Systematic stone blade production
Producción sistemática de láminas líticas
- Date
- c. 500 ka · confidence medium
- Place
- Kapthurin Formation, Baringo, Kenya
- Credited to
- Middle Pleistocene hominins (probably Homo heidelbergensis)
- Field
- Tools
What it is
Cores and elongated blades produced with a planned knapping method, half a million years before blades became widespread in the Eurasian Upper Palaeolithic. It shows that blade technology was invented in Africa and reappeared several times.
Dated to between 545 and 509 ka by argon-argon dating (Johnson and McBrearty, 2010). Blade technology was invented and lost several times before its definitive spread around 50 ka ago.
What it led to
- longer cutting edges per kilogram of stone
- the later manufacture of composite tools and microliths
- revision of the classic scheme linking blades to European Homo sapiens