What evidence is there of early people being able to specialize in doing activities which made life better for the whole society?
Answers
Answer:
Paralleling the biological evolution of early humans was the development of cultural technologies that allowed them to become increasingly successful at acquiring food and surviving predators. The evidence for this evolution in culture can be seen especially in three innovations:
1. the creation and use of tools
2. new subsistence patterns
3. the occupation of new environmental zones
Tool Making
Some chimpanzee communities are known to use stone and wood as hammers to crack nuts and as crude ineffective weapons in hunting small animals, including monkeys. However, they rarely shape their tools in a systematic way to increase efficiency. The most sophisticated chimpanzee tools are small, slender tree branches from which they strip off the leaves. These twigs are then used as probes for some of their favorite foods--termites and ants. More rarely, chimpanzees have been observed using sticks as short thrusting spears to hunt gallagos in holes and crevices of trees where they sleep during the day time. It is likely that the australopithecines were at least this sophisticated in their simple tool use.
photo of an Odowan Tradition chopper
Oldowan tradition core tool (chopper)
The first unquestionable stone tools were evidently made and used by early transitional humans and possibly Australopithecus garhi in East Africa about 2.5 million years ago. While the earliest sites with these tools are from the Gona River Region of Ethiopia, simple tools of this kind were first discovered by Mary and Louis Leakey associated with Homo habilis at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. Hence, they were named Oldowan click this icon to hear the preceding term pronounced tools after that location. These early toolmakers were selective in choosing particular rock materials for their artifacts. They usually chose hard water-worn creek cobbles made out of volcanic rock.
There were two main categories of tools in the Oldowan tradition. There were stone cobbles with several flakes knocked off usually at one end by heavy glancing percussion blows from another rock used as a hammer. This produced a jagged, chopping or cleaver-like implement that fit easily in the hand. These core tools most likely functioned as multipurpose hammering, chopping, and digging implements. Efficient use of this percussion flaking technique requires a strong precision grip. Humans are the only living primates that have this anatomical trait. Probably the most important tools in the Oldowan tradition were sharp-edged stone flakes produced in the process of making the core tools. These simple flake tools were used without further modification as knives. They would have been essential for butchering large animals, because human teeth and fingers are totally inadequate for cutting through thick skins and slicing off pieces of meat. Evidence of their use in this manner can be seen in cut marks that still are visible on bones. Some paleoanthropologists have suggested that the core tools were, in fact, only sources for the flake tools and that the cores had little other use.
click this icon to hear the following audio interview A Handy Bunch: Tools, Thumbs Helped Us Thrive--audio recording of an NPR interview with
anthropologists Erin Williams and Dennis Sandgathe concerning the relationship between stone tool
making and the evolution of the human hand. This link takes you to an external website. To return
here, you must click the "back" button on your browser program. (length = 7 mins, 46 secs)
In addition to stone tools, Homo habilis probably made simple implements out of wood and other highly perishable materials that have not survived. In the 1940's, Raymond Dart suggested that australopithecines and early humans also used the hard body parts of animals as clubs, daggers, and other sorts of weapons. Dart proposed an entire tool making tradition which he named osteodontokeratic click this icon to hear the preceding term pronounced, based on the presumed use of bones (osteo), teeth (donto), and horns (keratic). This idea has been rejected by most paleoanthropologists today since there is a lack of evidence for the systematic shaping or even use of these materials for weapons or other types of tools at this early time. In addition, it is unlikely that the earliest humans were aggressive hunters. They most likely were primarily vegetarians who occasionally ate meat that was mostly scavenged from the leftovers of kills abandoned by lions, leopards, and other large predators. At times, they also may have hunted monkeys and other small game much as chimpanzees do today.