All of the hominins made instruments
The 2 inventors of the concept of pure choice had considerably totally different viewpoints about how know-how mattered to human origins. In an 1864 lecture, Alfred Russel Wallace noticed that instruments, weapons, and clothes all are inclined to take away people from the direct motion of pure choice on the type of the physique. Wallace prompt that the bodily options of the human physique had turn out to be “fastened and everlasting”. As a substitute, he provided, Man had been “stored in concord with the slowly altering universe round him, by an advance in thoughts, fairly than by a change in physique.”
Charles Darwin additionally noticed instruments and weapons as extremely essential to human evolution. However the place Wallace had prompt a significant shift in pure choice away from our bodies towards minds, Darwin emphasised the continuities that hyperlink people and different primates. He mentioned proof of using stones by chimpanzees for cracking nuts, and talked about that some American monkeys had been simply educated to do the identical. Darwin noticed it as important that folks differ from different animals in diploma, not in sort, and he thought of this equally true for psychological as for bodily traits. For Darwin, this continuity of construction and conduct was a robust argument that pure choice had crafted people simply because it had crafted different species. The place others imagined a gulf, Darwin invariably noticed stepping stones.
This distinction between Wallace and Darwin involves thoughts once I take a look at the best way that paleoanthropologists focus on proof of instrument use. Many researchers have thought of stone and bone instruments to be uniquely related with the origin of our personal genus, Homo. Like Wallace, they think about a transition in our evolutionary trajectory: As soon as our ancestors started to rely increasingly more on know-how, pure choice on the type of the physique turned much less and fewer related. The evolution of toolmakers can be pushed by pure choice on the thoughts.
However people are removed from distinctive in our use of know-how. Our closest dwelling relations, chimpanzees and bonobos, are technical species that use a big selection of instruments, principally constructed from natural and perishable supplies. Each bonobos and chimpanzees use instruments as a part of their social interactions with different people, and each species use instruments generally to make themselves really feel extra snug. Chimpanzees moreover make and use a big selection of instruments to assist them get meals which might be onerous to course of with out instruments, for instance by cracking nuts, “fishing” for termites, or extracting honey from underground bee nests. Most chimpanzees don’t use stone, however western chimpanzees use stones for nutcracking and an enchanting conduct often known as “accumulative stone throwing”. Bonobos and chimpanzees have fingers and wrists which might be very totally different from people, specialised for knuckle-walking on the bottom and suspending beneath branches whereas climbing. These marked variations in anatomy don’t impede chimpanzees or bonobos from manipulating objects, shaping them for a goal, and utilizing the ensuing instruments to perform their goals.
Bonobos and chimpanzees assist present how a lot variation in social studying of toolmaking can evolve between carefully associated species. Almost all of the variations between them are manifested in perishable supplies, instruments that would go away no hint after hundreds of thousands of years. Each indication from the anatomy of early hominins and their ecology factors towards Darwin’s perception that the technical conduct of nonhuman primates is steady with conduct as soon as manifested by human ancestors and early people.
Many species made early stone and bone instruments
The earliest-known stone instruments are from Lomekwi 3, Kenya, made round 3.3 million years in the past and first described by Sonia Harmand and the West Turkana Archaeological Mission in 2015. The toolmakers, whoever they had been, lived a half million years earlier than the earliest fossils which were attributed to the genus Homo. The one fossil hominin recognized from the Lomekwi space round this time is Kenyanthropus platyops.
Fossils and artifacts are related when each are discovered throughout the similar sedimentary context, buried at across the similar time in the identical place. Few early archaeological websites have any hominin fossils. When a hominin fossil occurs to be discovered at such a website, it’s usually solely a single tooth or small fragment of bone. For instance, a current paper by Dylan Flicker and Alister Key lists ten archaeological websites with Oldowan artifacts which were dated to the interval between 2.6 million and a couple of.0 million years in the past. Out of the ten websites, solely 5 have any hint of hominin fossil stays, solely one of many 5 has hominin fossils which might be identifiable to the species stage—on this case, Paranthropus robustus in Sterkfontein Member 5 East.
