Chopper (archeology)

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1.7 million year old choppers from Hadar
About 1.8 million years old chopper from Dmanisi / Georgia

As a chopper ( Engl. Verb: to chop = 'chop) is in the archeology a generally roundish or oval debris device (engl .: pebble tool ) of early Paleolithic designated, the blade was produced by one-sided machining of an edge. Choppers are the oldest stone tools known to man and at the same time the first core tools . The oldest evidence for this is around 2.6 million years old. Choppers are a leading form of the early Oldowan in East Africa; during this time they had a strong, dominant position. In the developed Oldowan its distribution decreased significantly - it sank from the previous 60% share of all tools found to only approx. 28%. The chopping tool established itself as a new, widespread and almost universally used tool .

In contrast to the two-sided chopping tools , choppers are only made by hewing a rubble on one side . At the same time, cuts are created whose sharp edges may have served as early cutting tools.

Homo habilis is traditionally considered to be the producer of these earliest stone tools , as remains of this early human form were found together with choppers. Locations include the Olduvai Gorge (ger .: Olduvai Gorge ) and Koobi Fora in Omo -Tal. Recently, Homo rudolfensis and Australopithecus garhi have also been discussed as producers of such artifacts .

Manufacturing

Choppers are made from pebbles or other river boulders. The Oldowan choppers are mostly made of phonolite , a volcanic rock with a greenish-gray color. The production takes place by means of a hammer stone that hits one side of the stone to be worked at a certain angle; this will chop off splinters on one side and create a tool with a sharp edge. If further splits are then carried out, the edge becomes longer. The finishing of the stone tool by means of a hammer (without spacers) is called hard hammering . In the soft hammer technique , on the other hand, an antler hammer, a bone or a piece of hardwood is used. Choppers were partly made on a stone anvil .

This primitive artifact production technique already contains constitutive elements of later processing techniques. In the further course of the Early Paleolithic , this one-sided and later two-sided processing developed in two directions: on the one hand in the cut-off and on the other hand in the two-sided cultures.

Range of types

In her monographs on the excavations in the Olduvai Gorge in the early 1960s, Mary Leakey stated that, despite the simplicity of the editing of choppers, a further subdivision of these early artifacts was possible. This subdivision is based on the relation of the striking edge to the original shape of the stone, which can often be reconstructed afterwards due to the simplicity of the modifications. In general, it is possible to identify five subspecies of choppers. Firstly, there are the side choppers (here the machined surface is identical to one of the side edges of the original stone), and secondly the end choppers (usually made of roughly rectangular stones. The end choppers are defined by the length of the The distance between the machined edge and the bottom of all choppers is the greatest. The machined edge is therefore furthest away from the “end” of the stone, although the term “end” does not really seem to fit in this context . i.e. the unprocessed, rounded side of the artifact), thirdly the so-called two edged choppers by Leakey and finally variants of the side or end choppers . In terms of their prevalence in percentage terms, the side choppers have a definite priority; in Olduvai, for example, their share of all choppers found was 64.4%. End choppers represent the second largest item with a still 21.9%; the two-edged choppers are represented with 8.4%. The variants of the side and end chopper make up the remaining part.

In connection with Mary Leakey's classification of choppers, the existence of two-edged choppers in particular is questionable; this form of the device would today be more likely to be attributed to the chopping tool .

use

The main use of choppers has been to split the long bones of larger mammals in order to get to the fatty bone marrow . Since the human teeth are not suitable for tearing raw meat, the function of dividing and cutting meat can also be assumed. While the recovery of carrion is controversial, hacking and cutting marks on the bones of hunted animals have in some cases provided direct evidence of the use of choppers. The sharp, machined edge was always used. In some cases there are also traces of the use of the lower, rounded surface of the chopper; this was used as a hammer. Such a use is proven by examining the cortex surface at this point: If it shows slight traces of cracks, it can be assumed that it hit soft, organic material.

Locations

The oldest choppers, up to 2.6 million years old, come from the countries of East Africa , such as Tanzania (Olduvai Gorge), Kenya (Koobi Fora) and Ethiopia (Kada Hadar). Finds are also known from Egypt and South Africa .

In Asia, the ages of choppers go back to 1.66 million years. Find countries are China , Pakistan , Iran , Israel and Georgia (Dmanisi). Many stone tools, including choppers, were discovered near Sao Din in northern Thailand .

Oldowan choppers have been found in Bulgaria , Germany , France , Great Britain , Italy , Russia , Spain , the Czech Republic and Hungary .

Choppers even appeared in the south and southwest of North America, for example in Oklahoma .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joachim Hahn : Recognizing and determining stone and bone artifacts. Introduction to artifact morphology. In: Archaeologica Venatoria, Volume 10, 1991.
  2. ↑ a b Sileshi Semaw: The World's Oldest Stone Artefacts from Gona, Ethiopia: Their Implications for Understanding Stone Technology and Patterns of Human Evolution Between 2 · 6-1 · 5 Million Years Ago. Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 27, 2000, pp. 1197-1214, doi : 10.1006 / jasc.1999.0592 ; Full text also at indiana.edu (PDF; 1.0 MB) .
  3. ^ Ian Tattersall , Eric Delson et al .: Encyclopedia of human evolution and prehistory . Garland Verlag, New York / London 1988, p. 388.
  4. ^ Fiorenzo Facchini : The Origins of Humanity. Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 2006, p. 110.
  5. ^ A b Mary D. Leakey: Olduvai Gorge. Excavations in beds I and II. 1960-1963. Cambridge 1971, p. 4 f.
  6. ↑ RJ Blumenschine, JA Cavallo: Early Hominids - Scavengers. In: Spectrum of Science , December 1992.
  7. ^ J. de Heinzelin et al .: Environment and Behavior of 2.5-Million-Year-Old Bouri Hominids. In: Science , Volume 284, No. 5414, 1999, pp. 625-629, doi : 10.1126 / science.284.5414.625