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From: Primum Sapienti <invalide@invalid.invalid>
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology.paleo
Subject: Re: Bone tools from 1.5 MYA
Date: Sat, 8 Mar 2025 22:49:46 -0700
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Mario Petrinovic wrote:
> On 6.3.2025. 17:40, erik simpson wrote:
>> Systematic bone tool production at 1.5 million years ago
>>
>> Ignacio de la Torre, Luc Doyon, Alfonso Benito-Calvo, Rafael Mora, 
>> Ipyana Mwakyoma, Jackson K. Njau, Renata F. Peters, Angeliki 
>> Theodoropoulou & Francesco d’Errico
>>
>> Abstract
>> Recent evidence indicates that the emergence of stone tool technology 
>> occurred before the appearance of the genus Homo1 and may potentially 
>> be traced back deep into the primate evolutionary line2. Conversely, 
>> osseous technologies are apparently exclusive of later hominins from 
>> approximately 2 million years ago (Ma)3,4, whereas the earliest 
>> systematic production of bone tools is currently restricted to 
>> European Acheulean sites 400–250 thousand years ago5,6. Here we 
>> document an assemblage of bone tools shaped by knapping found within a 
>> single stratigraphic horizon at Olduvai Gorge dated to 1.5 Ma. Large 
>> mammal limb bone fragments, mostly from hippopotamus and elephant, 
>> were shaped to produce various tools, including massive elongated 
>> implements. Before our discovery, bone artefact production in 
>> pre-Middle Stone Age African contexts was widely considered as 
>> episodic, expedient and unrepresentative of early Homo toolkits. 
>> However, our results demonstrate that at the transition between the 
>> Oldowan and the early Acheulean, East African hominins developed an 
>> original cultural innovation that entailed a transfer and adaptation 
>> of knapping skills from stone to bone. By producing technologically 
>> and morphologically standardized bone tools, early Acheulean 
>> toolmakers unravelled technological repertoires that were previously 
>> thought to have appeared routinely more than 1 million years later.
>>
>> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08652-5. Open access
> 
>          So, did those who were persuading us into thinking that this 
> was episodic, apologize? Or should we encounter misconceptions like this 
> over and over again, just because this is "science", and science doesn't 
> think.

The conclusion that this used to be considered episodic
was based on the previous body of evidence. But as the
authors above state

"Before our discovery, bone artefact production
in pre-Middle Stone Age African contexts was
widely considered as episodic, expedient and
unrepresentative of early Homo toolkits."

New finds, paradigms change