The Oldowan (or Mode I) was a widespread stone tool archaeological industry during the early Lower Paleolithic spanning the late Pliocene and the first half of the Early Pleistocene. These early tools were simple, usually made by chipping one, or a few, flakes off a stone using another stone. Oldowan tools were used during a period spanning from 2.9 million years ago up until at least 1.7 million years ago (Ma), by ancient hominins (early humans) across much of Africa.The origins of stone tool technology in Africa: a historical perspective https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3049100/.. Ignacio de la Torre, Institute of Archaeology, University College London, 31–34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY, UK Email: [email protected] This technological industry was followed by the more sophisticated Acheulean industry (two sites associated with Homo erectus at Gona in the Afar Region of Ethiopia dating from 1.5 and 1.26 million years ago have both Oldowan and Acheulean tools).
The term Oldowan is taken from the site of Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, where the first Oldowan stone tools were discovered by the archaeologist Louis Leakey in the 1930s. However, some contemporary archaeologists and palaeoanthropologists prefer to use the term Mode 1 tools to designate pebble tool industries (including Oldowan), with Mode 2 designating bifacially worked tools (including Acheulean handaxes), Mode 3 designating prepared-core tools, and so forth. The industry is characterised by simple flaked cores and the sharp-edged flakes struck from them, and is the earliest widely accepted stone tool tradition.
Classification of Oldowan tools is still somewhat contentious. Mary Leakey was the first to create a system to classify Oldowan assemblages, and built her system based on prescribed use. The system included choppers, scrapers, and pounders. However, more recent classifications of Oldowan assemblages have been made that focus primarily on manufacture due to the problematic nature of assuming use from stone artefacts. An example is Isaac et al.'s tri-modal categories of "Flaked Pieces" (cores/choppers), "Detached Pieces" (flakes and fragments), "Pounded Pieces" (cobbles utilized as hammerstones, etc.) and "Unmodified Pieces" (manuports, stones transported to sites).Isaac, G. Ll., Harris, J. W. K. & Marshall, F. 1981. "Small is informative: the application of the study of mini-sites and least effort criteria in the interpretation of the Early Pleistocene archaeological record at Koobi Fora, Kenya." in "Inter-nacional de Ciencias Prehistoricas Y Protohistoricas", Mexico City. Mexico, pp. 101–119. Oldowan tools are sometimes called "pebble tools", so named because the blanks chosen for their production already resemble, in pebble form, the final product.
It is not known for sure which hominin species created and used Oldowan tools. Its emergence is often associated with the species Australopithecus garhi and its flourishing with early species of Homo such as H. habilis and H. ergaster.
Early Homo erectus is associated with both Oldowan and later Acheulean technologies. However, it remains debated whether this technological change reflects cumulative cultural transmission or whether at least some early knapping techniques could have been independently reinnovated. Experimental and comparative studies suggest that basic stone-knapping techniques do not necessarily require the copying of technical know-how.
Dates and ranges
The oldest known Oldowan tools have been found at Nyayanga on the Homa Peninsula in Kenya and are dated to ~2.9 million years ago (Ma). The Oldowan tools were associated with Paranthropus teeth and two butchered hippo skeletons. Early Oldowan tools are also known from Gona in Ethiopia (near the Awash River), and are dated to about 2.6 Ma.
The use of tools by apes including chimpanzees and orangutans can be used to argue in favour of tool-use as an ancestral feature of the hominin family. Tools made from bone, wood, or other organic materials were therefore in all probability used before the Oldowan. Oldowan stone tools are simply the oldest recognisable tools which have been preserved in the archaeological record.
There is a flourishing of Oldowan tools in eastern Africa, spreading to southern Africa, between 2.4 and 1.7 Ma. At 1.7 Ma., the first Acheulean tools appear even as Oldowan assemblages continue to be produced. Both technologies are occasionally found in the same areas, dating to the same time periods.The origins of stone tool technology in Africa: a historical perspective https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3049100/ This realisation required a rethinking of old cultural sequences in which the more "advanced" Acheulean was supposed to have succeeded the Oldowan. The different traditions may have been used by different species of hominins living in the same area, or multiple techniques may have been used by an individual species in response to different circumstances.
Sometime before 1.8 Ma Homo erectus had spread outside of Africa, reaching as far east as Java by 1.8 Ma and in Northern China by 1.66 Ma. In these newly colonised areas, no Acheulean assemblages have been found. In China, only "Mode 1" Oldowan assemblages were produced, while in Indonesia stone tools from this age are unknown.
By 1.8 Ma early Homo was present in Europe, as shown by the discovery of fossil remains and Oldowan tools in Dmanisi, Georgia. Remains of their activities have also been excavated in Spain at sites in the Guadix-Baza basin and near Atapuerca. Most early European sites yield "Mode 1" or Oldowan assemblages. The earliest Acheulean sites in Europe only appear around 0.5 Ma. In addition, the Acheulean tradition does not seem to spread to Eastern Asia. It is unclear from the archaeological record when the production of Oldowan technologies ended. Other tool-making traditions seem to have supplanted Oldowan technologies by 0.25 Ma.
