Bolas - stone balls around the World: Oldowan / Acheulean tools?

In my previous post I mentioned the stone balls, or "bolas" found in Miramar, Argentina, originally claimed to be 2 or even 3 million years old in the early 1900s, they are now believed to be either a hoax, or later, Paleoindian tools. However, genuinre and uncontroversial stone balls h ave been unearthed in the Old World, dating back to Oldowan and Acheulean times, meaning that they are around 1.5 million years old, and were made by Homo erectus or even older ancestral hominins.

Red Crag Stone from Bramford, England

Pictured below, (Red Crag stone. Source) this stone is not a sphere, instead it has an elongated shape, and unlike the other Old World finds, it has been quite controversial.

J. Reid Moir wrote an article about the stone three years after it was found by one of his assistants, by the name of John Baxter. It came from Pliocene sediments at Red Crag, Bramford, a site near Ipswich, in England, UK. The 1929 article titled "A Remarkable Object from Beneath the Red Crag". It was roughly egg shaped. Henri Breuil, who was a witness of the discovery wrote: "While I was staying in Ipswich with my friend J. Reid Moir, we were examining together a drawer of objects from the base of the Red Crag at Bramford, when J. Reid Moir showed me a singular egg-shaped object, which had been picked up on account of its unusual shape. Even at first sight it appeared to me to present artificial striations and facets, and I therefore examined it more closely with a mineralogist's lens. This examination showed me that." Rather than a South American bola, this ovoid was thought to be a sling stone like the ones used in "New Caledonia". TWhe Pleistocene to Eocene sediments at Bramfored are over 2 million years old.

However, Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews, 2011 warns that even thouth the age is correct, the setting may be wront: "the Red Crag deposits date from the Gelasian chrono-stratigraphic phase, 2,588,000 to 1,806,000 years ago during the earliest phase of the Lower Pleistocene, when this part of Britain was under a shallow sea, and it seems most likely that the “sling-stone” is a simple case of misidentification, its natural grooves being mistaken for human manufacture by an expert who was overtaken by his colleague’s enthusiasm for finding objects in the deposit in question."

Below is a Melanesian Sling stone , the resemblance is striking, yet this one is evidently manmade, and polished.

Sling stone from New Caledonia. Source

Olduvai stone balls, Tanzania

The Museum of Stone Tools shows the following image captioned as a quartzite spheroid from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, age: Early Pleistocene Oldowan-Acheulean 0.4 to 1.9 million years ago.

Another example can be seen here, online, at the British Museum, which in its description cautions, that although Louis Leakey suggested that these rounded stones were used as bolas, like the throwing stones from the Pampas, "experiments have shown that such pieces can be produced by repeatedly using the same quartz pebble as a knapping hammer"

The Oldowan tools, are crude, like struck pebbles, and believed to be the work of Homo habilis, manufacturing spheroidal stone balls seems to be beyond their cognitive abilities. Could primitive hominins like them fashion sinew cords or treat leather adequatly to be able to fasten them to stone balls like the bolas or boleadoras of the Pampas?

An excellent summary of the Olduvai spheroids can be found in Ignacio de la Torre & Rafael Mora, 2010, which I summarize below:

Clark reported them in 1955, and their deliberate manufacture by flaking and battering to shape the speroids. He suggested they were used as missiles, and also as hammerstones for stone tool manufacture and to crack nuts open.

Willoughby proposed in 1987 that they were the result of flaking that began with the typical choppers, and that ended up as speroids, or, altermtively that they were used as hammers, an unintentional outcome of their use was the shaping of rounded spheroids.

Texier and Roche (1995) consider them as deliberate objects that arose from a method of knapping flakes. A core is battered, through controlled reduction to produce flakes and this results in a polyhedron, or a spheroid.

Java stone balls made by H. erectus

Leaving Africa, and the Oldowan, stone balls were found in sites associated to Homo erectus, who has been in Eurasia for around two million years. Weidenreich, 1943 describes in Indonesia at the Homo erectus site in Solo: "The most interesting specimen illustrated by Oppenoorth is a stone ball from Ngandong. Similar stone balls have been found at several places in our excavations in the Solo Valley. They are made of andesite, are perfectly round, and are never polished. According to Oppenoorth, their diameters range from 67 to 92 mm... [2.6 - 3.6 in], and some may be even a little larger. They closely resemble primitive stone cannon balls as used in Java in medieval times for the old bronze cannons. They occur so regularly in the layers that they might actually represent "implements" used by Solo men." He attributes them a Mousterian, and therefore Neanderthal similarity, citing similar stones found in La Quina, France, Techik Tach, Russia. Adding that "Mousterio-Levalloisian of Florisbad, South Africa, Dreyer and Lyle mention "dozens of round balls" about 3 inches in diameter made mostly of dolorite, and also a few of blue shales." Weidenreich mentions that the oldest balls were Acheulean, from Kenya, reported by Leakey, who found them "in many cases in groups of three strongly indicating the use of the bolas, still used as a hunting weapon in South." Weidenreich suggests that although their purpose is unknown they were either sling stones or bolas.

According to Bartstra (1983), cited in van Heteren & de Vos, 2012 describes tools and remains found at the Ngebung site in Java, belonging to H. erectus there are three levels, the deepest (lowest) has tools that are absent in the upper ones of Upper Pleistocene age: "elongated choppers, spherical balls (so called sling stones or bolas) and crude axes, all made of andesite. The larger stone tools, like the bolas are considered to be Upper Pleistocene/Lower Holocene of age." No explanation given for assigning a more recent age to the bolas.

