A new study claimed that the Stone Age people made their tools and weapons independently, instead of an earlier belief that migrating African tribes built them.
Researchers from the Royal Holloway, University of London, along with other researchers from the United States and Europe, discovered an archaeological site in Armenia in 2008. The Nor Geghi site fills a significant gap in the fossil record of the Caucasus region, which prehistoric African populations might have crossed en route to Eurasia, according to Nature.com.
The team believes that these tools may have existed between 325,000 to 355,000 years ago, indicating that the people who made them were more innovative than previously thought.
"Our findings challenge the theory held by many archaeologists that Levallois technology was invented in Africa and spread to Eurasia as the human population expanded. Due to our ability to accurately date the site in Armenia, we now have the first clear evidence that this significant development in human innovation occurred independently within different populations," said co-author Dr. Simon Blockley from the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway in a university news release.
Stone Age tools were made primarily by the "chipping" method. In the 1990s, archaeologists proposed that the Levallois method first evolved in Africa, and that it became widespread after a group of hominids migrated to Europe and Asia and carried it with them, Nature.com reported.
The hypothesis was formulated to explain the resemblance of the tools found in Africa and other parts of the world that were similar to the Levallois tools.
Researchers found traces of flood sediment and volcanic ash in the site. Using chemical analysis, the team was able to identify that the Stone Age people in the area used obsidian, a kind of volcanic rock, to create the tools. The same method was also applied to rule out the real age of the tools.
"We wouldn't have found this mixture if the Levallois technology had simply replaced the old method," said palaeolithic archaeologist Daniel Adler at the University of Connecticut to Nature.com. "The communities probably worked out for themselves how to make bifacial tools and then it was a short step to the Levallois method."
Further details of the study were published in the Sept. 26 issue of Science.