The discovery of stone tools that predate the Oldowan, dated to as early as 3.3 Ma, at the Lomekwi site in Kenya, was announced in 2015.
This age pre-dates the current estimates for the age of the genus Homo by half a million years, and would fall into the pre-human period, associated with the direct australopithecine ancestors of genus Homo. It is not clear whether the tools of such a "Lomekwian industry" bear any relation to the Oldowan industry.
Tools Manufacture
There are articles that address how some Oldowan tools may have been found as stones with naturally occurring shapes that dictate their ideal use, or formed as such. To form the general shape of an Oldowan tool, a roughly spherical hammerstone is struck on the edge, or striking platform, of a suitable core rock to produce a conchoidal fracture with sharp edges useful for various purposes. The process is often called lithic reduction. The chip removed by the blow is the flake. Some of these flakes can be used as tools, provided the aforementioned conditions for the initial stone are met before modification. Below the point of impact on the core is a characteristic bulb with fine fissures on the fracture surface. The flake evidences ripple marks.
The materials of the tools were for the most part quartz, quartzite, basalt, or obsidian, and later flint and chert. Any rock that can hold an edge will do. The main source of these rocks is river cobbles, which provide both hammer stones and striking platforms. The earliest tools were simply split cobbles. It is not always clear which is the flake. Later tool-makers clearly identified and reworked flakes. Complaints that artifacts could not be distinguished from naturally fractured stone have helped spark careful studies of Oldowan techniques. These techniques have now been duplicated many times by archaeologists and other knappers, making misidentification of archaeological finds less likely.
Use of bone tools by hominins also producing Oldowan tools is known from Swartkrans, where a bone shaft with a polished point was discovered in Member (layer) I, dated 1.8–1.5 Ma. The Osteodontokeratic industry, the "bone-tooth-horn" industry hypothesized by Raymond Dart, is less certain.
Shapes and uses
Mary Leakey classified the Oldowan tools as Heavy Duty, Light Duty, Utilized Pieces and Debitage, or waste.There is a good online summary of Mary's classification on Effland's site for Anthropology ASB22 at Mesa Community College in Arizona, apparently written by Effland. Heavy-duty tools are mainly cores. A chopper has an edge on one side. It is unifacial if the edge was created by flaking on one face of the core, or bifacial if on two. Discoid tools are roughly circular with a peripheral edge. Polyhedral tools are edged in the shape of a polyhedron. In addition there are spheroidal hammer stones.
Light-duty tools are mainly flakes. There are scrapers, awls (with points for boring) and burins (with points for engraving). Some of these functions belong also to heavy-duty tools. For example, there are heavy-duty scrapers.
Utilized pieces are tools that began with one purpose in mind but were utilized opportunistically. Because of their use and variation, opportunities lead to the frequent modification of tools for either labor or forms of signaling has been proposed as a cause for the different shapes of similar tools.
Oldowan tools were probably used for many purposes, which have been discovered from observation of modern apes and hunter-gatherers. Nuts and bones are cracked by hitting them with hammer stones on a stone used as an anvil. Battered and pitted stones testify to this possible use.
Heavy-duty tools could be used as axes for woodworking. Once a branch was separated, it could be scraped clean with a scraper, or hollowed with pointed tools. Such uses are attested by characteristic microscopic alterations of edges used to scrape wood. Oldowan tools could also have been used for preparing hides. Hides must be cut by slicing, piercing and scraping them clean of residues. Flakes are most suitable for this purpose.
Lawrence Keeley, following in the footsteps of Sergei Semenov, conducted microscopic studies (with a high-powered optical microscope) on the edges of tools manufactured de novo and used for the originally speculative purposes described above. He found that the marks were characteristic of the use and matched marks on prehistoric tools. Studies of the cut marks on bones using an electron microscope produce a similar result.
Abbevillian Abbevillian is a currently obsolescent name for a tool tradition that is increasingly coming to be called Oldowan. The label Abbevillian prevailed until the Leakey family discovered older (yet similar) artifacts at Olduvai Gorge and promoted the African origin of man. Oldowan soon replaced Abbevillian in describing African and Asian lithics. The term Abbevillian is still used but is now restricted to Europe. The label, however, continues to lose popularity as a scientific designation.
In the late 20th century, discovery of the discrepancies in date caused a crisis of definition. Because Abbevillian did not necessarily precede Acheulean and both traditions had flakes and bifaces, it became difficult to differentiate the two. It was in this spirit that many artifacts formerly considered Abbevillian were labeled Acheulean. In consideration of the difficulty, some preferred to name both phases Acheulean. When the topic of Abbevillian came up, it was simply put down as a phase of Acheulean. Whatever was from Africa was Oldowan, and whatever from Europe, Acheulean.