Stone Tool Making Wasn’t Just ‘Out of Africa’

While most of human existence still remains explainable by the evolutionary theory known as the "Out of Africa" theory, it turns out that our craftiness may have developed elsewhere as an invention necessary for survival. In a new study published in this week's issue of the journal Science, researchers from the University of London along with an international team across most of the U.S. and Europe analyzed tools discovered in 2008 at the Nor Geghi site in the outskirts of Armenia.

The study undermines a long-accepted theory that our Stone Age ancestors learned sophisticated tool making techniques from migrating African tribes, and suggests that the tools may have been developed independently. Looking to the Caucasus mountain range, the researchers found that more than 335,000 years ago local populations developed simple biface tools made of obsidian and stone to accomplish simple tasks. But soon thereafter, researchers believed they devised a far more advanced technology.

Known as "Levallois", the tools found and analyzed were tools to make other tools, where the flakes and blades of the Levallois were used to carve and sharpen things much like modern-day hunting tools. Perfectly preserved by two lava flows that date back to 200,000 and 400,000 years ago, the site of excavation where 3,000 stone artifacts like the Levallois were found not only expanded our understanding of the ancient Caucasus, but also that of the behavior and technology of our distant ancestors.

"The discovery of thousands of stone artifacts preserved at this unique site provides a major new insight into how Stone Age tools developed during a period of profound human behavioral and biological change" lead researcher from the University of London, Simon Blockley says. "The people who lived there 325,000 years ago were much more innovative than previously thought, using a combination of two different technologies to make tools that were extremely important for the mobile hunter/gatherers of the time."

The pieces found were dated to be roughly 325,000 to 335,000 years old, and they allowed researchers to challenge the long-accepted theory that stone tools and artifacts like these arose from techniques that originally arose out of Africa, learned by others from the travelling tribes of the central plains.

 "Our findings challenge the theory held by many archaeologists that Levallois technology was invented in Africa and spread to Eurasia as the human population expanded" Blockley says. "Because of our ability to accurately date the site in Armenia, we now have the first clear evidence that this significant development in human innovation occurred independently with different populations."