Beyond the Acheulean: A view on the Lower Paleolithic occupation of Western Eurasia

Abstract

A review of the available data is used to discuss the origins of the Lower Paleolithic industries without Acheulean bifaces and the Acheulean biface technologies in Western Eurasia. The recent discoveries of the earliest hominid fossils (Dmanisi and Sima del Elefante) suggest that the first Homo to enter Western Eurasia were Homo habilis-rudolfensis hominids originated from Africa and bearing a core-flake industry of Pre-Oldowan type. In Western Eurasia, the core-flake industry further evolved into the core-flake-tool industry. This latter became the ancestral industry for various industry types of the Pre-Mousterian complex, and survived in the territory between the Alps and Caucasus, now demarcated by the “Movius Line” beyond the Acheulean distribution, until the end of the Lower Paleolithic. The data support Obermaier's hypothesis of the 1920s about the distribution in Central and Eastern Europe of the Pre-Mousterian complex, compared to the area of Acheulean complex distribution in Western Europe and Western Asia. The frontier for the maximum expansion of the Acheulean in Western Eurasia changed through the time as the Acheulean biface technologies expanded from Africa northward to Europe and the distribution area of non-Acheulean core-flake-tool industries was reduced. Study of interrelations between the hominid populations coming from Africa making Acheulean large cutting tools, and the hominid populations bearing a more primitive core-flake-tool industry that apparently were the aboriginal hominid population in Western Eurasia, is one of the main issues in Lower Paleolithic research.