Making stone tools ignoring environmental changes

Author(s): Ofer Bar-Yosef

Year: 2016

Summary

The common assumption that environmental shifts force humans to change the technology or types of their stone tools is examined on the basis of the Paleolithic of Mainland China. During long periods of time humans made core and flake industries from local hard rocks whether various types of quartz and even flint. This presentation will summarize the Pleistocene sequence of China stressing the traditions of the producing the same lithic industries. Rare examples of bifacial assemblages will demonstrate that there was no 'Movius line', as suggested already by several scholars. Instead the question of why the same core and flake industries prevail over long periods, including the early millennia of the Upper Paleolithic, are rarely questioned. Stable demographic aspects are examined and are tested against the better known sequence of prehistoric cultures in Western Eurasia.

Cite this Record

Making stone tools ignoring environmental changes. Ofer Bar-Yosef. Presented at The 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Orlando, Florida. 2016 ( tDAR id: 403442)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

min long: 66.885; min lat: -8.928 ; max long: 147.568; max lat: 54.059 ;

This Resource is Part of the Following User Created Collections