Earlier this yr, Thomas Plummer and coworkers described the earliest affiliation between stone artifacts and hominin fossils, from Nyayanga, Kenya. This website has now produced the oldest-known Oldowan archaeological materials, between 3.03 million and a couple of.58 million years outdated. The 2 hominin fossils are a single remoted molar and a second tooth fragment. Each are much like tooth of Paranthropus, though the tooth present too little info to attribute them to a species.
In a current article in L’Anthropologie, Sandrine Prat reviewed the file of affiliation between stone instrument proof and fossil hominin stays, from the interval between 3 million and 1.2 million years in the past. The evaluate included twenty-nine conditions with artifacts and fossil hominin stays, all from Ethiopia, Kenya, or Tanzania. She additionally discusses websites in South Africa, whereas recognizing that the geological conditions represented by these cave websites usually are not fairly equal to the open air sedimentary deposits from the East African Rift System.
I plotted these websites all collectively right here, including a handful of information factors from different conditions that additionally fall throughout the similar time vary, equivalent to Dmanisi, Republic of Georgia. I additionally added Lomekwi 3, regardless of the dearth of direct affiliation with hominin fossils, to indicate the place later websites match relative to those earliest identified artifacts.
The sample is hanging. Paranthropus and Homo species are each present in affiliation with stone and bone artifacts all through the interval of their coexistence. The info present no cause to recommend that both of those branches of hominins is kind of a toolmaker than the opposite.
Prat additionally mentioned anatomical proof from these species, notably the type of the hand and wrist. All identified hand and wrist fossils from Australopithecus and Paranthropus are in keeping with the sorts of grips utilized in making and utilizing stone instruments. To make certain, there have been many scientific debates in regards to the useful anatomy of hand and wrist fossils from these early hominins. However these debates have been about whether or not some options of the Australopithecus and Paranthropus fingers could mirror a larger reliance on climbing than in Homo. All options of those hominin fingers are in keeping with tremendous motor management and manipulation of objects in methods in keeping with instrument use. Meaning there is no anatomical foundation to say that Paranthropus or Australopithecus used instruments lower than Homo. That ought to be no shock, contemplating the extent of instrument use by chimpanzees and bonobos with out the identical skill to provide lots of the grips utilized by people.
Paranthropus: the uncared for toolmaker
Paranthropus robustus is the most typical hominin represented in South African websites between 2.3 million and 1.0 million years in the past. Almost each context with fossils of P. robustus additionally has stone artifacts and bone instruments. Within the East African Rift System, Paranthropus boisei is the most typical hominin species throughout the identical vary of time. Many websites with P. boisei even have stone artifacts, though the sedimentary exposures of the rift fairly generally have fossils which might be present in isolation with out different fossils or artifacts close by. Solely within the northeasternmost part of the Ethiopian Rift was P. boisei absent.
With this sample of affiliation of stone and bone artifacts with Paranthropus, it might appear difficult to clarify why archaeologists lengthy ignored this department of hominins as potential instrument utilizing species. This bias could be tracked again to the Nineteen Fifties, as John Robinson, C. Ok. Mind, and Revil Mason uncovered proof of stone instruments within the deposits of Sterkfontein.
Working below Robinson’s course, Mind and Mason opened an space of excavation at Sterkfontein that turned often known as the Extension Web site. Within the westernmost a part of this space, the breccia contained many stone instruments. In 1959, Robinson recognized a bone instrument from the location, marked by striations and polish on its tip. For twenty years, first Robert Broom after which John Robinson had discovered fossils of Australopithecus africanus at Sterkfontein. Was this species the toolmaker?
