Human evolution; tool and brain advances correlated (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, April 07, 2020, 04:51 (1689 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by David Turell, Tuesday, April 07, 2020, 05:35

From over three mya till recently it was a stone tooled world:

https://www.britannica.com/science/human-evolution/Refinements-in-tool-design

"In Africa the Early Paleolithic (3.3–0.2 mya) comprises several industries. The first tools (hammers, anvils, and primitive cutting tools) made way for the earliest human-made chipped flake tools and core choppers (2.5–2.1 mya). Double-faced hand axes, cleavers, and picks (collectively known as bifaces) appeared about 1.5 mya and persisted until about 200 kya. Archaeologists have detected some improvements of technique and product during the half-million-year span of core-flake industries. Although the major biface industry—the Acheulean—has been characterized as basically static, it too shows evidence of refinement over time, finally resulting in elegant, symmetrical hand axes that required notable skill to make.

***

"El ʿUbeidīya, Israel, provides evidence that people and bifaces had spread out of Africa by 1.4 mya. In Europe, Acheulean tools appear 500 kya and persist until about 250–150 kya; they also occur in South Asia. Sites in China (800 kya), Korea, and Japan contain bifaces, but they differ from Acheulean tools. No such technology has been found in tropical Southeast Asia, where bamboo tools may have sufficed.

"In both Africa and Eurasia the Middle Paleolithic was long thought to have lasted from about 200 kya to as recently as 30 kya, depending upon location. While tools from the Early Paleolithic slowly changed across space and time, the Middle Paleolithic was characterized by an explosion of local and regional variations in size and shape and by frequencies of reshaped flakes, blades, scrapers, hand axes, and other tools. Projectile points began to be emphasized in some regions, with bone being used as well as stone; bone arrow points dating to more than 60,000 years ago have been found at Sibudu Cave in South Africa.

"Although they vary across time and space, Middle Paleolithic tools as a whole are characterized by carefully prepared cores from which elegant flakes or blades were struck. Notably, tools of this type have been found at the Gademotta site in Ethiopia’s Rift Valley in stratigraphic levels that date to approximately 275 kya. Additional blades dating to roughly 315 kya have been found at Morocco’s Jebel Irhoud site. (me: the first H. sapiens)

"Late Paleolithic industries dating to 50–10 kya comprise diverse blade and microblade tools, especially in Europe. Late Paleolithic peoples used a variety of materials for their tools and bodily ornaments, including bone, stone, wood, antler, ivory, and shell. Stone blades were long, thin, and very effective cutting tools. Often, when they became dull, someone retouched them via pressure flaking, which requires fine motor control and coordination.
Microblades and other points were probably hafted to produce throwing and stabbing spears. Other composite tools of the period include atlatls, harpoons, fish weirs, and bows and arrows. Late Paleolithic people also developed techniques for grinding and polishing, with which they made beads, pendants, and other artistic objects. They also made needles (perhaps for sewing fitted clothing), fish hooks, and fish gorges.

"Yet if the stunning proliferation and stylistic variability of tools, bodily ornaments, and artistic works during the Paleolithic do not point unequivocally to the specific use of speech, the presence of these symbolically mediated artifacts—among the earliest of which are shell beads found in Morocco and made about 82,000 years ago—does indicate that early humans were capable of complex conceptual and abstract thought.

***

"Although versatile human speech is reasonably linked to a relatively spacious pharynx and mobile tongue, the absence of such features is not a compelling reason to deny some form of vocal language in ancestral hominins. It is argued that articulate human speech is impossible without a lowered voice box (larynx) and an expanded region above it. If this presumption were true, even Neanderthals would be inept vocally and probably also quite primitive cognitively as compared with Late Paleolithic H. sapiens populations such as the Cro-Magnons.

"...one cannot expect the problem of language origins or language competence to be clarified by studying Paleolithic symbolism and imagery, despite the awesome array of cave art and polished bone, antler, ivory, stone, and shell artifacts associated with the period. Yet if the stunning proliferation and stylistic variability of tools, bodily ornaments, and artistic works during the Paleolithic do not point unequivocally to the specific use of speech, the presence of these symbolically mediated artifacts—among the earliest of which are shell beads found in Morocco and made about 82,000 years ago—does indicate that early humans were capable of complex conceptual and abstract thought.

Comment: This picture dating back over three million years is one of several large jumps in brain size while it was still just stone tools with varying refinements until sapiens learned to really use their brain, resulting in ornaments, art and symbolically burying the dead appearing. For more on speech see my previous quotes here from "The Ape That Spoke", by McCrone. There is no evidence from this presentation that dhw's theory that a drive for abstract design forced brain enlargement. Lots of new sized brains but not much advancement