A new tephrochronology for early diverse stone tool technologies and long-distance raw material transport in the Middle to Late Pleistocene Kapthurin Formation, East Africa

Journal of Human Evolution
Nick BlegenS Mcbrearty

Abstract

The Middle to Late Pleistocene (780-10 ka) of East Africa records evidence of significant behavioral change, early fossils of Homo sapiens, and the dispersals of our species across and out of Africa. Studying human evolution in this time period thus requires an extensive and precise chronology relating behavioral evidence from archaeological sequences to aspects of hominin biology and evidence of past environments from fossils and geological sequences. Tephrochronology provides the chronostratigraphic resolution to achieve this through correlation and dating of volcanic ashes. The tephrochronology of the Kapthurin Formation presented here, based on tephra correlations and 40Ar/39Ar dates, provides new ages between 395.6 ± 3.5 ka and 465.3 ± 1.0 ka for nine sites showing diverse blade and Levallois methods of core reduction. These are >110 kyr older than previously known in East Africa. New 40Ar/39Ar dates provide a refined age of 222.5 ± 0.6 ka for early evidence of long-distance (166 km) obsidian transport at the Sibilo School Road Site. A tephra correlation between the Baringo and Victoria basins also provides a new date of ∼100 ka for the Middle Stone Age site of Keraswanin. By providing new and older dates for 11 sites cont...Continue Reading

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Citations

Dec 20, 2020·Evolutionary Anthropology·Jessica C ThompsonSarah J Ivory
Dec 8, 2021·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Elizabeth M NiespoloTim D White

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