In early August of 1959, Mary Leakey excavated the primary fossil cranium of the species we all know as we speak as Paranthropus boisei, from stage 22 of the FLK website at Olduvai Gorge. Louis and Mary Leakey had interpreted this stage as a “dwelling ground”, with plentiful stone artifacts of the custom they’d named the Oldowan Industrial Advanced. In his description of the cranium, which he named Zinjanthropus, Louis emphasised its near-pristine preservation as a cause why this particular person was totally different from the damaged and fragmented animal bones on the website. Zinjanthropus, he argued, have to be the maker of the instruments.
Many anthropologists had been comfortable to just accept these hominins as makers of stone instruments. For instance, Sherwood Washburn mentioned the Zinjanthropus discovery as confirming the discoveries by Robinson and Mind that appeared to affiliate Australopithecus with artifacts. He ridiculed the assertion by another researchers that “no creature with so small a mind might have made instruments”. However, he wrote, the issue might solely be solved by excavation.
“An affiliation in a single website can’t settle the matter, and the scenario is additional sophisticated as a result of a number of sorts of Australopithecus and Homo could have made instruments. It’s completely potential that totally different species of australopithecines and early Homo lived on the similar time and all made instruments.”—Sherwood Washburn
One of many scientists with doubts was Robinson himself. His work made clear that the Australopithecus fossils from Sterkfontein had been older than the Swartkrans breccia, which had fossils of Paranthropus robustus in addition to a extra humanlike type that Robinson and Robert Broom had known as Telanthropus capensis. Robinson considered Telanthropus as “an australopithecine that had attained euhominid standing”—in different phrases, one thing that as we speak we’d acknowledge as early Homo. A couple of years later Robinson would settle for Telanthropus as equivalent to Homo erectus, though as we speak researchers see this as a heterogeneous group of fossils which can embrace some early Homo people but additionally some that belong to P. robustus or Australopithecus sediba. Mind had recognized some quartzite artifacts within the Swartkrans breccia. As they continued to work the Sterkfontein deposits, it turned clear that the artifact-bearing breccia was someplace within the center: later than a lot of the Australopithecus fossils from the location however sooner than Swartkrans. Nonetheless, although the artifacts appeared to be later than a lot of the Australopithecus deposit, Robinson recognized some Australopithecus-like fragments within the space the place stone instruments had been discovered, and no different hominin stays.
Robinson admitted that it appeared logical to conclude that Australopithecus had made the instruments. Actually, Robinson, Mason, and lots of others on the time accepted Raymond Dart’s concept that the sample of damaged animal bones from the Makapan Limeworks website may characterize an early use of bones as instruments by Australopithecus. However Robinson thought of the stone instruments from Sterkfontein too superior for the sooner species, and he famous that a lot of the Australopithecus fossils, from Sterkfontein, Taung, and Makapan, had come from contexts the place no stone instruments had but been discovered. He thought that Telanthropus should certainly have made the stone instruments as a substitute. The very absence of proof turned a centerpiece of his argument:
“Maybe the actual fact that Australopithecus is frequent at Sterkfontein is an argument towards it being a tool-maker, since in all different very early Stone Age websites stays of the instrument producer are extraordinarily uncommon.”—John Robinson
At this time researchers have established that Robinson’s West Pit included breccia that belongs to Member 5 West deposits, which embrace Oldowan artifacts and a few bifaces, and sure postdates 2 million years in the past. The sooner Oldowan Infill of Member 5 East is the earliest-known Oldowan assemblage from South Africa with a cosmogenic date evaluation of two.18 ± 0.21 Myr and presently contains solely Paranthropus fossils.
The Olduvai Gorge image modified markedly in 1960 with the invention of the OH 7 mandible, partial skull, and hand on the FLK-NN website. The OH 7 jaw was far more like Australopithecus than the Zinjanthropus cranium had been, however its parietal bones prompt a bigger mind dimension—finally Phillip Tobias would estimate it as 750 ml. As Mary and Louis Leakey continued to work, they discovered stays of extra people with an identical dental sample, totally different from Zinjanthropus. Not one of the different cranial stays mirrored a mind as massive as OH 7, however fossils like OH 16 and OH 13 had been a bit bigger in mind dimension than Australopithecus was. By 1964, Louis Leakey, Phillip Tobias, and John Napier had been prepared to acknowledge these as a transitional species between Australopithecus and Homo erectus: they named it Homo habilis.
