Home Page | Syllabus | Readings | Lecture Notes | Quiz Site | Assignments

Week 5: Older than Olduvai! the oldest archaeological evidence in Africa

Map of East African early hominid sites

This week we're going to explore the evidence for the oldest sites in Eastern and Southern Africa.

On Tuesday you'll use a tool called TimeWeb to investigate:

• How old are the oldest sites in each region?
• Which hominids were contemporary with the oldest sites?
• Which hominids do you think made the tools at the sites?
• How does the new evidence from Bouri fit into these patterns? The question is, who was the butcher of Bouri? PDF articles are available to read about the details of these sites. Bouri hominid & Bouri butchery evidence. Look at them (great images!).

If you have time today, investigate the question:

• how do the artifacts at these early sites vary, from site to site?

---

Connect to Prehistoric Puzzles

---

• Reference information about Oldowan sites

Key Issues= Who had the ability to make stone tools (manual dexterity, intelligence) and who would have needed them (for dietary, or other needs)?

Stone tools:

To learn more about stone tool making, typology, and analysis, in addition to the Prehistoric Puzzles lithic module (under construction, but useful) I recommend that you look at some of the following web sites:

• Stone Age Reference Collection (wonderful info on Stone Age typology, technology, raw materials and study methods) from Instutute of Archaeology, Oslo, Norway
• The Lithics Site