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The ability to adapt to changing environments has deep roots. In a tech-driven world, people tend to confuse adaptability with technological change, especially when it comes to navigating unfavorable climates and locations. But not all technological revolutions are the result of environmental change.
Sometimes existing toolkits – containing, for example, simple cutting and scraping flakes – allowed early humans to mine new resources and thrive under changing conditions. As a species, humans are also characterized by the ability to quickly use disturbed environments. And, as new research in Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge reveals, this adaptability was already apparent millions of years ago.
Our new study, published in Nature Communications, is the result of a real team and multidisciplinary effort. Principal investigators from Canada and Tanzania worked with partners in Africa, North America and Europe to describe a vast assemblage of stone tools, fossil bones and chemical substitutes from dental and plant materials. . We also examined microscopic silica fragments left behind by plants, ancient pollen, and suspended charcoal in natural fires salvaged from ancient outcrops of rivers and lakes on the Serengeti plains.
Taken together, the data we’ve gathered presents the earliest evidence of human activity in the Olduvai Gorge: around 2 million years ago. It also shows that early humans used a wide variety of habitats to adapt to constant change.
East Africa is one of the main regions of the world for research on human origins. It has an extraordinary archive of extinct species spanning millions of years. For more than a century, paleo-anthropologists have explored sedimentary outcrops and unearthed hominid fossils during surveys and excavations. But the link between these fossils and their environmental context remains elusive. That’s because there aren’t many paleoecological datasets directly related to cultural relics left behind by the first extinct humans. Our study is an important step in filling this gap.
Various artefacts and data
The dataset was obtained during a recent survey of the unexplored western part of the old basin. The locality is called Ewass Oldupa; in the Maa language spoken by local residents, it means “the way to the gorge”. It’s an apt name: the site straddles the path that connects the rim of the canyon to its bottom. Here, the exposed canyon wall reveals 2 million years of history.
The team worked closely with researchers and Maasai communities during the excavation of the site. The research group employed a large group of participants, men and women, selected by the local community. And in addition to community outreach in the national language, Swahili, we are providing university training opportunities for two Maasai academics interested in archeology and heritage, as well as several other Tanzanians.
The stone tools discovered belong to the “culture” that archaeologists identify as Oldowan. It is a landmark representing the first humans who interacted with their environment in innovative ways, for example through food innovations combining meat and plants. In East Africa, the Oldowan began around 2.6 million years ago.
The concentration of stone tools and animal fossils is evidence that humans and wildlife have gathered around the water sources. We also learned that the Oldowan hominids cast their net in search of resources. Our data reveals that the first humans took rocks with them for tools they obtained from distant sources across the basin, 12 kilometers to the east. They also developed the flexibility to use various changing environments.
Our research shows that the geological, sedimentary and vegetal landscapes around Ewass Oldupa have changed a lot and rapidly. Yet humans have continued to return here to use local resources for over 200,000 years. They used a great diversity of habitats: fern meadows, wood mosaics, naturally burnt landscapes, palm groves by the lakes, steppes. These habitats were regularly covered with ash or reworked by massive flows associated with volcanic eruptions.
Thanks to past and ongoing radiometric work – using the Argon method, which dates the deposit of volcanic material that sandwiches archaeological finds – we have been able to date these artifacts to a period known as the Early Pleistocene, there are 2 million years ago.
What is not clear is which hominid species made the tools. We did not recover any hominid fossils, but the remains of Homo were found in younger sediments at another site just 350 meters away. It is likely that either Homo or a member of the genus Paranthropus—whose remains were also found at Olduvai Gorge before – was the tool maker. More research will be needed to be sure.
Collaboration
One of the reasons this research is so important is that it shows, once again, the value of collaboration. Archaeologists, geoscientists, biologists, chemists and materials specialists were all involved in the study of Ewass Oldupa.
It is thanks to the multiple samples and artefacts that these experts gathered and analyzed that we now also know that adaptation to major geomorphic and ecological transformations had no impact on the hominin technology used. They walked through many habitats but only used one tool kit, amidst unpredictable environments.
This is a clear sign that 2 million years ago humans were not subject to technological constraints and already had the capacity to expand their geographic range, as they were ready to exploit a multitude of habitats in Africa – and possibly beyond.
Julio Mercader Florin, professor, University of Calgary
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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