Jenna Gallitto
Anth 102
Ryan Mongelluzzo
1 December 2014
“Who Made the Oldowan Tools?” Article Summary #2
To this day, we have yet to discover which early hominid produced the Oldowan Industrial
Complex. This article addresses the evidence that has been compiled thus far, on whether
Homo, Paranthropus, or both hominids engaged in tool behavior when they were
contemporaries in Africa.
The oldest stone tools recovered were from sites dated 2.3-2.5 million years before
present. These sites were in East Africa from members E and F of the Shungura Formation
of the lower Omo Valley, and at Hadar, from the Kada Hadar Member In Ethiopia.
Researchers agree that artifacts from sites prior to the advent of Acheulean biface
technology can be grouped as the Oldowan Industrial Complex.
Around 4 my B.P., we saw the appearance of the first hominids. Their developments over
the next million years lead to the early archaeological record. Australopithecus afarensis
has neither broad fingertips nor a large pollical metacarpal. It fingers are long and curved,
indicating that they did not possess the level of dexterity of Homo habilis and other
hominids. At numerous other Plio-Pleistocene sites, stone tools are found in association
with more than one hominid species. In the lower Omo Valley, both Paranthropus and
Homo appear at the same sites. The belief that one single hominid at any one time could be
