Early humans appear to have experienced a sudden and rapid advance in technology around 600,000 years ago, according to new findings from a team of anthropologists exploring the use of ancient stone tools.
The researchers behind the findings say this likely represents a pivotal point in ancient human development, where the transfer of ancient knowledge from generation to generation, known as cumulative culture, resulted in incremental advances in society that fueled biological development. , cultural and technological of humanity.
“Our species, Homo sapiens, has been successful in adapting to ecological conditions—from tropical forests to arctic tundras—that require different kinds of problems to solve,” said Associate Professor Charles Perreault, an anthropologist from the School of Evolution. Arizona State University Human. and Social Change. and a research scientist with the Institute of Human Origins. “Cumulative culture is essential because it allows human populations to build on and recombine the solutions of previous generations and develop new complex solutions to problems very quickly.”
The production of tools suddenly underwent a rapid advance in technology
In their published study, “3.3 million years of stone tool complexity suggests that cumulative culture began during the Middle Pleistocene,” which appeared in the journal PNAS, Perreault and co-author Jonathan Paige, an anthropologist at the University of Missouri, explain that as their analysis of stone tools dating back 3.3 million years revealed this sudden and unexpected technological leap.
The researchers analyzed tools collected from 57 separate ancient hominin sites. The oldest tool, dating back over 3 million years, came from an African country. However, the researchers also studied ancient stone tools discovered at ancient hominin sites in Eurasia, Greenland, Sahul, Oceania and the Americas.
Next, the team ranked the complexity of the tools. This meant analyzing how many steps would have to be taken to create the tool in question. The researchers characterized and sequenced 62 distinct tool-making sequences.
After mapping the complexity of the tools, the team saw some unexpected patterns. Tools made between 3.3 million years ago and 1.8 million years ago required anywhere between two and four procedural units to produce. The complexity of stone tools increased steadily over the next 1.2 million years, with major samples requiring an impressive seven steps. While far more complex than tools made over a million years ago, researchers say this is still within the range of complexity for a single craftsman. This means that knowledge from previous generations of toolmakers most likely was not passed down during that period.
However, researchers found that when they looked at tools made about 600,000 years ago, in the Middle Pleistocene, they began to see a sudden and unexpected increase in complexity. The tools of this time period were not only more complex, but more complex manufacturing processes were required to make these tools.
“We analyzed stone tools made over the last 3.3 million years,” the researchers explain. “We found that these stone tools remained simple until about 600,000 BP. After that point, stone tools grew rapidly in complexity.”
Where earlier tools required only a handful of procedural steps to manufacture, tools from this time often required as many as 18 steps. According to Paige and Perreault, these are too many steps for a single generation of craftsmen to achieve without the knowledge passed down from previous generations.
This evidence, the researchers write, is consistent with findings from other research teams, suggesting that such a rapid transition “signals the development of cumulative culture in the human lineage.”
“By 600,000 years ago or so, hominin populations began to rely on extremely complex technologies, and we see only rapid increases in complexity after that time,” Paige said. “Both of these findings are consistent with what we expect to see among hominins that rely on cumulative culture.”
The Dawn of Cumulative Culture and the Evolution of Modern Humans
Although the evolution of stone tool production provides evidence for the dawn of cumulative culture, the researchers behind the findings say such a jump likely affected all aspects of early humans. This likely includes changes in human culture, biology, and even the ability to adapt to a variety of environments and habitats found across the globe.
“Human dependence on cumulative culture may have shaped the evolution of biological and behavioral traits in the hominin lineage,” Paige and Perreault explain, “including brain size, body size, life history, sociality, subsistence, and range expansion. ecological”.
Such changes can increase in complexity as genetic and cultural evolution occur simultaneously. According to the researchers, this “process of gene-culture co-evolution” may explain the increase in relative brain size, an extended life history “and other key traits that underlie human uniqueness.”
Notably, the researchers point out that the Middle Pleistocene shows many other examples of developing technology. For example, studies of this era reveal consistent evidence of the controlled use of fires, hearths, and other domestic spaces. This era also represents the evolution of wooden structures built with hewn logs using incised tools, which, the researchers explain, “are stone blades attached to handles of wood or bone.”
In their conclusion, Paige and Perreault note that tool production is only one measure of cumulative culture, and further study may identify other increases in this behavior that may have occurred in the past but are not immediately apparent. evident in the archaeological record. “It is possible that early hominins relied on cumulative culture to develop complex social, research, and technological behaviors that are archaeologically invisible,” they write.
Ultimately, the research team believes their findings show how knowledge can be passed down through the generations without each succeeding generation having to rediscover past knowledge. When sufficient knowledge succeeds, as appears to have happened 600,000 years ago, this process can result in an ever-growing and adaptive body of knowledge that allows for steady upward progress in cultural and technological evolution.
“Generations of improvements, modifications, and lucky mistakes can generate technology and knowledge beyond what a single naïve individual could independently invent in his lifetime,” the researchers conclude. “When a child inherits the culture of his parents’ generation, he inherits the result of thousands of years of lucky mistakes and experiments.”
“The result is that our cultures—from technological problems and solutions to the way we organize our institutions—are too complex for individuals to invent on their own,” adds Perreault.
Christopher Plain is a science fiction and fantasy novelist and chief science writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com or email directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.