All the pieces that Louis Leakey had mentioned about Zinjanthropus being the Oldowan toolmaker, he now took again.
“Whereas it’s potential that Zinjanthropus and Homo habilis each made stone instruments, it’s possible that the latter was the extra superior instrument maker and that the Zinjanthropus cranium represents an intruder (or a sufferer) on a Homo habilis dwelling website.”—Louis Leakey, Phillip Tobias, and John Napier
Homo habilis was the favored hominin. Zinjanthropus, as soon as vaunted because the toolmaker, was now roadkill. For a lot of scientists, Leakey’s backtracking was all they wanted as proof that stone instruments had been the unique province of Homo.
It could take 20 years for scientists to acknowledge the toolmaking potential of Paranthropus. An important researcher behind this alteration was C. Ok. Mind. After greater than twenty years working to know the Swartkrans website, Mind had realized a lot in regards to the associations of hominin fossils and their entry into the location. He discovered extra bone instruments, much like the one famous by Robinson at Sterkfontein, and along with Pat Shipman quantified the damage that marked the guidelines of the instruments because the potential results of digging in stony soil for underground bulbs. Later analysis by Lucinda Backwell and Francesco d’Errico additional prompt that among the bone artifacts had been used to puncture onerous termite nests. Mind confirmed that P. robustus was the predominant hominin aspect within the Swartkrans assemblage, with Homo very uncommon throughout the deposits, but artifacts had been current all through. The hand fossils additionally advised a narrative. Analyzed by Randall Susman and reviewed by Mind, it was clear that the Paranthropus hand anatomy was totally able to making and utilizing instruments.
“The notion that toolmaking supplied the adaptive wedge that separated the strong australopithecines from the gracile australopithecines and early Homo could be tenable no longer.”—C. Ok. Mind and coworkers
Which hominin species lacked stone or bone artifacts?
Whereas as we speak’s information associating some archaeological supplies with fossil hominin stays are a lot better than the previous, they continue to be incomplete. Earlier than 3 million years in the past, the one identified website with stone artifacts is Lomekwi 3. As mentioned above, the hominin fossils from the Turkana Basin close to that point have been labeled as Kenyanthropus platyops. The extra widespread Australopithecus afarensis, which lived a lot additional north within the Afar triangle of Ethiopia, and additional south at Kantis, Kenya, and Laetoli, Tanzania, could have been current within the Turkana Basin additionally. I do not assume we could be certain which early species made these explicit instruments, nor would I wager that somebody will not discover even earlier artifacts.
On the very least, although, I feel we should acknowledge that using stone artifacts was uncommon earlier than 3 million years in the past. Most hominins from this time, together with species equivalent to Australopithecus anamensis and Australopithecus deyiremeda, could not have used stone. That would not shock me in any respect: each bonobos and japanese and central chimpanzees present how intensive toolmaking could be with out utilizing stone as a uncooked materials. However I do not assume the file is powerful sufficient to rule out stone instrument use of the type practiced by western chimpanzees, together with using hammerstones for nutcracking and minimal transport of stone. It could be very difficult to check for this type of conduct with the sorts of archaeological surveys which were sensible in fossil exposures from the Pliocene.
Along with direct proof from artifacts, there could also be oblique proof of stone instrument use, equivalent to cutmarks and puncture marks on the bones of prey animals. In 2010, Shannon McPherron and coworkers reported that 3.4-million-year-old animal bones from Dikika, Ethiopia, present cutmarks from stone instruments, though they didn’t discover the artifacts themselves. Another researchers disputed this proof, suggesting that crocodiles or different carnivores may need generated these marks.