Acheulean bolas in Israel

My own research into these primitive bolas has revealed other sources, for instance, outside of Africa, made by Homo erectus in Ubeidiya, Israel, with an age of 1.4 million yearws, as reported by Muller et al., 2023 with a clear spherical shape. The paper suggests that they were deliberately fashioned that way, to resemble speheres and its title echoes that suggestion: The limestone spheroids of ‘Ubeidiya: intentionalimposition of symmetric geometry by early hominins? Some of the stone balls studied in this paper are pictured below:

This article points out that their shape has bewildered archaeologists, as they can't understand what was their use. Furthermore, they have been used for millions of years, starting with the crude Oldowan stones industry, and into the Acheulean, and Mousterian, their use in Southern South America persisted until the late 1800s. Their widespread geographic dispersion, from Africa, to Asia, Europe, and America is notable.

There are two schools of though about these balls: (1) that they were the byproduct of a flake producing technique that left spheroids as waste, a totally unintentional production of stone balls. (2) That the hominins that made them selected a nodule and then deliberately fashioned it into a polyhedron, and gradually into a spheroid or bola. The balls found in Israel, according to the authors , "are a complex formal technology that represent a manifestation of the complex cognitive and skilful capacities of Early Acheulean hominins. If similar intentional shaping can be demonstrated on Oldowan spheroids, this would likely represent the earliest evidence of hominins imposing a desired symmetrical geometry on their tools." In other words, Homo habilis and Homo erectus were much smarter than we imagined.

Ancient or Modern?

S. J. de Laet mentions stone balls in the History of Humanity Volume I (see p. 454) in line with what I have mentioned further, up, but he questions their antiquity in Indonesia, suggesting a modern Homo sapiens origin:

"round stone balls (resembling small stone cannon-balls) that are allegedly found in terrace sediments along the Solo. They are made of andesite, are not polished and measure on average 10 cm in diameter. They are associated with Homo soloensis(on account of their assumed stratigraphical position), and they are regarded as a primitive hunting weapon, which is why these stone balls are oftenreferred to as bolas or sling-stones. Von Koenigswald even saw in them evidence for theNeanderthal character of the Solo hominids: similar stone balls do occur at such famousNeanderthal sites as La Quina (France) and Teshik-Tash (Uzbekistan) (von Koenigswald,1951). In Sangiran too these stone balls are found (and they are displayed in the local museum); but around the hill of Ngebung it can be demonstrated that they certainly do not lie buried in high-terrace sediments. In Ngebung the stone balls can be associated with young, post-Pleistocene alluvial deposits (Bartstra, 1985). The question therefore ariseswhether the stone balls found along the Solo do not in fact originate also from recent sediments, and reflect the activities of Holocene hunters rather than those of ancient Homo soloensis"

Spheres with symbolic purposes

There are some intriguing rounded stone ballls that were discovered in a site known as El Guettar, in Tunisia, first explored by Gruet in 1954) (S. J. de Laet, see p. 352). The stones were found, accomodated in the shape of a cairn!

"El Guettar did yield the best evidence for symbolic behaviour in the constructed heap of stone balls (Gruet,1954, pp. 67–77). The site had some 7 m [23 ft.]of Middle Palaeolithic deposits around a spring, and the stone heap was found near the base of the sequence, built on a flat surface by the edge of the spring pool. The heap was conical, with a basal diameter of about 130 cm [4.2 ft] and a height of about 70 cm [2.3 ft.], and was built of about sixty balls, almost all of them oflimestone, which were graded from large (18 cm in diameter [3.1 in]), rather roughly shaped one sat the base to small (4.5 cm in diameter [1.8 in]), perfectly shaped ones at the top. The interior of the cone was filled with a mass of bones and flaked stone artefacts (approximately 2,000 ofthe latter, including a typical tanged point). The bones and artefacts seemed to have been simply gathered up from the surrounding surface (they do not differ overall from those found elsewhere in the excavation), but some care was taken to reserve the finest artefacts for the upper part of the fill. At the base of the interior of the heap were two thin plaques of a non-local limestone.The detectable method and consistency in the construction of the heap suggest that it was built on one occasion, rather than over a period of time. That the heap stood undisturbed thereafter until it became buried indicates that it was not just a convenient way of storing stone balls. The excavator believed that it represented an offering to the genius loci of the spring. Practical explanations have not been forthcoming and we too are brought to conclude that its purpose must have been symbolic."

I must add that Gruet believed the site was of people with a Mousterian culture, i.e. Neanderthals, however other scholars, like Clark, consider it to be later, belonging to the more recent Aterian culture, of modern Homo sapiens and about 40 ky old.

Below is a picture of the stone cairn at El Guettar

Cairn found at Guettar. Source

Hammers?

A recent article by Assaf, Preysler, and Bruner, 2023 analyzes the shape, size and flaking used to fashion them and concludes that "Based on the current data available, we link the development of SSBs [shaped stone balls] with an increased consumption and extraction of fat of large-medium sized herbivores in the Lower Paleolithic period. Indeed, SSBs may also have been used as percussion tools for processing vegetal material, perhaps similarly to handaxes, which were primarily used for butchering, but were occasionally used for woodworking. However, current functional and experimental data associate these items with marrow extraction activities, as well as some contextual data linking these items with faunal remains. We thus argue that these are designated tools shaped in a complex procedure—a technological solution invented during the LP in order to respond to the growing need for fat consumption."

