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Acheulian
Acheulean (; also Acheulian and Mode II), from the French after the type site of Saint-Acheul, is an archaeological industry of stone tool manufacture characterized by the distinctive oval and pear-shaped "hand axes" associated with ''Homo erectus'' and derived species such as ''Homo heidelbergensis''. Acheulean tools were produced during the Lower Palaeolithic era across Africa and much of West Asia, South Asia, East Asia and Europe, and are typically found with ''Homo erectus'' remains. It is thought that Acheulean technologies first developed about 2 million years ago, derived from the more primitive Oldowan technology associated with ''Homo habilis''. The Acheulean includes at least the early part of the Middle Paleolithic. Its end is not well defined; if Sangoan (also known as Epi-Acheulean) is included, it may be taken to last until as late as 130,000 years ago. In Europe and Western Asia, early Neanderthals adopted Acheulean technology, transitioning to Moust ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soanian
The Soanian culture is a prehistoric technological culture from the Siwalik Hills, Pakistan. Quote: “Soanian and Soanian‐like assemblages are known throughout the entire Siwalik or Sub‐ Himalayan region, from Pakistan to northeast India including Nepal...” It is named after the Soan Valley in Pakistan. Discovery Soanian sites are found along the Siwalik region in present-day India, Nepal and Pakistan.Chauhan, Parth R., ''An Overview of the Siwalik Acheulian & Reconsidering Its Chronological Relationship with the Soanian – A Theoretical Perspective''. The Soanian culture has been approximated to have occurred during the Middle Pleistocene period or the mid-Holocene epoch (Northgrippian). Debates still go on today regarding the exact period occupied by the culture due to artifacts often found in non-datable surface contexts. The anthropology and archaeology team led by Helmut de Terra and Thomas Thomson Paterson first discovered and named this culture. Soanian ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fauresmith Industry
In archaeology, Fauresmith industry is a stone tool industry that is transitional between the Acheulian and the Middle Stone Age. It is at the end of the Acheulian or beginning of the Middle Stone Age. It is named after the town of Fauresmith in South Africa. The Fauresmith is found at a number of other archaeological sites such as Wonderwerk Cave and Kathu Pan where it is potentially dated to at least 420,000 years ago. The Fauresmith consists of Middle Stone Age technology such as blades, points and prepared core technology as well as retaining handaxes from the Acheulian. The type sites are Brakfontein 321 and Riverview Estates Site VI. The Fauresmith culture shows Levalloisean influence, with hand-axes and flakes with faceted striking platforms. It is largely in the similar period with the Sangoan __TOC__ The Sangoan is a prehistoric lithic industry of sub-Saharan Africa, broadly dated to the later part of the Early Stone Age (ESA) and the transition to the Middle Ston ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hand Axe
A hand axe (or handaxe or Acheulean hand axe) is a Prehistory, prehistoric stone tool with two faces that is the longest-used tool in human history. It is made from stone, usually flint or chert that has been "reduced" and shaped from a larger piece by knapping, or hitting against another stone. They are characteristic of the lower Acheulean and middle Palaeolithic (Mousterian) periods, roughly 1.6 million years ago to about 100,000 years ago, and used by ''Homo erectus'' and other early humans, but rarely by ''Homo sapiens''. Their technical name (biface) comes from the fact that the archetypical model is a generally bifacial (with two wide sides or faces) and almond-shaped (amygdaloidal) lithic flake. Hand axes tend to be Symmetry, symmetrical along their longitudinal Symmetry axis, axis and formed by pressure or percussion. The most common hand axes have a pointed end and rounded base, which gives them their characteristic almond shape, and both faces have been Knapping, knap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lower Palaeolithic
The Lower Paleolithic (or Lower Palaeolithic) is the earliest subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. It spans the time from around 3.3 million years ago when the first evidence for stone tool production and use by hominins appears in the current archaeological record, until around 300,000 years ago, spanning the Oldowan ("mode 1") and Acheulean ("mode 2") lithics industries. In African archaeology, the time period roughly corresponds to the Early Stone Age, the earliest finds dating back to 3.3 million years ago, with Lomekwian stone tool technology, spanning Mode 1 stone tool technology, which begins roughly 2.6 million years ago and ends between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago, with Mode 2 technology. The Middle Paleolithic followed the Lower Paleolithic and recorded the appearance of the more advanced prepared-core tool-making technologies such as the Mousterian. Whether the earliest control of fire by hominins dates to the Lower or to the Middle Paleolith ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oldowan
The Oldowan (or Mode I) was a widespread stone tool archaeological industry during the early Lower Paleolithic spanning the late Pliocene and the first half of the Early Pleistocene. These early tools were simple, usually made by chipping one, or a few, flakes off a stone using another stone. Oldowan tools were used during over a period spanning from 2.9 million years ago up until at least 1.7 million years ago (Ma), by ancient hominins (early humans) across much of Africa. This technological industry was followed by the more sophisticated Acheulean industry (two sites associated with ''Homo erectus'' at Gona in the Afar Region of Ethiopia dating from 1.5 and 1.26 million years ago have both Oldowan and Acheulean tools). The term ''Oldowan'' is taken from the site of Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, where the first Oldowan stone tools were discovered by the archaeologist Louis Leakey in the 1930s. However, some contemporary archaeologists and palaeoanthropologists prefer to use th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lower Paleolithic
