ARCL-1006EL Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Mary Leakey, Homo Erectus, Paleoanthropology
16 Jun 2018
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ARCL 1006!
March 12, 2018!
Early Homo and Homo Erectus!
•Early Hominin Tool Use!
•Dikika, Ethiopia- 3.4 MYA!
•Bone w cut marks on it!
•Ethiopia is rich in hominid fossils !
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•Bouri Ethipoia- 2.5 MYA !
•Percussion marks to extract marrow!
•Same starts as Australopithecus gahri!
•Gona, Ethiopia- 2.5 MYA!
•Stone tools!
•Evidence that early ancestors making tools!
•Who was it?!
•The story of Olduvai, Tanzania!
•Extremely famous and important location in palaeoanthropology !
•Right near rift valley- a river cutting through the area above and exposing different strata
and in those strata are archaeological sites !
•Lewis Leakey and Mary Leakey worked int his location in the 50’s and 60’s!
•He recognized artifacts in this area, specifically ones made of basalt and volcanic
rocks !
•IMPORTANT SITES: !
•Olduvai, FLK- concentrations of broken bone and stone!
•Olduvai DK site- circular concentration of stone!
•Mary Leakey used ethnographic technology and hypothesized that it was similar to
huts used by south Africa societies- this was proven wrong!
•Lower Palaeolithic: Oldowan Tradition: based on tools found by Mary Leakey!
•Oldowan choppers!
•Oldowan flake tools!
•Mary Leakey took a lot of time examining tools- !
•Questions raised about early hominid behaviour and cognition!
•How did hominids obtain meat?!
•Way to look for it: look for cut marks on bones!
•Look for gnaw marks from animals- cross section the research !
•Who accessed the meat first? Animal or hominind? Did they scavenge it?!