The next diploma of acceptance has been given to claims of cutmarks and puncture marks on antelope and horse bones from 2.5 million years in the past, at Bouri, Ethiopia. A few of these discoveries had been close to the BOU-VP-12 locality with fossil materials of Australopithecus garhi. Different websites from this area, together with Gona, Hadar, and Ledi-Geraru, do protect stone artifacts from the identical time or earlier, however with none related hominin stays. Later, round 3.3 million years in the past, stone instruments from Hadar have been related to a maxilla attributed to early Homo, however the first potential mandible of Homo from Ledi-Geraru shouldn’t be from a locality with artifacts.
Australopithecus africanus stays a difficult case. No stone instruments have been present in contexts the place Au. africanus fossils clearly happen, at Sterkfontein, Makapan Limeworks, or Taung. Latest work has proven that the Sterkfontein Member 4 fossils of Au. africanus could also be older than 3.4 million years—due to this fact, older than any identified artifacts wherever. The Makapan and Taung websites themselves could also be older than 2.8 million, and so it’s potential that Au. africanus merely existed earlier than stone instruments had been utilized in South Africa. But there stays some uncertainty. For one factor, some authors dispute the concept Sterkfontein Member 4 is as early as 3.4 million years, preferring a date between 2.6 million and a couple of.1 million years in the past. One other aspect of uncertainty comes from the StW 53 skull, which I and lots of different scientists attribute to Au. africanus, and which has marks on its maxilla that some authors have argued are cutmarks from a stone artifact. Simply as for Paranthropus, the anatomical proof from the hand bones of Au. africanus means that this species had the tremendous precision grip and relied readily available postures that as we speak’s people use for making and utilizing instruments.
The notable late Australopithecus website is Malapa, with Australopithecus sediba at 1.977 million years in the past. No artifacts have but been reported from this locality. Nonetheless, current work from Clément Zanolli and coworkers has proven that many dental and mandibular fossils from Swartkrans, Drimolen, and Sterkfontein Member 5 that had been beforehand attributed to Homo could as a substitute belong to Paranthropus or Australopithecus. It appears possible that many of those could also be unrecognized Au. sediba people. Any of these can be related to Oldowan artifacts and bone instruments from these websites.
The well-known species of Homo that does not present up within the dataset on associations of artifacts and fossils is Homo rudolfensis. That is one other case the place solely a handful of fossils are clearly related to this species. It might be stunning, however I might argue that solely 4 fossils is likely to be strongly linked to H. rudolfensis: the KNM-ER 1470 skull, KNM-ER 62000 subadult face, and two mandibular fossils—KNM-ER 60000 and KNM-ER 62003. None are from localities with archaeological materials. There are different fossils that may conceivably belong to H. rudolfensis, however lots of the ones that previous anthropologists related with this species, just like the KNM-ER 1802 mandible or the UR 501 mandible from Uraha, Malawi, could also be Australopithecus as a substitute.
Toolmaking ecology throughout species
It is clear that associations of fossils and artifacts can go solely to date. Robinson most well-liked the speculation that essentially the most superior hominin on the scene should have made any artifacts. Many researchers over the last 60 years have adopted this viewpoint. However as we speak’s information permit us to check whether or not any fossil species is constantly related to artifacts. After round 2.8 million years in the past each fossil species is discovered with artifacts, with the few exceptions being these species which were recognized from solely a single locality or—within the case of H. rudolfensis—a handful of localities. The 2 branches which might be discovered most usually with artifactual proof, Paranthropus and Homo, are each represented at archaeological localities in equal measure; solely Paranthropus is current on the earliest two Oldowan localities.
It’s onerous for me to enhance on C. Ok. Mind’s conclusions about instrument use. By the Early Pleistocene, all hominins had the anatomical functionality of creating and utilizing stone instruments, and most of them did so. As in dwelling bonobos and chimpanzees, instrument use could have differed markedly between species and populations, relying upon their explicit ecological conditions. It was the makes use of of the instruments that differentiated the hominins, not the capability to make use of instruments.
