Stone tool discovery challenges ‘revolution’ theory of human evolution
Using tools seems like second nature for humans today, but our prehistoric ancestors didn’t acquire this practical skill set overnight. The timeline of stone tool development by humans has been rearranged by new research, shaking up traditional views about the evolution of ancient human ingenuity.
The study, published in Nature Communications, suggests that humans went through a period of gradual cultural change after they started moving throughout Eurasia 50,000 years to 40,000 years ago.
This new perspective challenges the prior belief that early humans experienced a rapid cultural and technological revolution before expanding across Eurasia. The previous ‘revolution’ theory supported the idea that sudden development of anatomically modern humans led them to prevail over Neanderthals and other archaic humans.
The study reached this updated conclusion after analyzing trends related to human productivity with stone tools during the Middle-Upper Paleolithic (MP-UP), a transition between two crucial phases of human evolution. [Continue reading…]