Africa and Asia: Comparisons of the Earliest Archaeological Evidence

Abstract

The earliest archaeological sites in East Asia ­suggest that making and using stone artifacts was a consistent part of the subsistence strategy of these earliest immigrants to East Asia. Although there are many differences between the earliest archaeological record in Africa and Asia, a few aspects of these industries allow formal comparisons. Here we review aspects of the African Oldowan archaeological record and compare it to the large and well-studied archaeological record from the Nihewan Basin. We suggest that the technological strategies shown in these East Asian Early Paleolithic assemblages are consistent with a subsistence pattern where stone tool mediated resources played a very different role than that found in East Africa. We suggest that the poor quality of available materials were not conducive to the maintenance of complex toolkits. Early Pleistocene hominins in East Asia may have exploited a series of diverse resources that had distinct technological requirements. In this sense the ecology of these hominins may have been very different from their African counterparts.