Closing Comments

The use of stone balls is ancient, dating back to the first stone tools used by our ancestors in Africa. They survived across species (H. erectus, Neanderthals, and modern humans), and vast distances. They ended up in America where they were used for tens of thousands of years in the Pampas and Patagonia.

Were they introduced into the New World by H. erectus? and if so, is their great antiquity (as suggested by Ameghino at Miramar) could be an indication of that origin.

Finally, the Patagonian myth of Tachwull, them proto-human maker of bolas may be a memory of the presence of erectus in America.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Homo erectus left Africa earlier than thought (New 2026 paper)

As mentioned in yesterday's post, there have been some recent discoveries that are changing what we knew about the spread of our ancestors out of Africa and across Eurasia.

A new paper has disclosed that the site of Ubeidiya, in the Valley of the Jordan river has been dated to an age older than 1.9 million years. This is relevant because Acheulean tools, typical of Homo erectus have been found in those sediments, and this date is much older than previous estimates, pushing the first Out Of Africa event further back in time.

The paper: A. Matmon, et al., (2026). Complex exposure-burial history and Pleistocene sediment recycling in the dead sea rift with implications for the age of the Acheulean site of ‘Ubeidiya. Quaternary Science Reviews, Volume 378, 2026, 109871, ISSN 0277-3791, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2026.109871. 🔒

The Abstract reads as follows: "We present early Pleistocene burial ages of the ‘Ubeidiya Formation sediments in the Jordan Valley, a segment of the Dead Sea Rift Valley. A minimum age of ∼1.1 Ma is constrained both by paleomagnetic analysis and U-Pb dating of Melanopsis shells. Simple cosmogenic burial ages (i.e., one very long exposure period followed by one period of burial) calculated from the ratios of 26Al to 10Be and 10Be concentrations indicate ages of ∼3 Ma, contradicting the geological and paleomagnetic constraints as well as a reasonable age of the ‘Ubeidiya archeological site, as it contains human remains. A more sophisticated way of treating the results, by combining numerical modeling of cosmogenic nuclide build up during repeated burial-exposure cycles, paleomagnetic analysis (indicating reverse polarity) and a minimum burial age of 1.1 Ma set by U-Pb dating of Melanopsis shells, suggests two most probable time slots (1.19-1.77 and 1.93- 2.14 Ma) for the absolute age of the ‘Ubeidiya Formation. However, the skewed distribution of cosmogenic isotope burial ages, with a median age of 2.05 Ma, indicates a much higher probability of the older ages, most likely >1.9 Ma. The exposure-burial history that emerges from the model implies recycling of sediments previously deposited and buried in the rift valley, between 4.5 and 3.2 Ma, and subsequently exhumed, eroded, transported and then redeposited along the ‘Ubeidiya paleo lake shoreline."

Previous research had provided inconclusive dates, and used obscure methods. The consensus dates for the tools found there were between 1.2 and 1.6 million years. So this discovery pushes the first Out Of Africa migration back at least 300,000 years.

Furthermore, some previous dating of 3 Ma was due to the "recycling", that is the erosion of old strata, the transport and reburying of older sediment further down the valley making the sites seem older than they really are. However, the burial of sediments also preserved the information of magnetic field reversals which is a useful tool to date old strata ( magnetostratigraphy), the team also used radioactive decay of isotopes formed by cosmic rays in chert and quartz, and dating of snail shells using radioactive decay of Uranium to Lead. These three methods helped define the dating.

These dates make sense, because the earliest homo found in Eurasia, at Dmanisi, Georgia is slightly younger. This earlier presence of erectus in Israel, suggests that these erectus could have moved north towards Georgia, and also east, across Asia, reaching Eastern Asia (Indonesia and China) much earlier than previously expected (as we will see in my next post), and also, a possible continuation of their journey into America. They had almost 2 million years to do so before the arrival of Modern Humans in Eurasia.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Hominins that predate the Human-Denisovan-Neanderthal split , from Morocco

A paper published yesterday (January 7, 2026) in Nature investigated some fossil remains found in a site (Grotte à Hominidés) at a quarry in Morocco, not far from the city of Casablanca. They belong to hominds who appear to be "basal" to modern H. sapiens, Neanderthals, and Denisovans. The authors date them to around 773,000 years ago and state that these remains reinforce "the case for an African rather than a Eurasian ancestry of H. sapiens."

This is the paper: Hublin, JJ., Lef&egravE;vre, D., Perini, S. et al. Early hominins from Morocco basal to the Homo sapiens lineage. Nature (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09914-y

This date is very close to the date when modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans split and went different ways, which is believed to have taken place between 550 and 765 thousand years ago.

The paper also suggests that they may be related to the Homo antecessor (TD6) whose remains have been found in Atapuerca, Spain, and whose remains have been dated to 950-770 ka. Though the Morccan remains and the Atapuerca fossils are similar, they also differ.

The Morocco fossils, named ThI-GH (from Thomas Quarry I, Grotte à Hominidés) combine modern and primitive traits. The site, excavated between 1994 and 2015 has produced Acheulean tools (typical of H. erectus), more primitive than the stone knapping techniques developed later by the Neanderthals.

The age of the remains

The authors analyzed the sediments in which the fossils were found, employing magnetostratigraphic tecniques that compare the sediments with the record of polarity reversals of the Earth's magnetic field, and found that "our analysis indicates hominin ages younger than 990 ka (top of Jaramillo) and close to the MBT at a nominal age of 773 ± 4 ka."

