After excavations over almost 30 years, the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania in 1959 became one of the most important paleoanthropological sites in the world. In 1979, it was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The gorge is 48 km long and 90 meters deep. The age of the remains of a skilled man (Homo habilis) is about 2.1 million years. The remains of more than 60 hominids, to which our ancestors belong, are found there.
Dating and location
Olduvai is the earliest of the typological "cultures" of the Lower Paleolithic or Early Stone Age. Currently, the earliest Olduvai or Oldovan settlements date back to approximately 2.6 Ma and belong to Ghona in the Afar region of Ethiopia. The Olduvai culture ceased to exist about 1.6 million years ago, which coincides with the beginning of the Acheulean culture. The production of guns, coinciding in time with Ashel, judging by the finds, continued for several hundred thousand years after the end of Olduvai.
Nevertheless, numerous researchers do not consider this period, which is also called "developed Olduvai", separately from the Acheulean culture. In a strict sense, from an archeological point of view, the Olduvai culture is limited to Africa, although stone tools were found in other parts of the Old World that preceded Ashel and had the same characteristic features. In particular, the Olduvai type guns were found in the Krasnodar Territory, the Crimea and Moldova.
First research
Considering briefly the Olduvai archaeological culture, the following should be noted. Oldduvay was first investigated by Heinrich Reck in the early 1910s. He established the basic stratigraphic framework for future research. Nevertheless, it was Louis Leakey who first recognized the importance of archaeological finds in Oldduv and established the cultural affiliation of the stone tools of Oldovan as a cultural sequence.
It was Leakey who introduced this as a new typological culture. He also in the 1950s, when radiometric dating methods appeared, established the age of the culture. This had a huge impact on the study of the evolution of hominids during a given time period.
Specific traits
This culture is also called pebble. In the manufacture of tools, large pebbles were beaten off with a stone chipper. Often the stone was simply split in half without additional processing. When using a chipper on one side, pebbles knocked down several large flakes. In addition, several more basic types of tools are found in this culture: discoids, spheroids, and polyhedra.
These guns were made in a similar way using a chipper. Also, along with tools, numerous untreated flakes or broken pieces of pebbles were discovered. Treated flakes such as simple scrapers and prongs are also rarely found in this culture.
Many archaeologists regarded Olduvai as a primitive version of the late Ashel. In this regard, many considered pebble tools as the basic version of the Acheulean hand ax. In addition, many noted that Oldovay and Ashel are very similar and differ mainly in the presence or absence of axes. This problem was further complicated after the discovery of many places coinciding in time with Ashel, but where stone axes were not found during excavations.
Such places were often attributed to the developed Oldduv. In later studies, this point of view was considered more problematic due to the decrease in the importance attached to stone axes as typical examples of Ashel culture.
Learning problems
An initial study by Nicholas Thot showed that untreated flakes are actually much sharper than basic tools, such as characteristic chippers. This indicated that focusing on the main tools was inappropriate, and that the sharp end scales that were previously considered waste were the real desired end product. N. Thoth suggested that the main tools were, in fact, the result of specific actions aimed at the production of usable flakes, and therefore were not specially designed.
Thus, the production of tools, which were defined as the typological basis of the Olduvai culture, was in fact a random result of the removal of sharp scales. This caused considerable criticism of the typology of stone tools of Olduvai, which was based solely on the basic tools. For this reason, current research tends to attach less importance to such typological labels and focus more on conclusions about behaviors related to the specifics of the chronology.
Most of the early researchers of the culture of Olduvai believed that its creators were mainly hunters of large animals, and that it was an evolutionary force that caused not only the development of the brain, but, due to cognitive complexity, the development of the technology for the production of stone tools. Later researchers, such as Lewis Binford, criticized this position. But, despite this, the widespread opinion remains that the stone tools of the Olduvai culture were used mainly for cutting.
There are many types of hominids that are present in Africa during the Olduvai period, which greatly complicates the question of who the creators of this culture were. These include Late Australopithecus, Homo habilis (skilled man) and Homo ergaster (working man). When Leakey discovered the first instance of Homo habilis in Olduvai, he immediately suggested that this hominid with a large brain relative to his famous ancestors and contemporaries was the first creator of stone tools.
Indeed, this remains the most common opinion. However, it is also possible that the late Australopithecines or even the early Homo ergaster people were the first to create the Olduvai guns. It is highly unlikely that in the future there will be any unequivocal evidence regarding this issue.