Panoramic view of the Jojosi site. Clearly visible are gullies formed by erosion, where stone artifacts were observed on the surface during site visits, both on foot and using drones
Photo Credit: Dr. Manuel Will / University of Tübingen
Scientific Frontline: Extended "At a Glance" Summary: Early Human Stone Quarrying at Jojosi
The Core Concept: Early humans (Homo sapiens) in Paleolithic South Africa deliberately sought out and systematically quarried geological formations for tool-making materials as early as 220,000 years ago.
Key Distinction/Mechanism: Contrary to the prevailing model that Paleolithic hunter-gatherers only collected raw materials incidentally during other activities, evidence from the Jojosi site demonstrates a dedicated extraction process. The site features an absence of finished tools or settlement traces, revealing it was strictly a specialized production center where raw hornfels rock was tested and knapped into preliminary shapes before being transported elsewhere.
Origin/History: The Jojosi open-air site in eastern South Africa has been actively excavated since 2022 by an interdisciplinary team from the University of Tübingen and the University of Cologne. Findings indicate the site was utilized continuously for tens of thousands of years, ending around 110,000 BCE.
Major Frameworks/Components:
- Luminescence Dating: A precise geochronological tool utilized to determine the exact time surrounding sediment was last exposed to sunlight, effectively dating the archaeological layers.
- 3D Artifact Refitting: The physical reconstruction of hundreds of "production waste" flakes and chips to map the sequence of stone knapping and infer the intended final shape of the extracted materials.
- Stratigraphic Analysis: The examination of highly concentrated artifact horizons (yielding up to two million finds per cubic meter) within erosional gullies to verify sustained historical usage.
Branch of Science: Archaeology, Paleoanthropology, Geochronology, and Quaternary Ecology.
Future Application: The successful application of advanced luminescence dating and extensive 3D refitting on unweathered open-air surface sites provides a methodological blueprint for identifying and analyzing other undiscovered early human industrial sites globally.
Why It Matters: This discovery fundamentally shifts the established timeline of human cognitive and behavioral evolution. It provides concrete evidence that early Homo sapiens possessed the advanced foresight and logistical capacity required to engage in complex, long-term resource planning far earlier than previously assumed.
International research team with participation of the University of Cologne shows long-term use of a source of raw materials in Paleolithic South Africa
As long as 220,000 years ago – far earlier than previously thought – people quarried rocks for their tools in places they specifically sought out. An international research team, including researchers from the University of Cologne, has demonstrated this behavior at the Jojosi site in South Africa, challenging the prevailing view that Paleolithic hunter-gatherers collected their raw materials incidentally during other activities. The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.
“At Jojosi, we found numerous traces of the quarrying of hornfels – a metamorphic shale – including blocks that were tested for their quality, flakes of various sizes, thousands of millimeter-sized pieces of production waste and hammerstones,” says Dr Manuel Will from the Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology at the University of Tübingen. Hornfels is a fine-grained rock that was frequently used to produce tools in the Stone Age. “People worked cobbles on site here and knapped the material until they had achieved the desired shape from the rock – probably to make tools from it later.”
The researchers almost exclusively found ‘production waste’ here. The absence of both the end products and other traces of activity and settlement indicate that the people of the Stone Age were solely and deliberately visiting Jojosi to extract the coveted raw material. Remarkably, they were doing this for tens of thousands of years, at least until 110,000 BCE, as can be seen from the luminescence dating of the finds. Given its great age and long period of use, Jojosi adds new facets to the image of early Homo sapiens, indicating that they planned the long-term acquisition of resources much earlier than previously thought.
“Luminescence dating is a fantastic geochronological tool, as it tells us when sediment was last exposed to sunlight. We can apply this method over a wide age range, from a few years to multiple hundred-thousand years, which really helped us determining the age of the archaeological findings at Jojosi,” says Junior Professor Dr Svenja Riedesel from the Institute of Geography at the University of Cologne.
The Jojosi excavation site lies in vast grasslands in eastern South Africa, roughly 140 kilometers from the Indian Ocean coast. Geological processes during the Pleistocene formed a landscape characterized by erosional gullies, also exposing large hornfels layers. An interdisciplinary team headed by Manuel Will has been studying the geology and archeology of this landscape since 2022.
“On our very first visits, both on foot and using drones, we discovered about a dozen sites where perfectly-preserved, unweathered hornfels flakes were visible in eroded sediment – an absolute rarity for an open-air site,” says Will. During their excavations, the researchers uncovered clearly defined, stratified artefact horizons with high concentrations of 200,000 to two million finds per cubic meter. All sediment was sieved to retain even the smallest fragment.
Gunther Möller, PhD student at the Institute of Prehistory, Early History and Medieval Archaeology of the University of Tübingen, successfully assembled 353 of the left-behind pieces into ‘refits’. “With these 3D puzzles, we were able to see precisely where and how material was chipped off and in what order. Several of these puzzles together then allow us to draw conclusions about the form of the actual end product. Before it was taken to another place,” explains Möller.
Published in journal: Nature Communications
Title: Specialised and persistent raw material procurement by humans in the Middle Pleistocene
Authors: Manuel Will, Christian Sommer, Gunther H. D. Möller, Greg A. Botha, Matthias A. Blessing, Lawrence Msimanga, Aron Mazel, Aurore Val, Flavia Venditti, and Svenja Riedesel
Source/Credit: University of Cologne
Reference Number: arch040926_01
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