Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [144]
About the above-mentioned light-duty flakes and fragments, Leakey wrote: “Flakes and other small fragments with chipping and blunting on the edges occur in both the Oldowan and developed Oldowan but are more common in the latter. They fall into three groups: (a) with straight edges; (b) with concave or notched edges; (c) with convex edges. There is also a miscellaneous group with indeterminate chipping. In specimens with straight edges, chipping is usually evident on both sides, while in the notched and convex series it is usually only present on one face” (M. Leakey 1971, pp. 7–8). Leakey also described “lightduty utilised flakes” (Figure 3.29). Of these, she stated: “The utilised edges are sharp, with ‘nibbled’ one-directional flaking, which is sometimes present on two of the edges” (M. Leakey 1971, p. 37). The above descriptions could also apply to many of the European eoliths.
3.7.3 Who Made the Eolithic and Oldowan Implements?
Now comes a crucial question: to what sort of being should the manufacture of the quite similar Oldowan and Eolithic tool types be assigned? Most of the tools in both the Oldowan and Eolithic assemblages are very crude. Scientists are prepared to accept practically without question that the Oldowan implements were made by Homo habilis, a primitive hominid species which, according to modern paleoanthropological thought, marks the initial transition from the australopithecine hominids to the genus Homo. It should not, therefore, be completely unthinkable for scientists to entertain the possibility that a creature like Homo habilis might also have made the eoliths from East Anglia and the Kent Plateau, some of which are roughly comparable in age to the Oldowan tools.
Figure 3.29. Top: Light-duty utilized flakes from Olduvai Gorge, Africa (M. Leakey 1971, p. 38). Bottom: Flaked flint implements from the Red Crag formation at Foxhall, England (Moir 1927, p. 34). The Olduvai specimens appear cruder and look less like implements than the specimens from England.
But of some of the Oldowan tools J. Desmond Clark wrote in his forward to Mary Leakey’s study: “Here are artefacts that conventional usage associates typologically with much later times (the late Paleolithic or even later)—diminutive scraper forms, awls, burins . . . and a grooved and pecked cobble” (M. Leakey 1971, p. xvi). The same is true of the European Eolithic assemblages. As we noted in our introduction to this chapter, implements of a more advanced character sometimes turn up in even the crudest of industries.
We note, however, that tools of the type found in the “late Paleolithic and even later” are considered by modern scientists to be specifically the work of Homo sapiens rather than Homo erectus or Homo habilis. We might thus entertain the possibility that anatomically modern humans were responsible for some if not all of the Oldowan and Eolithic tools.
The standard reply will be that there are no fossils showing that humans of the fully modern type were around then, in the Early Pleistocene or Late Pliocene, roughly 1–2 million years ago, whereas there are fossils of Homo habilis. But the history of events at Olduvai Gorge demonstrates that one should be careful about connecting fossil bones with stone tools. As we have seen, the Leakeys first found stone tools but no hominid fossils. When fossils of Zinjanthropus were found, this creature was designated as the toolmaker. But when additional fossils of the more advanced Homo habilis were found, Homo habilis replaced Zinjanthropus as the toolmaker. One cannot predict what further fossils might be found in the lower levels of Olduvai Gorge. Perhaps scientists might uncover fossils of Homo sapiens,