Stone Tools From India: Another Blow To Human Evolution Model?

Thousands of stone tools excavated from a site in India suggest that a sophisticated tool-making technology arrived in South Asia much earlier than once thought possible, say researchers. (Credit: Sharma Centre for Heritage Education, India) A new study on stone tools from a site in India offers the latest challenge to the model of human evolution and migration that has dominated paleoanthropology, particularly in the West, for decades. The artifacts, which the researchers say were produced with a sophisticated style of tool-making, are hundreds of thousands of years older than might be expected. What does it mean? Well, that part of the story is still up for debate. At the archaeological site of Attirampakkam in southeastern India, near Chennai, researchers have collected more than 7,000 artifacts, many of them stone tools that appear to show a transition from an early style of tool-making to one that's more sophisticated. The shocker: if the analysis is correct, the transition occurred more than 200,000 years earlier than expected based on previous evidence. Tool-making styles, or technologies, are important in the study of human evolution and migration for a couple reasons. For starters, stone tools have a habit of sticking around long after human remains have disintegrated. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust and all that. But the complexity of the tool technology — how the tools were made — also can reveal a lot about the cognitive ability of the toolmaker. The earliest tools at Attirampakkam belong to the Acheulean technology. Instantly recognizable by its teardrop shape, the Acheulean handaxe in particular was a considerable improvement on earlier Oldowan technology.