By ‘hometowns’ of hominids we mean places where these early hominids stayed for a longer period of time. The stay and its length depended on the vegetation that grew there and the game that was present. Actually, they are ‘houses’ of 2 million years old, which we recognize by the large concentrations of fossil material, stone tools and rubbish present in a relatively small area.
Feature: restriction of housing
The remainder of the hominid ‘dwellings’ is limited to a depth of only a few centimeters. The earth on which these early hominids squatted can still be found today, complete with the remains of the things they made and ate. These remains can be found scattered all around. All those places of residence were gradually covered with:
- windblown dust;
- mud deposited by rising water;
- advancing vegetation.
The gradual way it happened covered the hominid habitats without disturbing anything. As a result, the objects that the Leakey anthropologists worked so hard to uncover and later catalogue, have remained exactly where they were left by early hominins.
Scattered location
Now it is not the case that everywhere in the Olduvai Gorge:
- objects and remains in a confined space;
- only a few centimeters deep;
- together
have been discovered.
Tools and bones have been found elsewhere in the area, spread over sand and clay layers at a depth of several tens of centimeters. These finds were mixed and carried along by the river, after which they were deposited from time to time, so their location in relation to each other does not say much.
Finds from a hometown
When such a hominid habitat is uncovered, what is found there is what Homo habilis left behind, such as:
- a large number of fish heads;
- crocodile bones;
- fossilized rhizomes of papyrus plants.
From these finds it can be concluded that Homo habilis:
- lived near water in at least one place;
- got his food from this water.
Because many flamingo bones have been found in other places, anthropologists know that the water in that area must have been a lake, which was shallow and somewhat alkaline. In addition, only those two factors (shallow and alkaline) produce the small aquatic animals that flamingos eat. Today, many East African lakes are still like this.
Tool sites
In Olduvai, ten settlements were found – spread over an 18 kilometer long area in this gorge – from a total of 70 places where fossils or tools were present. In one of these settlements the refuse of civilization was arranged in a very peculiar manner. A large concentration of chips and flakes was found. These chips and flakes came from the manufactured tools and were mixed with a large number of fragments of crushed animal bones. These finds were found compressed into an almost rectangular area approximately 5 meters wide and 10 meters long. Around that rectangle was a strip of approximately 1 meter wide, where virtually no civilization rubbish could be found. The ground there was almost bare. However, outside that strip the material became quite plentiful again. The question arose as to what could be the explanation for this.
Declaration
The most obvious explanation is that the central part (with the dense concentration of waste) was the actual place of residence. This residence was surrounded by a dense, protective hedge of thorns. Within it, the residents safely and comfortably made their tools and consumed their food. Everything that they simply did not drop on the ground, they threw out over the hedge.
Circular formation stones
At another site a roughly circular formation of stones with a diameter of about 5 meters was found. That was a very remarkable find, because not only were few other stones found at that place of residence, but those that were found were scattered randomly. In contrast, the circle consisted of a dense concentration of several hundred stones, carefully arranged. That must have been done by someone who also took the trouble to build a higher pile of stones every 60 or 90 centimeters.
This grouping of stones has persisted for almost 2 million years and is reminiscent of a shelter still made today by the Okombambi tribe in South West Africa. The Okombambi tribe also makes low circles of stones, with high piles at regular intervals to support poles or branches over which hides or grass stalks are spread. This keeps the wind out.
Besides the indication of certain activities (splinters found within the circle of stones), there are further indications of a wide variety of activities outside this circle. That seems logical if we pay attention to:
- the small internal dimensions of the irregular circle, which are only three by four or five meters. Something that is quite tight for the ‘home’ of several people;
- there were some extremely good hunters or scavengers in the group, for the surrounding area contained the fossilized remains of giraffes, hippopotamuses, many antelopes, and the tooth of a Dinotherium (extinct elephant);
- people ate well and probably preferred to eat outside rather than in the limited space of the shelter.
Origin of the meat
Whether Homo habilis killed those large animals themselves, hunted them into swamps and helped them die there, or whether early humans appropriated the prey of other carnivores (meat eaters) is not clear from the finds. It has become clear that the hominids cut up and ate an exceptionally large carcass.
Slaughterhouses
Two places have been found in Olduvai that can be considered slaughter sites. One contained the skeleton of an elephant, the other that of a Dinotherium (extinct elephant). Since both animals weighed several tons, it was impossible to move them. So there would have been no choice but to stay with the carcass and chop and chew until the meat was gone. Evidence has been found at these slaughter sites from which one can conclude that this indeed happened.
In both places lies the almost complete skeleton of a huge animal, the bones in disarray as if they had been torn apart and chopped. Among the bones are discarded hand axes and other stone tools used for chopping.
Hominid development revealed
It’s a fantastic image that the work of anthropologist Mary Leakey has revealed. Just as the intricacies and subtleties of chimpanzee or baboon society turn out to be far more complex than anyone might have imagined a generation ago, so too does the culture of early bipedal hominids turn out to be far more complex than expected.
Brain size
The reason why the Leakeys concluded that the creature who made this elaborate tool assemblage was human (and should therefore be called Homo habilis ) is not the size of its brain, but the advanced culture that Mary unearthed. Mary doesn’t care about the size of that brain. What matters to her is what early humans could do with those brains. If the hominid could make tools (and not just use them) according to a fixed pattern, then it was a human.
By the way, Mary Leakey is not a supporter of the theory espoused by many anthropologists, namely that Homo habilis is descended from the Australopithecinae. Mary believes that Homo habilis has its own lineage history and that the finely built type Australopithecus is a cousin and not an ancestor. The reasons for this are subtle and difficult to prove, but is essentially just a play on words.