The "Swiss knife of prehistoric tools" found in Asia, suggests a homemade technology

A new analysis of artefacts found on an archaeological site in southern China shows that sophisticated tool technology has emerged in East Asia earlier than expected.

A study by an international team of researchers, including the University of Washington, showed that carved stone tools, also known as Levallois stones, were used in Asia 80,000 to 170,000 years ago. Developed in Africa and Western Europe 300,000 years ago, the cores are the sign of a more advanced toolmaking – the "multi-tool" of the prehistoric world – but, until the end of the century. at present, they would not have emerged in East Asia until 30,000 to 40,000 years ago.

With the discovery – and the absence of human fossils linking tools to migrant populations – researchers believe that the technology was developed independently by Asians, evidence of similar skills evolving in different parts of the ancient world.

The is published online November 19 in Nature.

"Formerly, it was thought that Levallois nuclei had arrived in China with modern humans," said Ben Marwick, associate professor of anthropology at UW and one of the newspaper's corresponding authors. "Our work reveals the complexity and adaptability of people there, equivalent to those of the rest of the world.This shows the diversity of the human experience."

The Levallois-shaped cores – the "Swiss army knife of prehistoric tools," said Marwick – are effective and durable, indispensable for a hunter-gatherer society in which a broken lance tip could mean certain death to claws or jaws of a predator. The cores were named in the honor of the Parisian suburb of Levallois-Perret, where stone flakes were found in the 1800s.

Presenting a distinct faceted surface, created by a series of stages, the Levallois flakes are versatile "blanks" used for throwing, slicing, scraping or digging. The size process represents a more sophisticated approach to tool making than simple and oval stones from earlier periods.

The Levallois artifacts examined in this study were unearthed in the Guanyindong Cave in Guizhou Province in the 1960s and 1970s. Previous research using serial uranium dates estimated a large slice of artifacts. Age of the archaeological site – between 50,000 and 240,000 years – but this earlier technique was centered on fossils found far from stone artifacts, said Marwick. The sediment analysis surrounding the artifacts provides more accurate clues as to when the artifacts would have been used.

Marwick and other members of the team, from Chinese and Australian universities, used optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) to date the artifacts. OSL can determine age by determining when a sediment sample, up to a grain of sand, was exposed to the sun – and thus how long an artifact could have been buried in layers of sediment .

"Dating for this site was difficult because it had been excavated 40 years ago and the sediment profile was exposed to the air and unprotected, so trees, plants, animals and insects could disrupt stratigraphy, which could affect the results of dating if conventional methods Bo Li, professor of archeology at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and one of the newspaper's corresponding authors. "To solve this problem, we used a new single-grain dating technique recently developed in our OSL laboratory at the University of Wollongong to date individual grains of minerals in sediments. Fortunately, we found residual sediments left by previous excavations. take samples to date. "

The researchers analyzed more than 2,200 artifacts found in the Guanyindong Cave, reducing the number of Levallois-style stones and flakes to 45. Among those who would be over 130,000 to 180,000 years old, the team was also able to identify the environment in which the tools were used: an open forest on a rocky landscape, in "a forest area reduced rainfall compared to today, "note the authors.

In Africa and Europe, these types of stone tools are often found on archaeological sites dating back 300,000 to 200,000 years. This is the Mode III technology, which is part of a vast evolutionary sequence preceded by the technology of the hand ax (mode II) and technology of blade tools (mode IV). Archaeologists believed that Mode IV technologies had arrived in China through Western migration, but these new findings suggest that they could have been invented locally. At the time, people were making tools in the Guanyindong cave, the Denisovans – ancestors of Homo sapiens and contemporaries related to Neanderthals elsewhere in the world – roamed Asia from around the world. Is. But while hundreds of archaic human fossils and related objects, dating back over 3 million years ago, have been discovered in Africa and Europe, the archives archaeological sites in East Asia are more rare.

This is partly the reason why a stereotype exists, namely that the ancient peoples of the region were lagging behind in terms of technological development, said Marwick.

"Our work shows that ancient people were just as capable of innovation as anywhere else.The technological innovations in East Asia can be developed here, and do not always come from there. "West," he said.

The independent emergence of Levallois technique at different times and places of the world is not unique in terms of prehistoric innovations. The construction of pyramids, for example, has appeared in at least three distinct societies: the Egyptians, the Aztecs and the Mayas. The construction of boats began according to the geography and depended on the materials available in the community. And of course, the writing has developed in various forms with separate alphabets and characters.

In the evolution of tools, Levallois cores represent an intermediate step. Subsequent fabrication processes resulted in more refined blades made up of rocks and minerals more resistant to flaking, as well as composites such as a spear tip and blades along the edge. The late appearance of blades indicates a further increase in the complexity and number of steps required to manufacture the tools.

"The emergence of the Levallois strategy represents a sharp increase in the complexity of the technology because many steps must be completed to get the final product, compared to previous technologies," said Marwick.

###

The study was funded by the Australian Research Council, the National Science Foundation of China, the University of Wollongong, the China Scholarship Council, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Research Laboratory. loess and quaternary geology.

Yue Hu and Xue Rui, from Wollongong University; Jia-Fu Zhang from Peking University in China; Ya-Mei Hou, Jian-Ping Yue and Wei-Wen Huang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; and Wen-Rong Chen from the Office of Cultural Relics Protection of Guizhou Province, China.

For more information, contact Marwick at [email protected].

Grant Numbers: FT140100384, FT140100101, NSFC 41471003, 201506010345, XDPB05, 41272033, SKLLQG1501