Re: How did the millions of stone tools get on the savanna?

On Jun 24, 9:13 pm, "deowll" <deo...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Lee Olsen" <paleoc...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:81fd82b9-d0b2-4bc6-882f-ba29fba70457@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Jun 23, 2:40 pm, Marc Verhaegen <m_verhae...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

(SAP)

SF:
How did the millions of stone tools get on the savanna? Did the lions make
them?

DD:
Thousands of stone tools, tens of thousands of scraps and millions of
natural geofacts,

ROFL. I'll call this idiots bluff....http://tinyurl.com/6x4goy

I've read the theory that these things were just a biface produced as a by
product of making sharp chips.

Correct, Noble & Davidson. Tony Baker most recently.

I don't see a sharp pointed end like this one
being formed unless somebody wanted a sharp pointed end.

Correct.

This is not to say
that bifaces weren't formed by people who just wanted sharp chips but this
one seems unlikely.

The fallacy in the chip dispenser theory can be demonstrated in a
number
of ways.

1) Use wear and retouch tests have shown that both modern and early
Homo only utilize flakes down to about the size of a quarter, they are
then discarded
because they are too small to easily grip. Thousands of hand axes are
covered with
flake scars much smaller than the size of a quarter, thus showing that
shape
was intended, not tiny non-usable flakes.

2) Isolated piles of flakes have been found that when conjoined show
that many usable (larger than a quarter) flakes were left behind and
the shaped axe was removed from the site.

3) Many side-struck cores have one side already the shape of an axe
and show shaping only on the side that didn't, thus once again showing
shape was the goal.

4) Cleavers are handaxes with a tranchet flake knocked off the tip and
show
use wear on the tip edge, proving they were tools.

While it is true that some cores can resemble hand axes, and thus give
the false
impression that axes were cores for flakes, this occurs in only a
small
percentage of the time. In these cases, it is the flakes that are
missing and
the core is the object discarded.

Sometimes, Clovis being the most obvious example, both the discarded
flakes and
the point were utilized. IOW, a Clovis point acted as both a chip
dispenser and a
handaxe at the same time, especially in the case of the largest ones.

Bottom line: Any cores with fine chipping that leave flake scars
smaller than
a quarter in size are deliberately shaped tools. Those that have
larger scars
and an amorphous shape could well be a chip dispensers and a by
product of flake
manufacture. These seldom meet the statistical criteria for a classic
axe.
But if one does enough cherry-picking, sure, one can find marginal-
looking objects and make any argument they want.
.