From Newsgroup: sci.anthropology.paleo
Pandora wrote:
Selective use of distant stone resources by the earliest Oldowan toolmakers
Abstract
The adaptive shift that favored stone toolrCoassisted behavior in hominins began by 3.3 million years ago. However, evidence from early
archaeological sites indicates relatively short-distance stone transport dynamics similar to behaviors observed in nonhuman primates. Here we
report selective raw material transport over longer distances than
expected at least 2.6 million years ago. Hominins at Nyayanga, Kenya, manufactured Oldowan tools primarily from diverse nonlocal stones,
pushing back the date for expanded raw material transport by over half a million years. Nonlocal cobbles were transported up to 13 kilometers for on-site reduction, resulting in assemblage patterns inconsistent with accumulations formed by repeated short-distance transport events. These findings demonstrate that early toolmakers moved stones over substantial distances, possibly in anticipation of food processing needs,
representing the earliest archaeologically visible signal for the incorporation of lithic technology into landscape-scale foraging repertoires.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adu5838
Some earlier reports on long range transport of lithics
https://repository.si.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/32a1819c-a2be-441a-9677-80d32e104ffa/content
Received 25 October 2007
Received in revised form 16 February 2008
Accepted 3 March 2008
Oldowan behavior and raw material transport: perspectives from the
Kanjera Formation
"These data show that hominins selected raw materials for transport at frequencies that are significantly different from their availability on ancient landscapes. Furthermore, a substantial proportion of the
assemblage represents transport over relatively long distances (>10 km).
Our study further suggests that in the early stages of stone tool use
hominins used a wide variety of raw materials and selected these
materials at some distance from their eventual discard locations."
"The location of these silica rich Nyanzian cherts is restricted to a
few hills at the foot of the Kisii Highlands (Fig. 5), and therefore the closest primary source outcrop to Kanjera South is approximately 35 km
from the archaeological site."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1571301/
J Anat. 2004 May; 204(5): 417430.
The role of load-carrying in the evolution of modern body proportions
...
The best documented cases of Oldowan raw material transport are from
Olduvai Bed I, where distances of 3-12 km have been established (Leakey,
1971; Hay, 1976). East Turkana also provides instances of the
importation of raw material floodplains of the ancient lake, over
distances of up to 20 km (Harris & Herbich, 1978). However, in Acheulean sites, evidence suggests that transport occurs more often - and over
much greater distances. At Olorgesailie, Isaac (1977) notes occurrences
of quartz brought over 40 km. At Kilombe, similarly, two obsidian
bifaces appear among many hundreds made from local lavas, and the
implication is again that long-distance transport occurred (Gowlett,
1982). At Gadeb, in eastern Ethiopia, dated at about 1.5 Ma, several
obsidian bifaces apparently document a transport distance of over 100 km (Clark, 1980). Thus, the archaeological record suggests that transport
both became more common and occurred over much greater distances, during
the period in which Homo acquired its modern human-like postcranial
skeleton.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2