However, other tests find a younger age: "Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating, performed in unit SU4 on cemented sands provided age estimates of 420 ± 34 ka and 391 ± 32 ka, of the same order as the ages obtained from OH2 to OH5. OSL ages appear to be inconsistent with the evidence that these formations belong to at least three glacioeustatic cycles and, for this reason, can be disputed. Combined electron-spin resonance (ESR) and U-series dating methods applied directly to an isolated hominin tooth from SU4 resulted in an estimated age of 501 ka +94 ka/−76 ka. The same method yielded ages ranging from 591 ± 103 ka to 538 ± 52 ka on three well-preserved herbivore teeth from SU4...

Below I quote the paper's relevant parts with my comments in brackets.

"These hominins cannot be directly compared with later specimens, such as the Kabwe or Bodo skulls, which have been tentatively assigned to H. heidelbergensis. Not only do these specimens differ substantially in age, but they also lack preservation of comparable anatomical parts. Our analysis suggests that the ThI-GH hominins probably belong to an evolved form of H. erectus sensu lato in North Africa, much as H. antecessor does in Europe.
[These hominins appear to be "evolved" Homo erectus - Homo antecessor group!]
However, the ThI-GH hominins offer an interesting contrast to both the Spanish fossils and the considerably older fossils from Tighennif (Algeria), which are likely to date to at least 1,000 ka. The fossil mandibles from Tighennif appear more primitive, larger and more robust than both the European H. antecessor and the northwest African ThI-GH fossils. The Spanish and Moroccan fossils share several features in their teeth and mandibles. Both groups display a combination of archaic and derived features reminiscent of later hominins. These similarities revive the question of possible exchanges across the Strait of Gibraltar during the EP. Nevertheless, the ThI-GH hominins are different from the TD6 hominins.
[Since the Strait of Gibraltar was breached by the sea during the Zanclean Flood about 5.33 million years ago (that eliminated the dry-land bridge between Europe and Africa as the Mediterranean basin filled up with water from the Atlantic, the "exchanges across the Strait of Gibraltar during the EP" or Early Pleistocene means that these people built watercraft to navigate the Strait of Gibraltar!]
The origin of H. sapiens, and the precise timing of the divergence of its ancestral populations from the Neanderthal–Denisovan clade, remain subjects of debate. Anatomical evidence has at times been used to argue for a split predating 800 ka and even for an alternative Asian ancestry of our species. In this context, the Maghreb fossils are key to understanding the diversification of MP [Mid Pleistocene] hominins. The morphology of the ThI-GH hominins places them close to the split between the African and Eurasian lineages. Our findings not only align with the phylogenetic structure inferred from palaeogenetic data but also highlight the Maghreb as a pivotal region for understanding the emergence of our species, reinforcing the case for an African rather than a Eurasian ancestry of H. sapiens."

The exchange across Gibraltar could be considered as an Out of Africa, for Homo erectus who entered Europe and evolved into Homo antecessor there, or probably a route into Africa from early hominins who (like those found in Dmanisi and the Caucasus) peopled Europe and returned via Spain to Africa across Gibraltar.

The authors seem intent on proving an African origin for "our species" and mention this twice in their paper. I am not so certain this paper suggestss an African origin for modern humans, it only describes hominins with an archaic-modern mossaic of features similar to those of H. erectus and H. antecessor, both of which are Eurasian!

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Hominins and stone tools in Sunda 1.48 Ma - Implications

A paper published last August in Nature (Hakim, B., Wibowo, U.P., van den Bergh, G.D. et al. Hominins on Sulawesi during the Early Pleistocene. Nature 646, 378–383 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09348-6) reported finding stone tools and flakes older than 1 million years, and possibly up to 1.48 Ma on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia.

The oldest tools that had been found in the area were found at Wolo Sege on Flores Island, home of the minute Hobbit Homo floresiensis, that were 1.02 million years old. Some stone tools and bones with man-made cut marks were discovered in Luzon, and island in the Pilippines, dated to 777-631 thousand years ago. These are much older.

The paper states that> "The dispersal of archaic hominins beyond mainland Southeast Asia (Sunda) represents the earliest evidence for humans crossing ocean barriers to reach isolated landmasses... On Sulawesi, the largest Wallacean island, previous excavations revealed stone artefacts with a minimum age of 194 ka at the open site of Talepu in the Walanae Depression, long preceding the earliest known presence of modern humans (Homo sapiens) in the region (73–63 ka in Sunda). Here we show that stone artefacts also occur at the nearby site of Calio in fossiliferous layers dated to at least 1.04 Ma and possibly up to 1.48 Ma... The discovery of Early Pleistocene artefacts at Calio suggests that Sulawesi was populated by hominins at around the same time as Flores, if not earlier."

Primitive Stone "artifacts"

The authors found "seven flaked stone artefacts... All stone artefacts are made of chert, alternately known as silicified limestone in some of the related literature. This source material is abundantly present among the naturally occurring pebbles, but the stone artefacts differ statistically by their larger size compared with unmodified pebble-sized clasts excavated from the same fluvial sandstone deposits... These results suggest that the stone artefacts were produced by hominins outside the Calio site and carried there for use as tools, further underlining the anthropogenic origin of these objects. It is also possible that some or all artefacts could have been eroded out of riverbanks by laterally migrating fluvial channels, and may therefore be older than the layers in which they were found."

