'Staying Longer At Home' Was Key To Stone Age Technology Change 60,000 Years Ago (phys.org)

A new study by scientists at the University of the Witwatersrand suggests that at about 58,000 years ago, Stone Age humans began to settle down, staying in one area for longer periods. The research also provides a potential answer to a long-held mystery: why older, Howiesons Poort complex technological tradition in South Africa, suddenly disappear at that time. Phys.Org reports: The Howiesons Poort at Sibudu contains many finely-worked, crescent-shaped stone tools fashioned from long, thin blades made on dolerite, hornfels and, to a lesser extent, quartz. These "segments," as they are called, were hafted to shafts or handles at a variety of angles using compound adhesives that sometimes included red ochre (an iron oxide). A diverse bone tool kit in the Howiesons Poort includes what may be the world's oldest bone arrowhead. Certainly a variety of hunting techniques was used perhaps including the first use of snares for the capture of small creatures. The animal remains brought to Sibudu reflect this diversity for there are bones from large plains game like zebra, tiny blue duiker, and even pigeons and small carnivores. Soft, clayey ochre pieces were collected in the Howiesons Poort perhaps at a considerable distance From Sibudu. Clayey ochre is useful for applying as paint. The beautiful Howiesons Poort industry with its long, thin blades is replaced at 58,000 years ago by a simple technology that could be rapidly produced. Coarse rocks like quartzite and sandstone became popular. These could be collected close to Sibudu. Post-Howiesons Poort tools were part of an unstandardized toolkit with triangular or irregularly-shaped flakes. Tiny scaled pieces were also produced using a bipolar technique (in the simplest terms this involves smashing a small piece of rock with a hammerstone). The study has been published in the journal PlosOne.

Comments

Race to the bottom

[Comboman]

The beautiful Howiesons Poort industry with its long, thin blades is replaced at 58,000 years ago by a simple technology that could be rapidly produced.

Skilled craftsmen replaced by cheap labor. Who knew it was a tradition 58,000 years old.

Not the whole story

[spaceman375]

It seems to me that there still would have been traders and other travelers. If the Howiesons Poort tech was so much better there would have been demand for the raw materials. Perhaps they were decimated by inter-tribal warfare. Travel also spreads disease, so a plague or two could have brought them down. There are more factors to this than one simple explanation.

How can they tell if a rock is a "tool"?

[Anonymous Coward]

The article has this picture which shows some of the alleged "tools".

Years ago my uncle had a dirt and gravel business. He had piles of stones 20 feet high that looked just like those in that picture, that he had crushed from larger rocks.

How can these scientists be so sure that such stones are actually tools of some sort? Just because a rock has a sharp edge doesn't prove that it has been intentionally worked by humans and used as a tool. Depending on the type of rock, just breaking a larger boulder (which could happen completely naturally, without human intervention) can give stones with sharp edges, or otherwise cause markings on the stones.

It's one thing when we're talking about an Amerindian arrow head, which has a defined shape and very specific machining that would be quite unlikely to happen in nature. But the rocks shown in the article's picture look like gravel. They have no specific shapes. They have no obvious signs of being worked by humans. They look like plain gravel.