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June 9, 2005
400,000 Year Old Tools from Iran?
The Tehran Times article has just enough information to cause thought but not nearly enough to know what to think.
Archaeologist Ali Mahforuzi said on Wednesday that 400,000-year-old stone tools discovered in the valleys of Shuresh near the Rostam Kola, Huto, and Kamarband caves are the oldest ever found in the area.The previous studies had dated human settlement in the region to have begun about 50,000 years ago.
"The recent studies conducted by a joint team of archaeologists from the Mazandaran Cultural Heritage and Tourism Department and archaeologists from the Mazandaran National Museum led to the discovery of several stone tools.
"The primary studies on the tools did not reveal their exact age, so the tools were sent to Professor Marcel Otte of the University of Liege in Belgium. He happened to be in Iran and he dated the tools to be 400,000 years old," Mahforuzi explained.
First, it appears that Otte determined the age of the tools by tool morphology rather than archaeological context. If so, the range of possible ages could be very large indeed. Tool morphology didn't change much from very early tools to about 300,000 years ago. I can not help but wonder if Otte simply thought they were older than 300,000 years ago and that 400,000 years ago would not be out of line as a educated guess. The problem is that Hominids continued to use the older tool kit in many places even after the new tools were introduced.
Second, since, apparently, no skeletal remains were found, it is very difficult to say who made these tools.
If the date is correct, what can be said of the makers of these tools? First, negatively, they were not Homo sapiens; too old by more than 200,000 years. The better choices are H. neanderthalenis or H. egaster/erectus. But this speculation is only speculation and no more. It would be nice to know more about the tool kits. In fact, it would be nice to have a whole lot more information period. That will come in time.
The Rostam Kola, Huto, and Kamarband caves are near Gorgan Bay of the Caspian Sea, about 150 miles east by north east of Tehran. Even the find location seems a little vague to me, but that may be for security reasons.
Posted by Duane Smith at June 9, 2005 9:36 AM | Read more on Paleoanthropology |
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