A recent phys.org article provided by Royal Holloway, University of London - Innovative Stone Age tools were not African invention, research says - and published in the journal Science reveals the new discovery of thousands of Stone Age tools. This is providing a major insight into human innovation 325,000 years ago and how early technological developments spread across the world.

image: Levallois and biface tools. Credit: Royal Holloway, University of London

Dr Simon Blockley and Dr Alison MacLeod from Royal Holloway, University of London, along with international colleagues, are challenging the belief that a type of technology known as Levallois - where the flakes and blades of stones were used to make useful products such as hunting weapons - was invented in Africa and then spread to other continents.

The challenge is a result of discoveries at an archaeological site in Armenia - in the village of Nor Geghi, in the Kotayk Province - where tools such as this existed between 325,000 and 335,000 years ago. In other words, local populations developed them out of a more basic type of technology, known as biface, which was also found at the site.

Dr Simon Blockley and Dr Alison MacLeod, having dated the Levallois tools at the site, are suggesting that the people who lived here were much more innovative than previously thought, and used a combination of two different technologies to make tools that were extremely important for the mobile hunter-gatherers of the time. Indeed, this significant development in human innovation occurred independently within different populations.

Editor's note: this is clearly an important hypothesis, and one that will be tested in further archaeological sites. Until then, many researchers will be able to argue against independent invention or coincidental similarities of unrelated people exploiting similar environments.

To read more about the development of stone tools:

http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/origins/index.php