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The story of humanity’s origin has gotten increasingly tangled in recent years: New discoveries suggest that Homo sapiens interacted and interbred with other species and ventured out of Africa in more than one wave — our planet had modern humans in Africa, Neanderthals in Europe, Homo erectus in Asia.
Now, a treasure trove of ancient stone tools suggest that humans’ circuitous path to modernity also wound through India.
In a paper published in the journal Nature, researchers described thousands of stone implements uncovered at Attirampakkam, an archaeological site in Tamil Nadu in southern India. The tools span some million years of history, they say, and illustrate the evolution of big, blunt hand axes into finely sculpted stone points. Starting roughly 385,000 years ago — long before modern humans are thought to have arrived in India — it appears that an advanced toolmaking culture was developing there.
How did these techniques reach India so early? “That’s the multimillion-dollar question,” said archaeologist Shanti Pappu, founder of the Sharma Center for Heritage Education, based in Tamil Nadu, India, and a co-author of the report.
No remains were found alongside the Indian tools, meaning it’s impossible to determine whether the tools were produced by modern humans or one of our hominin cousins. If they were produced by members of our species, it would significantly shift the timeline of human evolution. But that’s a big “if,” Pappu acknowledged.
“It shows that simple linear narratives of dispersal only at certain time periods is incorrect,” Pappu said.
Modern humans evolved in Africa, and the oldest known bones that could feasibly belong to our species were found in a Moroccan cave and dated to 300,000 years ago.
Palaeoanthropologists believe the first hominins left Africa about 1.7 million years ago, though there’s some dispute about what species those early migrants belonged to.
Out of Africa
The first hominins to leave Africa — whoever they were — carried with them oval- and pear-shaped hand axes used to pound and scrape food — a technology called Acheulean. The oldest tools found at Attirampakkam, which are more than 1 million years old, were crafted in this tradition.
But in a second batch of implements uncovered from a rock layer that spans 385,000 to 172,000 years ago (plus or minus roughly 50,000 years on either end), those heavy hand axes give way to smaller, more sophisticated points.
This kind of technology has long been associated with Neanderthals and Homo sapiens in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and it wasn’t thought to have arrived in India until humans reached South Asia about 100,000 years ago.
Known as Levallois, this technique is associated with significant advances in human cognition, because such tools can’t be crafted without the ability to think abstractly and plan ahead.
BOX
The team of researchers for the find comprises Shanti Pappu and Kumar Akhilesh (archaeologists directing the project), Yanni Gunnell (University of Lyon, geomorphologist), A.K. Singhvi, Haresh Rajapara and A.D. Shukla from the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India (responsible for the geochronology). They tell Gulf News about what these finds mean.
How significant are these finds? This is part of a long-term project in south east India with over 20 years of work at this site. This is only one of several sites we are looking at. The site is significant as our long-term multidisciplinary research has yielded new information in terms of the chronology of successive Acheulian and Middle Palaeolithic (MP) occupation, nature of the stone tool assemblages, implications for behavioural changes and past climatic changes.
How many such tools were uncovered?
The site has yielded [over 7,000] artefacts with Lower Palaeolithic Acheulian cultures.
What is the significance of these tools in establishing the presence of hominins or modern humans in that geographical area?
Our message is very simple. Over a period ranging from around 385 ± 64 ka (kilo annum, thousand years), we see processes of transitional from the preceding Acheulian culture to the changes [seen] in [this] stone tool assemblage. This process of a complete shift in tool-making preferences continued until around 172 ka at this site. So we are not speaking of one date, but a range of dates, and not of one tool-type but a whole change in technology.
Why is finding out who these ‘people’ were a “million-dollar question”?
Very few fossils have been found in India, only one partial cranium and some post-cranial remains uncovered in the Narmada region of Central India.
It is difficult to correlate these with our assemblages, and we err on the side of caution in correlating tool-types with species.
Have relatively few paleontologists focused their efforts in India?
Not at all. India has had a long and very productive history of research in Palaeolithic archaeology, with numerous sites discovered right from 1863 onwards. In comparison to the volume of research in Africa, Europe or elsewhere, we have comparatively fewer excavated and dated sites.
Yanni Gunnell: We would say that India
suffers from two issues: a poorer preservation potential of fossils because of its surface geology and humid environment (powerful and destructive monsoon rivers, etc.); and limited exposure of its scientific community to international media, which has failed to put India on the map of world prehistory.
What is the way forward?
We need more funding for long-term sustained research projects across India. Our work is only a small part of a huge puzzle. We don’t have all the answers as yet.
Yanni Gunnell: Even assuming we find some more remains, we must rely on dating methods that reach further back in time than radiocarbon dating. Such radiometric methods correspond to cutting-edge research in physics and chemistry, with potential pitfalls in regions such as monsoon India, where the geological conditions are less favourable than in the regions of Afro-Arabia, and in regions where ongoing volcanic activity such as the African Rift Valley. Volcanic rocks and debris can not only preserve material by burying it, but can also be directly dated with methods not applicable in other circumstances — such as India.
Will this discovery make a big shift in what we know so far?
Shanti Pappu and Kumar Akhilesh: We hope it will stimulate debates.
Yanni Gunnell: Rome wasn’t made in a day, and we don’t shoot from the hip.
— Gulf News