But perhaps even this underestimates the commonalities throughout species. Secure isotopes and dental microwear recommend that P. robustus and early Homo in southern Africa had been consuming comparable meals, regardless of what appear to be some essential variations in dental morphology. If their ecologies had been a lot the identical, and their hand anatomies had been a lot the identical, it’s onerous to justify any assumption that they might have been totally different of their use of instruments.
Going additional, wherever each species existed they each would have encountered one another’s trash. Every particular person scattering stone throughout a panorama modified the potentialities for each different hominin. Every species existed throughout the ecology of the opposite. When one was rapping cobble on core, others heard them a whole bunch of meters away. They realized from one another. Their use of sources should usually have converged.
Darwin wrote eloquently about the best way that small steps in instrument use would change the potentialities for “primeval” people.
“The Duke of Argyll remarks, that the fashioning of an implement for a particular goal is totally peculiar to man; and he considers that this varieties an immeasurable gulf between him and the brutes. It’s little question a vital distinction, however there seems to me a lot fact in Sir J. Lubbock’s suggestion, that when primeval man first used flint-stones for any goal, he would have by accident splintered them, and would then have used the sharp fragments. From this step it will be a small one to deliberately break the flints, and never a really vast step to rudely style them.”—Charles Darwin
Instrument use doesn’t make people distinctive; it hyperlinks us to our ancestors and relations. These hyperlinks that stay are phylogenetic, however they had been as soon as dwelling cultural hyperlinks. It’s true that current people have turn out to be reliant upon our instruments in ways in which early hominins wouldn’t have acknowledged. Earlier than this time we lived in a world of transitions into and out of technical traditions. The steps throughout species in instrument use had been as soon as small ones, interconnected actions that spanned variations in physique dimension and type.
Notes: The present proof of hand anatomy in varied hominins is ably reviewed in a number of papers by Tracy Kivell, Matt Skinner, and lots of of their collaborators. The work by Clément Zanolli and coworkers highlighting inner dental proof for affinities of South African dental materials is value studying for its broader implications: we’ve got little dependable details about the species identification of many remoted finds. I didn’t embrace within the references beneath all of the works that underlie the dataset described by Sandrine Prat, or each paper associated to the relationship of web sites mentioned within the submit.
I’ve solely included just a few phrases right here in regards to the cultural conduct of chimpanzees and bonobos. This can be a wealthy space with deep significance for understanding early hominins, and hopefully I can increase on this in an extra submit.
There could also be readers who suspect I’m being unfair to Wallace on this comparability of views on know-how. The variations between Wallace and Darwin on the extent that pure choice might clarify human cultural talents have been the topic of many historians of science, and two paragraphs inevitably oversimplify these variations. I feel it is honest to say that Darwin and Wallace had been involved with totally different elements of the human origins drawback.
References
Mind, C. Ok., Churcher, C. S., Clark, J. D., Grine, F. F., Shipman, P., Susman, R. L., Turner, A. and Watson V. (1988). New proof of early hominids, their tradition and surroundings from the Swartkrans cave, South Africa. South African Journal of Science, 84(10), 828. https://doi.org/10.10520/AJA00382353_6877
Darwin, C. (1871). The Descent of Man, and Choice in Relation to Intercourse. John Murray.
