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What the eastern African stone tool evidence tells us about Plio-Pleistocene hominin extinctions
1Stony Brook University, New York, USA.
Abstract:
This paper examines the stone tool evidence associated with extinctions among Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and Homo in Eastern Africa between 0.8 and 3.5 Ma. It does this using Stoneworking Modes A-I, a relatively new framework for comparing stone tool evidence, and data from the Eastern African Prehistoric Stoneworking Survey. While the evolutionary transition between early Homo and H. ergaster/erectus seems correlated with a shift from occasional to habitual stoneworking, Australopithecus' and Paranthropus' last appearance dates do not appear correlated with major changes in the archaeological record.
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