They are not Acheulean, a mark of H. erectus, these are stones used simple tool-making techniques that hint at an Oldowan origin. However, the stones were carefully struck, and retouched: "The flakes were struck by the hard-hammer freehand percussion technique and range from 21.9 to 60.1 mm long along the percussion axes... The reduction of large flakes into smaller flakes, which were themselves retouched, suggests that a two-step reduction process was sometimes used to reduce the natural chert cobbles into suitably-sized tools. The evidence for reduction of cores-on-flakes, frequent core rotation and understanding of hard-hammer fracture mechanics attests to expert technical knowledge within the context of a straightforward, ‘least effort’ approach to toolmaking.".

The authors conclude that "it now seems possible that hominin occupation of this large Wallacean island preceded that of Luzon to the north and is at least as old as, and potentially earlier than, the hominin presence on Flores to the south. However, precisely when hominins first crossed to Sulawesi remains an open question, as does the taxonomic affinity of the colonizing population."

These people predate the hominins of Luzon and the hobbits of Flores. Their stool-making techniques suggests that they were not H. erectus, could they have been the easternmost members of the group that reached Georgia (Dmanisi people), a branch of H. georgicus?

Sulawesi stone artifacts (Fig. 2) in Hakim, B., Wibowo, U.P., van den Bergh, G.D. et al. (2025)

A 2024 paper (D. Ma,S. Pei,F. Xie,Z. Ye,F. Wang,J. Xu,C. Deng, & I. de la Torre, Earliest Prepared core technology in Eurasia from Nihewan (China): Implications for early human abilities and dispersals in East Asia, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 121 (11) e2313123121, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2313123121, 2024) noted that in Niwehan, in northern China, west of Beijing, stone tools dated to 1.1 million years ago, were Acheulean style (or mode-2 technology - compared to Oldowan or mode-1), despite the lack of the characteristic handaxe that this type of stone knapping produces. They attribute the lack of handaxes to the poor quality of the raw materials used. They find that these tools "at 1.1 Mya now constitutes one of the world’s earliest occurrences of prepared core technologies... This may suggest that mode 2 hominins dispersed into East Asia much earlier than previously thought and, given that the earliest occupation of China could be over 2 Ma, our results may also point at multiple migrations of early hominins into East Asia throughout the early Pleistocene."

The tools, in my layman opinion, seem to be Oldowan. The authors explain that they are Acheulean because they display higher mental abilities required to perform additional steps in knapping, elaborate techniques, and "standardized end products". They admit that "the differences between CJW (and by extension other Nihewan sites) and the typical Acheulean should not be ignored, and the absence of handaxes in East Asian sites cannot be attributed to raw material availability only... we propose that these mode 2 hominins with complex technical abilities were led to produce smaller tools due to the poor local raw material quality and environmental conditions, which may have also required the development of new survival strategies and/or technological innovations to adapt to the local environmental conditions in this region of northern China."

If we accept their explanations, then two (or more) different populations peopled Asia 1.1 Ma, one in Sunda another in China, with different tool-making techniques. This was way before Denisovans, Neanderthals and modern humans. Were they H. erectus? Dmanisi - H. georgicus? Another unknown hominin?

Could any of these groups have moved north and then east, into America? They would have had 1 million years with the New World for themselves before modern humans arrived around 30 ky ago, or perhaps Neanderthals and⁄or Denisovans arrived during the past 500 ky. Who knows? Nobody ever digs deep enough to look for any remains older than 20,000 years in the New World.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Homo Heidelbergensis lived in Glacial Britain 712 to 424 ky ago

Our distant relatives and ancestors managed to survive in the icy and frozen wastelands of northern Britain 712 to 424 kya according to a paper published on Sep. 1, 2025.

These people were not Homo sapiens they were Homo heidelbergensis which we believe are the stock from which Neanderthals, Denisovans, and we originated from.

Read the article: Key, A., Clark, J., Lauer, T. et al. Hominin glacial-stage occupation 712,000 to 424,000 years ago at Fordwich Pit, Old Park (Canterbury, UK). Nat Ecol Evol (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02829-x

The site reveals that these people were well adapted to living in cold places. They also found tools of different people. The early occupants of the site lived there between 773 and 607 ky and used acheulean tools (first developed by H. erectus). This period was cold. This is "evidence of the earliest known Acheulean bifaces in northern Europe". Ths site was inhabited again some two hundred thousand years later (420 ky) by another group of hominins that also used Acheulean tools.

The paper stresses the fact that this site "provides evidence for Lower Palaeolithic hominins [and] early human presence above 51° latitude during a glacial stage and handaxe production in northern Europe from MIS 17 to 16".

The paper states that these people "could, therefore, have had the cultural and technological attributes necessary to survive in these cooler climates and ecologies." The authors reckon that they occupied this area during a cold but not glacial period, when there were grasslands and grazing animals in the area. Yet they don't rule out habitation during a colder period either, the evidence hints at a "potentially summer-only occupation and even ice-proximal conditions." At that time, the glacial front was only 65 km north of the site. Walls of ice marked the limit of habitability. There is little evidence of trees in the area and the plants recovered from the site suggest it was similar to the Siberian steppe.

However, the oldest evidence for controlled fire in Europe is more recent, some 300 to 400 thousand years ago. We don't know if these people in Britain used fire. Did they burn dung in the absence of wood? or did they burn bones? In any case, it shows that people with less cranial capacity than modern humans or our more recent relatives, the Neanderthals and Denisovans, could cope with cold, icy climates and survive. This means that they could have done the same in Northeastern Asia (Northern China, Manchuria, and Siberia) on their way into America at any time between 700 and 400 ky.

