19552 GW Mag 26_Final_singles - Flipbook - Page 16
Tools of
Change:
Adapting to
Environmental
Upheaval
Evidence of stone tools in
Kenya’s Turkana Basin.
(Photo Courtesy Koobi
Fora Research and
Training Program)
Research led by Anthropology’s David Braun revealed a
300,000-year tradition of early humans crafting stone tools.
IMAGINE EARLY HUMANS METICULOUSLY CRAFTING
stone tools for nearly 300,000 years—all while contending
with wildfires, droughts and dramatic environmental shifts.
That’s the exact scene an international research team led
by CCAS faculty, students and postdocs reconstructed at an
archaeological site called Namorotukunan in Kenya’s
Turkana Basin. In a study published in the journal Nature
Communications, the researchers described uncovering one
of the oldest and longest intervals of Oldowan stone tools—a
major milestone in human evolutionary history—dating
from approximately 2.75 to 2.44 million years ago.
The artifacts demonstrate that our ancestors not only
survived but also thrived throughout an environmentally
volatile period in Earth’s history when Namorotukunan and
the surrounding area was transformed from a lush, fertile
floodplain into a dry, arid environment.
“This site reveals an extraordinary story of behavioral
flexibility and cultural continuity,” said Professor of
Anthropology David R. Braun, the lead author on the
16 | www.columbian.gwu.edu
study. “What we’re seeing isn’t a one-off innovation. It’s
a long-standing technological tradition.”
The study, “Early Oldowan technology thrived during
Pliocene environmental change in the Turkana Basin,
Kenya,” brings to light evidence of an enduring technological
achievement and provides a rare geological lens into a
changing Earth—one where a reshaped landscape influenced
hominin habits and behaviors. The evidence of tool making
at the 2.75 million-year-old Namorotukunan site reveals
that early humans adapted their technology through the
environmental upheaval. According to the researchers,
this discovery opens the door to further research on the
connection between climate change and human innovation.
“Despite these environmental challenges, early human
ancestors were able to survive using their tool-making
tradition, perhaps revealing the roots of one of humankind’s
oldest habits: using technology to steady ourselves against
change,” said corresponding author Dan V. Palcu Rolier, a
geoscientist at Utrecht University.
