Page 66 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

tfw-6 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

This plate shows a variety of tools of increasing technological complexity used by humans at
different times and places to shape stone. Tools 1–5 are used to flake or abrade stone. Tools
6 and 7 (long horizontal instruments and accompanying square to the right) are different
parts of drills used with sand and tool 8 is a slate saw.

details of early human remains, but also in any evidence modern foraging communities. Indeed, the notion of a
that hints at the presence of symbolic language and the foraging mode of production was first proposed by the
accumulation of technical skills. The findings of anthropologist Richard Lee during the late 1970s on the
McBrearty and Brooks link the earliest evidence of sym- basis of his studies of foraging communities in southern
bolic activity (including hints of the grinding of pigments Africa. However, the scanty archaeological evidence can
for use in body painting) and of significant changes in be used to discipline the generalizations suggested by
stone tool technologies (including the disappearance of modern anthropological research.
the stone technologies associated with most forms of The scarcity of remains from this era, combined with
Homo ergaster) with the appearance of a new species what we know of the ecology of modern foragers, makes
known as “Homo helmei.” The remains of this species are us certain that levels of productivity were extraordinarily
so close to those of modern women and men that we low by modern standards. Humans probably did not
may eventually have to classify them with our own extract from their environment much more than the
species, Homo sapiens. The earliest anatomical, techno- 3,000 kilocalories per day that adult members of our
logical, and cultural evidence for these changes appears species need to maintain a basic, healthy existence. Low
in Africa between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago.
For more on these topics, please see the following articles:
Foraging Societies, Contemporary p. 764 (v2)
Foraging Lifeways
Indigenous Peoples p. 963 (v3)
Archaeological evidence is so scarce for the era of for-
Kinship p. 1083 (v3)
agers that our understanding of early human lifeways has
Marriage and Family p. 1195 (v3)
been shaped largely by conclusions based on the study of