CAPTION HERE. Copyright © 2025 by Austin Whittall

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

24 kyr Stone Tools in Pedra Furada, Brazil

Earlier this year a paper by Eric Boëda ( Boëda E, Ramos M, Perez A, Hatté C, Lahaye C, Pino M, et al. (2021) 24.0 kyr cal BP stone artefact from Vale da Pedra Furada, Piauí, Brazil: Techno-functional analysis. PLoS ONE 16(3): e0247965. rRephttps://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247965) analyzed stone tools dated 24,000 years old, from Brazil. The interesting part is (see my previous post) that the authors acknowledge the conflict between orthodox scholars and those that support an early peopling of America.

They wrote: "The peopling of the Americas continues to be subject of intense debate, basically between two positions that often do not consider fully South American research: a Last Glacial Maximum (LGM sensu stricto, dated between 19–23 kyr BP) occupation (current consensus) and a pre-LGM occupation. In support of the latter, a growing body of evidence demonstrates a Late Pleistocene human presence (i.e. Paleoamerican) in South America well beyond 20 cal kyr BP"

The article then goes on to describe stone tools and one in particular (24 kya). What I found interesting is the authors' comment that the older layers have cobble type quarz tools (they look Oldowan to my layman eyes. See Fig. 5), and as you reach younger levels, the tools morph into bifacial tools (Fig. 7). Both are shown below:

Fig. 5 they look like Pebble tools (Oldowan)

Fig. 7, bifacial (Acheulean axes?)

Anyway, these findings show two things. One, evidence is mounting and it supports an earlier peopling of America and, two, that North American scientists wouldn't even see an ancient stone industry tool because they don't think there are any in the Americas. They will ignore it or consider it a geofact.

Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2021 by Austin Whittall © 

Lake Utah 40Ky stone tools and the Hansen skull cap article

Following my previous post, I found the Utah Statewide Archaeological Society Newsletter, Volume 21, Number 1, April 1975 which contains not only Hansen's paper about the Lake Utah Neanderthaloid skull cap but also another one by Leland Clark about stone tools dating back 40,000 years, discovered on the highest shoreline of former Lake Bonneville, on the NW tip of Lake Utah.

Former Lake Bonneville now reduced to the Great Salt Lake and Lake Utah that existed during the past 45,000 years, gradually drying up.

The images depict the lake, and the headline of the paper on the 40ky old stone tools (check fig. 5, showing a handaxe).

The whole newsletter is worth reading as it deals with the same subject: early human presence on the shores of Lake Bonneville in Utah, USA.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2021 by Austin Whittall © 

An early Out of Africa 2.48 Million years ago

We have posted on the hominin remains found at Dmanisi in Georgia, and evidence of hominin presence in China 2.1 Million yeras ago (Ma). A recent paper provides some more information on this very early migration of hominins out of Africa 2.48 Ma, long before the first Homo sapiens appeared.

A few months ago we mentioned a new paper reported in the media that pushes the Out of Africa migration by pre-sapiens hominins to 2.4 Ma. We have just found it published: it is the paper by Giancarlo Scardia, Fabio Parenti, Daniel P. Miggins, AxelG erdes, Astolfo G.M. Araujo and Walter A.Neves, (Chronologic constraints on hominin dispersal outside Africa since 2.48?Ma from the Zarqa Valley, Jordan, Quaternary Science Reviews, Vol 219, 1 September 2019, pp 1-19, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2019.06.007). It tells us that they found evidence of hominin presence in an area that those who would later reach Dmanisi and China had to cross on their trek out of Africa: The Middle East.

They mention the presence of hominins in China some 2.1 Ma, and in North Africa (2.4 Ma), - and we add the Homo georgicus found in Georgia (1.75 Ma) to their list.

They also report that even though the Levant does not have any sites as old as those mentioned above, they found stone tools in the Dawqara Formation sediments in Zarqa Valley, in Jordan that were buried some 300,000 years earlier thant the Chinese tools.

As Jordan lies in the corridor that any out-of-Africa Homo habilis would use to exit Africa, they conclude that these artifacts were made by these hominins.

They found Oldowan tools together with fossils of mammals in the Dawqara Formation. They were not found in a site (a camp site for instance), the tools were transported to where they were found by water and buried by riverine sediments. They dated these sediments to 2.48 Ma.

These Oldowan tools are primitive and predate the later Acheulean tools developed by Homo erectus. So clearly these hominins were Homo habilis.

This puts an early date for the first hominin migration out of Africa and into Eurasia.

The Abstract is the following:

" Recent discoveries constrain the presence of hominins in North Africa since ca. 2.4?Ma and in China since ca. 2.1?Ma, providing a new temporal framework for the earliest migration out of Africa. No Paleolithic sites of such age exist in the Levant, the natural corridor between Africa and Asia. The Dawqara Formation in the Zarqa Valley, Jordan, has been known since the early 1980s because of the presence of artifacts at different stratigraphic levels within its fluvial sediments, consisting of choppers, cores, and flakes.
Although most of the artifacts display signs of transport, they bear unambiguous evidence of manufacture, and document hominin presence in the Zarqa Valley during the deposition of Dawqara Formation. Based on integrated chronology provided by paleomagnetic, 40Ar⁄39Ar, and U-Pb dating methods, our study shows that the Dawqara Formation was deposited between 2.52+⁄-?0.01?Ma and the Matuyama–Olduvai geomagnetic reversal (1.95?Ma). By linear interpolation, the artifact-bearing stratigraphic levels within the Dawqara Formation have ages of ca. 2.48?Ma, 2.24?Ma, 2.16?Ma, 2.06?Ma, and 1.95?Ma, respectively, possibly documenting continuous hominin presence in the Zarqa Valley.
These new ages for the Dawqara assemblage constrain the earliest hominin dispersal out of Africa to the beginning of the Pleistocene, and pre-date by ca. 300 kyr the hominin occupation of Chinese Loess Plateau."

