Hominid evolution and tool making go hand in hand. However, despite all research, the hominid’s first steps on its path as a tool maker lie in the darkness of history. That very first production of tools took place during a period when it is still virtually impossible to distinguish between a worked tool and a found stone.
Koobi Forums
In 1969, information trickled in to scientists about archaeological finds in Africa, namely on the east side of Lake Rudolf and Omo, where tools had also been found. Mary Leakey, an anthropologist, published a paper in 1970 on some tools that her son, Richard Leakey, had found on the eastern shore of Lake Rudolf near Koobi Fora. Mary’s publication was considered the first official news. In 1971, two experts went to Koobi Fora to help Richard analyze his site. These experts were:
- Glynn Isaac, a prehistorian from the University of California and Berkeley;
- Kay Behrensmeyer, a Harvard geology student.
Their investigation revealed a habitat containing not only animal bones but also Oldowan hand axes and flakes. These habitats were probably three quarters of a million years older than those in the Olduvai Gorge.
Finds by Mary Leakey
Mary Leakey discovered that the hominids of the Olduvai Gorge ate all kinds of things. As has been shown:
- some places rich in antelope bones (some of them with the skull split just at the point in front where the bone is thinnest);
- other places, which were full of the shells of large tortoises, or of snail shells;
- a particular place, where Mary and her team found the skull of a giraffe, without the rest of the animal present. So that prey had clearly been carried away to be eaten at home;
- a site, higher in Layer II, that revealed an increasing dependence on horses and zebras. This means that the climate had then become drier and created favorable conditions for the expansion of open grassland;
- Mary’s discovery of a marked increase in scrapers in Layer II. This indicates that skin and leather processing had begun.
Little concentration legs
Mary Leakey revealed many and fascinating clues. So she discovered small concentrations of very small bones here and there, most of which were broken into small pieces. It was already thought that there may have been a quixotic hominid that had collected and carefully piled up handfuls of skeletal particles from mice, shrews, small birds and lizards. That seemed highly unlikely to Mary. She herself considered the strange little piles to be the remains of hominid feces. If Mary is right, this means that the hominids ate those animals whole, i.e. skin and hair. Much the same way a modern human eats a sardine.
Attention to minute details
The attention Mary Leakey paid to minute details is extraordinary. Please note:
- in one place she collected more than 14,000 fragments of bones, so small that together they weighed only 13 pounds;
- tools measured and classified with equal precision. This allowed her to pinpoint the ‘mixture’ of 14 different types of tools at each of the important sites where she had conducted extensive research.
Result
Because of the way Mary Leakey conducted her research, her findings revealed that:
- the hand ax was overwhelmingly preferred at all sites of Layer I in the Olduvai Gorge;
- the spheroid (round stone balls) in Layer II has been the most common tool in almost all places.
With spheroids we distinguish:
- prolate spheroid : this figure has a quadratic surface. It is a figure of revolution of an elipse. A spheroid is therefore a figure of revolution (ellipsoid) of which two radii are equal, but the equal radii are smaller than the third;
- Oblate spheroid : This is a spheroid, where the two equal rays are larger than the third ray.
Target of the round, stone balls
“What purpose,” the scientists would ask, “were those round stone balls for?” The spheroids had been made too carefully and required too great an investment of time and labor to simply use them as projectiles. Because projectiles can easily be lost. Therefore, Mary Leakey believed that the round stone balls could have been used as bolas. The bola is still used in the South American pampas.
A bola
A bola consists of two or more stones attached to each other by straps or cords. These are swung around above the hunter’s head and then thrown at a running animal or large bird. Such a rotating bola with a diameter of 50 or 75 centimeters has:
- a much greater chance of hitting a target than a single thrown stone;
- is also very effective at ensnaring an animal by the legs;
- can be easily retrieved if it ends up completely off target.
High degree of culture
Logic forces scientists to accept that hominid evolution goes hand in hand with the ability to make tools. Through finds, science tries to clarify the development of hominids from the time when it was barely possible to distinguish between a found stone and a worked tool to a period when even a primitive creature like Ramapithecus would have can experiment with stone tools. In any case, the abundance of Mary Leakey’s data from Olduvai shows that there can no longer be any doubt that hominids lived there about two million years ago with a remarkably high degree of culture. And at such a level that a few decades ago no one in their wildest dreams would have thought possible.