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In 1956, G. H. R. von Koenigswald described some human artifacts that were discovered in the lower levels of the Olduvai Gorge site in Tanzania, Africa. “Apart from these archaic handaxes,” wrote von Koenigswald (1956, p. 170), “the same levels have yielded numbers of stones that have been chipped until they were roughly spherical. . . . These stones are enormously widespread in Africa, occurring both in the north and south; indeed, at Ain Hanech, east of Algiers, they are the only signs of human culture that have been found there in association with fossil remains of elephant and giraffe. They are believed to be an extremely primitive form of throwing ball. Stone balls of this type, known to them as bolas, are still used by native hunters in South America. They are tied in little leather bags and two or three of them are attached to a long cord. Holding one ball in his hand, the hunter whirls the other one or two around his head and then lets fly.” An early hominid might have had enough intelligence to use bolas, but only Homo sapiens sapiens is actually known to have used them. Bolas are not unequivocally associated with the fossil remains of any other hominid. The objects reported by von Koenigswald, if used in the same manner as South American bolas, imply that their makers were adept not only at stoneworking but leatherworking as well.

All this becomes problematic, however, when one considers that Bed I at Olduvai, where stone balls were found, is 1.7–2.0 million years old. According to standard views on human evolution, only Australopithecus and Homo habilis should have been around at that time. At present, there is not any definite evidence that Australopithecus used tools, and Homo habilis is not generally thought to have been capable of employing a technology as sophisticated as that represented by bola stones, if that is what the objects really are. Some scientists doubt that Homo habilis was a toolmaker at all, and want to attribute tools found in the same level as Homo habilis to early representatives of Homo erectus.

Once more we find ourselves confronted with a situation that calls for an obvious, but forbidden, suggestion—perhaps there were creatures of modern human capability at Olduvai during the earliest Pleistocene. After all, the present inhabitants of the same region, as well as people in other parts of the world, make and use tools like the pebble choppers found in Bed I of Olduvai Gorge. Any crude stone tool now attributed to Homo habilis or Homo erectus could, therefore, also be attributed to Homo sapiens.

Those who find this suggestion incredible will doubtlessly respond that there is no fossil evidence to support such a conclusion. In terms of evidence currently accepted, that is certainly true. But if we widen our horizons somewhat, we encounter Reck’s skeleton, fully human, recovered from upper Bed II, right at Olduvai Gorge (Section 11.1). And not far away, at Kanam, Louis Leakey, according to a commission of scientists, discovered a fully human jaw in Early Pleistocene sediments, equivalent in age to Bed I (Section 11.2.3). In more recent times, humanlike femurs have been discovered in East Africa, in Early Pleistocene contexts (Section 11.6.3). These isolated femurs were originally attributed to Homo habilis, but the subsequent discovery of a relatively complete skeleton of a Homo habilis individual has shown the Homo habilis anatomy, including the femur, to be somewhat apelike. This opens the possibility that the humanlike femurs once attributed to Homo habilis might have belonged to anatomically modern human beings living in East Africa during the Early Pleistocene (Section 11.7.1). If we expand the range of our search to other parts of the world, we can multiply the number of examples of fully human fossil remains from the Early Pleistocene and earlier. In this context, the bola stones of Olduvai do not seem out of place.

But perhaps the objects are not bolas. To this possibility Mary Leakey (1971, p. 262) replied: “Although there is no direct evidence that spheroids were used as