Early humans appear to have experienced a sudden and rapid advance in technology around 600,000 years ago, according to new findings by a team of anthropologists exploring the use of ancient stone tools.
The researchers behind the findings say this likely represents a key inflection point in ancient human development, where the transfer of ancient knowledge from generation to generation, known as cumulative culture, resulted in increasing advances in society that propelled humanity’s biological, cultural and technological development.
“Our species, Homo sapiens, has been successful at adapting to ecological conditions — from tropical forests to arctic tundra — that require different kinds of problems to be solved,” said associate professor Charles Perreault, an anthropologist from Arizona State University’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change. and a research scientist with the Institute of Human Origins.“Cumulative culture is key because it allows human populations to build on and recombine the solutions of prior generations and to develop new complex solutions to problems very quickly.”
TOOLMAKING SUDDENLY UNDERWENT A RAPID ADVANCE IN TECHNOLOGY
In their published study, “3.3 million years of stone tool complexity suggests that cumulative culture began during the Middle Pleistocene,” which appeared in the journal PNAS, Perreault and fellow author Jonathan Paige, a University of Missouri anthropologist, explain how their analysis of stone tools dating back to 3.3 million years ago revealed this sudden and unexpected technological leap.
The researchers analyzed tools collected from 57 separate ancient hominin sites. The oldest tool, dating back over 3 million years, came from an African site. However, the researchers also studied ancient stone tools discovered at ancient hominin sites in Eurasia, Greenland, Sahul, Oceania, and the Americas.
Next, the team ranked the tools’ complexity. This meant analyzing how many steps would need to be taken to create the tool in question. The researchers characterized and ranked 62 distinct tool-making sequences.
Hellbound and Down 