting and Meat-eating
• Tool Use
• Sexual Division of Labor
• Extensive Food Sharing
• Home Bases
Taphonomy: Everything that happens to a bone from death to discovery
Carnivore consumption and hominid butchery of carcasses damage bones in different ways
This allows archeologists to interpret the processes forming fossil and archeological sites
Experimental Archeology: carry out experiments to help interpret past behavior
Scanning Electron Microscope Imaging of Bone Surface Damage
Stone tool cutmarks with internal striations
U-shaped carnivore tooth score
Oldowan Sites not Home Bases
1
What is CULTURE? Socially transmitted behavior that is passed from generation to generation
In animals, foraging using tools is generally “tool-assisted” not “tool-dependent”
Ratchet effect: build on knowledge over time, can lead to radical transformations in ideas, technologies--
CUMULATIVE CULTURAL CHANGE
Ratchet effect is generally not obvious in non-human technologies….
Why Study the Oldowan?
Oldest evidence of technology
Major adaptive event in human evolution?
Major Dietary shift?
Archeological sites: restructuring of hominin activities on landscape
Associated with environmental change, turnover of hominin taxa
Interpreting the Oldest Archeological Sites = Oldowan, 1.6 – 2.6 Ma
Type Site for Oldowan: Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania
Oldowan sites like FLK Zinj have stone tools and animal bones in silts and clays—geology shows that water
action did not form the sites
Original investigators of Oldowan sites viewed them as being similar to hunter-gatherer camps or “home
bases”
Fundamental Features of Contemporary Foraging Societies
• Hunting and Meat-eating
• Tool Use
• Sexual Division of Labor
• Extensive Food Sharing
• Home Bases
Taphonomy: Everything that happens to a bone from death to discovery
Carnivore consumption and hominid butchery of carcasses damage bones in different ways
This allows archeologists to interpret the processes forming fossil and archeological sites
Experimental Archeology: carry out experiments to help interpret past behavior
Scanning Electron Microscope Imaging of Bone Surface Damage
Stone tool cutmarks with internal striations
U-shaped carnivore tooth score
Oldowan Sites not Home Bases
1
