rekordy: Stone Age

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make stone tools with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted for roughly 3.4 million years and ended between 4000 BC and 2000 BC, with the advent of metalworking. Because of its enormous timescale, it encompasses 99% of human history. Though some simple metalworking of malleable metals, particularly the use of gold and copper for purposes of ornamentation, was known in the Stone Age, it is the melting and smelting of copper that marks the end of the Stone Age. In Western Asia, this occurred by about 3000 BC, when bronze became widespread. The term Bronze Age is used to describe the perio…

Evidence: 66 • authority: 72

Homo antecessor (Latin for 'pioneer man') is an extinct species of archaic human recorded in the Spanish Sierra de Atapuerca, a productive archaeological site, from 1.2 to 0.8 million years ago during the Early Pleistocene. Populations of this species may have been present elsewhere in Western Europe, and were among the first to settle that region of the world, hence the name. The first fossils were found in the Gran Dolina cave in 1994, and the species was formally described in 1997 as the last common ancestor of modern humans and Neanderthals, supplanting the more conventional H. heidelbergensis in this position. H. antecessor has since been reinterpreted as an offshoot from the modern hu…

Evidence: 59 • authority: 92

Specialised and persistent raw material procurement by humans in the Middle Pleistocene.. The selection and acquisition of suitable raw material constitute the first steps in stone tool technology. Previous ethnographical and archaeological research suggests that hominins in the Pleistocene primarily collected their stone materials while carrying out other activities. Direct provisioning for this purpose alone remains an outlier and is rarely demonstrated. Archaeological excavations coupled with multidisciplinary analyses at Jojosi in South Africa demonstrate that early modern humans undertook specific, repeated visits to a raw material source over tens of thousands of years for the exclusi…

Evidence: 52 • authority: 72

A bog body is a cadaver that has been naturally mummified in a peat bog. Such bodies, sometimes known as bog people, are both geographically and chronologically widespread, having been dated between 8000 BC and the Second World War. The common factors of bog bodies are that they have been found in peat and are at least partially preserved. However, the actual levels of preservation vary widely, from immaculately preserved to mere skeletons. Due to the unusual conditions of peat bogs – highly acidic water, low temperature, and a lack of oxygen – the soft tissue of bog bodies can be remarkably well-preserved in comparison to typical ancient human remains. The high levels of acidity can tan th…

Evidence: 52 • authority: 72

The Early Dynastic Period (abbreviated ED Period or ED) is an archaeological culture in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) that is generally dated to c. 2900 – c. 2350 BC and was preceded by the Uruk and Jemdet Nasr periods. It saw the development of writing and the formation of the first cities and states. The ED itself was characterized by the existence of multiple city-states: small states with a relatively simple structure that developed and solidified over time. This development ultimately led, directly after this period, to broad Mesopotamian unification under the rule of Sargon, the first monarch of the Akkadian Empire. Despite their political fragmentation, the ED city-states shared a re…

Evidence: 45 • authority: 92

Impacted Bones: Can Extant Primates Help Identify Tool Use in Early Hominins?. Despite recent advances pushing back the earliest record of tool use, how and when it first emerged in hominins, and the extent to which it featured amongst the numerous co-existing species, remain critical questions in paleoanthropology. In addition to analyzing fossils and lithic toolkits, novel strides in understanding this might be made by studying the skeletons of the great apes, as well as more distantly related tool-using primates and applying resultant findings to the fossil record via predictive modelling. We review current methods of extrapolating tool-use capabilities in extinct and extant taxa and pro…

Evidence: 38 • authority: 80

Oldest wooden tools may have been used to butcher elephants

Evidence: 38 • authority: 80

Putting ochre to the test: replication studies of adhesives that may have been used for hafting tools in the Middle Stone Age

Evidence: 38 • authority: 92

Aterian shell beads from the coastal site of El Mnasra Cave (Rabat-Témara, Morocco): Specificities of the north African MSA personal ornaments.. The use of Nassariidea shells as personal ornaments is attested to an increasing number of Middle Stone Age (MSA) archaeological sites in northern and southern Africa. The chronological extent of this behavior is constantly moving back in time; currently, the oldest evidence has been identified at the Bizmoune cave site in Morocco back to the MIS 6. Although these evidences make it possible to refine the spatial and temporal distribution of this behavior, shell beads remain rare in Middle Stone Age assemblages and are generally composed of several…

Evidence: 38 • authority: 92

Unveiling bast fiber production in Upper Paleolithic North China: Microfibers and usewear traces on stone tools from Shizitan.. Fiber technology-including the making of cordages, mats, baskets, and textiles-holds a crucial place in human history. However, uncovering archaeological evidence of early fiber products proves challenging due to their rapid decay. To address preservation hurdles, we employ a multi-disciplinary approach to interpret microfiber remains, drawing on microfossil remains, usewear traces, ethnographic observation, and experimental archaeology, to study artifacts from two Upper Paleolithic Shizitan (SZT) site localities on the North China Loess Plateau, dating 28,000-18,0…

Evidence: 38 • authority: 72

The Prehistory of Transylvania describes what can be learned about the region known as Transylvania through archaeology, anthropology, comparative linguistics and other allied sciences. Transylvania proper is a plateau or tableland in northwest central Romania. It is bounded and defined by the Carpathian Mountains to the east and south, and the Apuseni Mountains to the west. As a diverse and relatively protected region, the area has always been rich in wildlife, and remains one of the more ecologically diverse areas in Europe. The mountains contain a large number of caves, which attracted both human and animal residents. The Peștera Urșilor, the "Bears Cave", was home to a large number of c…