Flicker, D., & Key, A. (2023). Statistical evaluation of the temporal and cultural relationship between the Lomekwian and Oldowan. Journal of Archaeological Science: Studies, 48, 103834. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2023.103834
Harmand, S., Lewis, J. E., Feibel, C. S., Lepre, C. J., Prat, S., Lenoble, A., Boës, X., Quinn, R. L., Brenet, M., Arroyo, A., Taylor, N., Clément, S., Daver, G., Brugal, J.-P., Leakey, L., Mortlock, R. A., Wright, J. D., Lokorodi, S., Kirwa, C., … Roche, H. (2015). 3.3-million-year-old stone instruments from Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya. Nature, 521(7552), Article 7552. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14464
Kivell, T. L., Baraki, N., Lockwood, V., Williams-Hatala, E. M., & Wooden, B. A. (2023). Type, operate and evolution of the human hand. American Journal of Organic Anthropology, 181(S76), 6–57. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.24667
Kühl, H. S., Kalan, A. Ok., Arandjelovic, M., Aubert, F., D’Auvergne, L., Goedmakers, A., Jones, S., Kehoe, L., Regnaut, S., Tickle, A., Ton, E., van Schijndel, J., Abwe, E. E., Angedakin, S., Agbor, A., Ayimisin, E. A., Bailey, E., Bessone, M., Bonnet, M., … Boesch, C. (2016). Chimpanzee accumulative stone throwing. Scientific Studies, 6(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep22219
Leakey, L. S. B. (1959). A New Fossil Cranium From Olduvai. Nature, 184(4685), Article 4685. https://doi.org/10.1038/184491a0
Leakey, L. S. B., Tobias, P. V., & Napier, J. R. (1964). A New Species of The Genus Homo From Olduvai Gorge. Nature, 202(4927), Article 4927. https://doi.org/10.1038/202007a0
McPherron, S. P., Alemseged, Z., Marean, C. W., Wynn, J. G., Reed, D., Geraads, D., Bobe, R., & Béarat, H. A. (2010). Proof for stone-tool-assisted consumption of animal tissues earlier than 3.39 million years in the past at Dikika, Ethiopia. Nature, 466(7308), Article 7308. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09248
Oakley, Ok. (1957). Instruments Makyth Man. Antiquity, 31(124), 199–209. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00028453
Plummer, T. W., Oliver, J. S., Finestone, E. M., Ditchfield, P. W., Bishop, L. C., Blumenthal, S. A., Lemorini, C., Caricola, I., Bailey, S. E., Herries, A. I. R., Parkinson, J. A., Whitfield, E., Hertel, F., Kinyanjui, R. N., Vincent, T. H., Li, Y., Louys, J., Frost, S. R., Braun, D. R., … Potts, R. (2023). Expanded geographic distribution and dietary methods of the earliest Oldowan hominins and Paranthropus. Science, 379(6632), 561–566. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abo7452
Prat, S. (2023). Past the genus stereotype. Who had been the primary toolmarkers in Africa? Crossed views between archaeology and anatomy. L’Anthropologie, 127(4), 103187. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anthro.2023.103187
Robinson, J. T. (1957). Incidence of Stone Artefacts with Australopithecus at Sterkfontein: Half 1. Nature, 180(4585), Article 4585. https://doi.org/10.1038/180521a0
Robinson, J. T., & Mason, R. J. (1962). Australopithecines and Artefacts at Sterkfontein. The South African Archaeological Bulletin, 17(66), 87–126. https://doi.org/10.2307/3886942
Wallace, A. R. (1864). The Origin of Human Races and the Antiquity of Man Deduced from the Principle of “Pure Choice.” Journal of the Anthropological Society of London, 2, clviii–clxxxvii. https://doi.org/10.2307/3025211
Washburn, S. L. (1959). Speculations on the Interrelations of the Historical past of Instruments and Organic Evolution. Human Biology, 31(1), 21–31. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41449226
Washburn, S. L. (1960). Instruments and Human Evolution. Scientific American, 203(3), 62–75.
Zanolli, C., Davies, T. W., Joannes-Boyau, R., Beaudet, A., Bruxelles, L., de Beer, F., Hoffman, J., Hublin, J.-J., Jakata, Ok., Kgasi, L., Kullmer, O., Macchiarelli, R., Pan, L., Schrenk, F., Santos, F., Stratford, D., Tawane, M., Thackeray, F., Xing, S., … Skinner, M. M. (2022). Dental information problem the ever present presence of Homo within the Cradle of Humankind. Proceedings of the Nationwide Academy of Sciences, 119(28), e2111212119. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2111212119