Oldowan - Dates and Ranges

Dates and Ranges

The oldest currently known Oldowan tools have been found in Gona, Ethiopia. These are dated to about 2.6 mya. New discoveries may push that date further back in time.

These tools should not be regarded as evidence of the first use of tools. The use of tools in apes, like chimpanzees and orangutans can be used to argue in favour of tool-use as an ancestral feature of the hominin family. Tools were therefore in all probability used before the Oldowan. Oldowan stone tools are simply the oldest recognisable tools which have been preserved in the archaeological record, presumably manufactured by species in the hominin family.

There is a flourishing of Oldowan tools in East Africa, spreading to South Africa, between 2.4 and 1.7 mya. At 1.7 mya., the first Acheulean appears. However, Oldowan assemblages continue to be produced. The two techniques were also used in the same areas. This realisation required a rethinking of old cultural sequences in which the more "advanced" Acheulean was supposed to have succeeded the Oldowan. A number of different interpretations of this fact have been proposed. It is thought that the different traditions may have been used by different species of hominins. On the other hand, it could be that both techniques were used by the same species in response to different circumstances.

Sometime before 1.8 mya. Homo erectus had spread outside of Africa. It has been found as far east as Java by 1.8 mya. and in Northern China by 1.66 mya. In these newly colonised areas, no Acheulean assemblages have been found. In China, only 'Mode 1" assemblages were produced, while in Indonesia stone tools from this age are unknown.

By 1.8 mya early man was present in Europe, as shown by the discovery of skulls and Oldowan tools from that time in Dmanisi, Georgia. Remains of their activities have also been excavated in Spain at sites in the Guadix-Baza basin and near Atapuerca. Most early European sites yield "mode 1" or Oldowan assemblages. The earliest Acheulean sites in Europe only appear around 0.5 mya. In addition, the Acheulean tradition does not seem to spread to Eastern Asia. When the use of the technology stopped is unclear. Discounting modern reproductions it is probably safe to say it was mostly replaced by other toolmaking traditions by 0.25 mya.