The North African tools are the 1.9-million- and 2.4-million-year-old artifacts and stone tool-cutmarked bones from Ain Boucherit, Algeria., Sahnouni M, et al., Science. 2018 Dec 14;362(6420):1297-1301. doi: 10.1126/science.aau0008. Epub 2018 Nov 29.

Sahnouni suggests that these old Algerian tools (slightly younger thant the Oldowan tools from East Africa - 2.6 Ma) "shows that ancestral hominins inhabited the Mediterranean fringe in northern Africa much earlier than previously thought. The evidence strongly argues for early dispersal of stone tool manufacture and use from East Africa or a possible multiple-origin scenario of stone technology in both East and North Africa.".

However there are even older tools found in Asia, in India to be more specific, that are 2.6 Ma. Were these the first hominins to leave Africa?

Last but not least, these Zarqa Valley "artifacts" have been dug up in a fluvial environment not unlike the setting where the Calico California stone tools were found, yet these American artifacts have been disregarded by orthodox science and labeled as geofacts (not man made, but shaped by natural forces).

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2019 by Austin Whittall © 

A paper from 1978: 70,000 year-old stone tools found in Timlin, New York.

After writing my previous post on 2.4 Million-year-old tools found in Jordan I pondered about the difficulties faced by those who propose paradigm shifts (such as Neves and his team, who propose an earlier Homo habilis migration out of Africa).

Another finding of old tools back in 1977 (Some Paleolithic Tools from Northeast North America, B. E. Raemsch; W. W. Vernon Current Anthropology, Vol. 18, No. 1. Mar., 1977, pp. 97-99.) led to a very heated debate.

Vernon and Raemsch reported finding stone tools that were 70,000 years old, at the Timlin site in the Catskills in New York state, USA.

Yes, 70 Ky ago is not that old, but when it deals with a site located in America it is much older than the currently accepted date for the peopling of America. And back in the late 1970s, the date was even more recent (some 13,000 years max.).

The tools discovered by Raemsch and Vernon were dug out of the soil which was buried under glacial rocks belonging to the early Wisconsin (or Würm) age, roughly 70,000 years ago.

They described these rock tools as follows: "The oldest of the artifacts closely resemble flake tools commonly referred to in Europe and Africa as Upper Acheulean, and they include cordiform points (fig. I), type side- and end-scrapers resembling those of Mousterian assemblages ".

And this is very interesting because the Mousterian lithic tools were associated with the Neanderthals! and the older Acheulean tools date back to Homo erectus.

Of course critics attacked these findings considering them as geofacts (natural origin) instead of man made, and also questioning their age. Vernon and Raemsch responded to these criticisms quite clearly (See their reply in On Criticisms of "Some Paleolithic Tools From Northeast North America - with some images too!) and added "Funk has resisted accepting even the possibility of the great antiquity of man in the New World for years. This bias places him with the early 20th-century skeptics..."

We have posted on Mousterian and Acheoulean tools in America several times so we do believe that further findings (if only someone was looking for this type of tools in America) would settle the issue for good.

Below are some images from these papers, with their captions:

Below is yet another image, captioned "FIG.2. Handaxe approximating position in which it was found in situ, lodged in the radius of a bovid. Deep pits in the bone accommodated the handaxe tip, which was broken as it was driven into the bone":

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2019 by Austin Whittall © 

Homo habilis left Africa 2.4 Million Years ago

Brazilian media has reported that today, Saturday July 6, 2019, Quaternary Science Reviews magazine will publish a paper authored by a Brazilian-Italian team who conducted a series of excavations on the Zarqa River in northern Jordan between 2013 and 2015. Their key discovery are stone tools dated 2.4 Million years old.

At the time that I published this post, I hadn't been able to find the article in Quaternary Science Reviews, but I will share what these news reports say (I am translating them more or less freely from Portuguese to English):

The fact that these stone tools are 2.4 Million years old is significant because it places them 500,000 years further back in time than the commonly accepted earliest date of hominid migration out of Africa.

The team unearthed some 450 pieces of stone of which at least 100 are really old. Images shown below depict these tools:

Tools dated 2.4 My Old, from Zarqa River, Jordan.

The age of these tools means that they predate Homo erectus and therefore, they are the work of the only hominid that existed at that time: Homo habilis.

Furthermore, it places H. habilis in the Middle East, that is, out of Africa and in Asia.

One of the paper's authors, Walter Neves, a Brazilian biologist, archaeologist and anthropolgist stated that "With our discoveries, we demonstrated that man left Africa some 500 thousand years earlier, and that the transition from Homo habilis to Homo erectus took place in the Caucasus and not in Africa".

Their discovery would, as Neves says "solve one of the biggest problems of paleonanthropology fo the last 20 years" by explaining the skulls found in Dmanisi, Georgia, in the Caucasus as belonging to H. habilis.

These five skulls, pictured below, had been originally assigned to a local branch of Homo ergaster, now they are considered as being Homo erectus and their age of 1.8 My makes this feasible, as it coincides more or less with the date of the supposed migration of Homo erectus out of Africa. However the size of the Dmanisi skulls was problematic: they were very different to each other and far smaller than Homo erectus skulls... they were more like Homo habilis skulls.