The Lower Paleolithic (or Lower Palaeolithic) is the earliest subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. It spans the time from around 3.3 million years ago when the first evidence for stone tool production and use by hominins appears in the current archaeological record, until around 300,000 years ago, spanning the Oldowan ("mode 1") and Acheulean ("mode 2") lithics industries. In African archaeology, the time period roughly corresponds to the Early Stone Age, the earliest finds dating back to 3.3 million years ago, with Lomekwian stone tool technology, spanning Mode 1 stone tool technology, which begins roughly 2.6 million years ago and ends between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago, with Mode 2 technology. The Middle Paleolithic followed the Lower Paleolithic and recorded the appearance of the more advanced prepared-core tool-making technologies such as the Mousterian. Whether the earliest control of fire by hominins dates to the Lower or to the Middle Paleolithic rem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homo Heidelbergensis
''Homo heidelbergensis'' is a species of archaic human from the Middle Pleistocene of Europe and Africa, as well as potentially Asia depending on the taxonomic convention used. The species-level classification of ''Homo'' during the Middle Pleistocene is controversial, called the "muddle in the middle", owing to the wide anatomical range of variation that populations exhibited during this time. ''H. heidelbergensis'' has been regarded as either the last common ancestor of modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans; or as a completely separate lineage. ''H. heidelbergensis'' was species description, described by German anthropologist Otto Schoetensack in 1908 based on a jawbone, Mauer 1, from a sand mining, sand pit near the village of Mauer (Baden), Mauer — southeast of Heidelberg. It was the oldest identified human fossil in Europe, and Schoetensack described it as an antediluvian race (before the Great Flood) which would eventually evolve into living Europeans. By the mid-2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cleaver (tool)
In archaeology, a cleaver is a type of biface stone tool of the Lower Palaeolithic. Cleavers resemble hand axes in that they are large and oblong or U-shaped tools meant to be held in the hand. But, unlike hand axes, they have a wide, straight cutting edge running at right angles to the axis of the tool. Acheulean cleavers resemble handaxes but with the pointed end truncated away. Flake cleavers have a cutting edge created by a tranchet flake being struck from the primary surface. Differences between cleavers and hand axes Cleavers, found in many Acheulean assemblages such as Africa, were similar in size and manner of hand axes. The differences between a hand axe and a cleaver is that a hand axe has a more pointed tip, while a cleaver will have a more transverse "bit" that consists of an untrimmed portion of the edge oriented perpendicular to the long axis of the tool. These were used in lithic technology. It is unclear if it was used for heavy digging or not. More experi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sangoan
__TOC__ The Sangoan is a prehistoric lithic industry of sub-Saharan Africa, broadly dated to the later part of the Early Stone Age (ESA) and the transition to the Middle Stone Age (MSA), approximately between 500,000 and 300,000 years ago. First identified in the 1920s at Sango Bay in Uganda, the industry is characterized by heavy-duty core tools such as picks, core axes, choppers, and scrapers, often produced on large cobbles or blocks of coarse-grained stone. These minimally shaped tools were likely used for woodworking, digging, or other subsistence tasks. Archaeology, Archaeological sites associated with the Sangoan have been found across a broad ecological and geographical range, including rainforest, woodland, and savanna environments. This distribution extends from Central and East Africa to parts of southern and possibly northern Africa, with debated evidence even reaching the Mediterranean. The Sangoan is noted for its technological variability, its lack of consistent dia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Acheulo-Yabrudian Complex
The Acheulo-Yabrudian complex is a complex of archaeological cultures in the Levant at the end of the Lower Palaeolithic. It follows the Acheulian and precedes the Mousterian. It is also called the Mugharan Tradition or the Acheulo-Yabrudian Cultural Complex (AYCC). The Acheulo-Yabrudian complex has three stone-tool traditions, chronologically: the Acheulo-Yabrudian, the Yabrudian and the Pre-Aurignacian or Amudian. The Yabrudian tradition is dominated by thick scrapers shaped by steep Quina retouch; the Acheuleo-Yabrudian contains Yabrudian scrapers and handaxes; and the Pre-Aurignacian/Amudian is dominated by blades and blade-tools. Dating Determining the age period for the Acheulo-Yabrudian has been difficult as its major excavations occurred in the 1930s and 1950s, before modern radiometric dating. The recently excavated Qesem and Tabun caves, however, suggest the oldest period is about 350 kyr and the most recent 200 kyr. This would make the Lower–Middle Palaeolithic tra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archaeological Industry
In the archaeology of the Stone Age, an industry or technocomplex is a typology (archaeology), typological classification of stone tools. An industry consists of a number of lithic Assemblage (archeology ), assemblages, typically including a range of different types of tools, that are grouped together on the basis of shared technological or Morphology (archaeology), morphological characteristics. For example, the Acheulean industry includes Hand axe, hand-axes, Cleaver (tool), cleavers, Scraper (archaeology), scrapers and other tools with different forms, but which were all manufactured by the symmetrical Lithic reduction, reduction of a Biface, bifacial Lithic core, core producing large flakes. Industries are usually named after a type site where these characteristics were first observed (e.g. the Mousterian industry is named after the site of Le Moustier). By contrast, Neolithic axeheads from the Langdale axe industry were recognised as a type well before the centre at Great L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clactonian
The Clactonian is the name given by archaeologists to an industry of European flint tool manufacture that dates to the early part of the Hoxnian Interglacial (corresponding to the global Marine Isotope Stage 11 and the continental Holstein Interglacial) around 424–415,000 years ago. Clactonian tools were made by ''Homo heidelbergensis''. The Clactonian is primarily distinguished from the (globally) contemporaneous Acheulean industry by its lack of use of handaxe tools. It is named after finds made by Samuel Hazzledine Warren in a palaeochannel at Clacton-on-Sea in the English county of Essex in 1911. The artefacts found there included flint chopping tools, flint flakes and the tip of a worked wooden shaft, the Clacton Spear. Further examples of the tools have been found at sites including Barnfield Pit and Rickson's Pit, near Swanscombe in Kent and Barnham in Suffolk; similar industries have been identified across Northern Europe. The Clactonian industry involved stri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
