Were bamboo tools made in prehistoric Southeast Asia? An experimental view from South China

Abstract

The use of bamboo by hominins in Southeast Asia has long been used as an explanation for the lack of stone tool innovation and diversity in that region during the Pleistocene. The paleoenvironmental and ethnographic basis of “Bamboo hypothesis” has been critiqued recently, but those factors are not directly relevant to the question of whether prehistoric hominins actually used bamboo. There is an even more rudimentary question that should be answered first: is it even possible to make complex bamboo tools with simple flaked cobble tool industries? This paper shows that it is indeed possible to procure and manipulate bamboo in a variety of ways with replicated stone tools. Not all bamboo stems are of equal quality, which should add a layer of intricacy in need of consideration by any future advocate of the Bamboo Hypothesis. Pilot knapping studies are also discussed, and suggest that the raw material constraints presented by local raw materials may generally be given undue weight in the morphological appearance of Southeast Asian Pleistocene stone tools.