-The five Dmanisi skulls of Homo erectus georgicus (credits; M.S. Ponce de Leon & P.E. Zollkofer, University of Zurich).

The Dmanisi remains data (from David Lordkipanidze et al., (2013). A Complete Skull from Dmanisi, Georgia, and the Evolutionary Biology of Early Homo. Science 18 October 2013. Vol. 342 no. 6156 pp. 326-331; doi: 10.1126/science.1238484):

• Similar to the "African" H. erectus (known as H. ergaster) but have smaller crania and therefore closer to H. habilis.
• Skull sizes from 546 to 730 cm³, compatible with theH. habilis' 509 to 687 cm³.
• Small bodied: 146 to 166 cm, 47 to 50 kg, similar to H. habilis but in the lower range of H. erectus.

Neves believes that they were Homo habilis, and that they are the forebearers of Homo erectus, who evolved in Asia out of H. Habilis stock.

He also suggests that this can explain the tiny Flores Island hominids and the old stone tools recently discovered in China, which are 2.1 Million years old, in line with what we wrote in our post on those tools (Hominins in China 2.1 Million years ago... pushing back the dates in Asia):

"And this is in China, surely the hominins who made those tools reached western Eurasia far earlier than the 2.12 My age assigned to those tools. Which may imply that they were not Homo erectus, maybe Homo habilis or even an australopithecine species! (maybe the ancestors of the primitive Flores island "Hobbit")."

The Flores - Homo habilis link was proposed by Debbie Arguea et al., (see my post First Asians were not Homo erectus revisited) in June 2017, and Neves' dates seems to support it.

We will update this post once the paper is published.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2019 by Austin Whittall © 

Levallois tools: did this technology originate in Asia?

Earlier this year, a paper (Kumar Akhilesh et al., Early Middle Palaeolithic culture in India around 385–172 ka reframes Out of Africa models, Nature volume 554, pages 97-101, 01 February 2018) reported finding Levallois stone tools in a site called Attirampakam, in India. These tools were about 385,000 years old, which put the date of this stone knapping technology further back in time than had been previously expected.

These Indian tools are even older than the Levallois tools found in Africa, and they predate the currently accepted date of Homo sapiens expansion out of Africa.

Modern Brains

The Levallois tools represent a shift in stone knapping know-how. Until then the Acheulian (developed by Homo erectus) technique had been in use for over 1.4 million years.

It was named after the site where they were first discovered in the 1800s: Levallois-Perret, a suburb of Paris, in France.

It is distinctive of a more brainier hominid, who developed a new technique for knapping stones to obtain sharp flint tools.

But who made them? until recently it had been suggested that they were the result of archaic Homo sapiens migrating out of Africa.

But with the Indian tools dated around 385 kya and some found in Armenia (D.S. Adler et al., Early Levallois technology and the Lower to Middle Paleolithic transition in the Southern Caucasus, Science 26 Sep 2014: Vol. 345, Issue 6204, pp. 1609-1613 DOI: 10.1126/science.1256484) aged 325 kya, this explanation seems unfounded: there were no H. sapiens at that time.

Adler writes: "Our data from Nor Geghi, Armenia... are consistent with the hypothesis that this transition occurred independently within geographically dispersed, technologically precocious hominin populations with a shared technological ancestry."

Suggesting a pre-Homo sapiens origin.

The oldest remains of Homo sapiens and Levallois tools are from a site in Morocco and they are much more recent than the Armenian and Indian tools: 315,000 years old. (Read more).

We know that the Neanderthal made them in Europe, could they be the authors of these Eurasian tools?

A paper published four days ago: Yue Hu et al.Late Middle Pleistocene Levallois stone-tool technology in southwest China, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0710-1 DO 10.1038/s41586-018-0710-1 ID Nature 19. Nov. 2018), reports finding Levallois tools in China:

"Here we present evidence of Levallois technology from the lithic assemblage of the Guanyindong Cave site in southwest China, dated to approximately 170,000-80,000 years ago. To our knowledge, this is the earliest evidence of Levallois technology in east Asia. Our findings thus challenge the existing model of the origin and spread of Levallois technologies in east Asia and its links toa Late Pleistocene dispersal of modern humans."

So once again who made them? This date is prior to any known H. sapiens presence in China. Were they Neanderthals? or perhaps Denisovans, who lived in Southern and Central Asia at that time?

Here we have a technological break-through that seems to have originated Out of Africa and not In Africa, our purported craddle of mankind. Did modern humans evolve outside of Africa?

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2018 by Austin Whittall © 

As they were found in Africa they are tools...

A paper published in Nature describes the finding of the most ancient stone tools, and informs that they predate the genus "Homo". So it was not old Homo habilis who made the first tools. Instead it was made by some other hominin. The authors propose the name Lomekwian for this pre-Oldovan lithic technology.

Below are some photos, of the tools and the site (yes, like my previous post, this one too was inspired by news that I read today in bbc.com)

Lomekwian tools and the site. From BBC.com

The paper (can be read in full) is: Harmand, S. et al. 3.3 Million-Year-Old Stone Tools from Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya. Nature, published online May 21, 2015

It is an exciting find, pushing back the origin of tool making to the very first of our kin. But it also makes me wonder about the prejudice in science. Similar stones found in America, at the Calico site would be dismissed as geofacts, made by nature, flash floods knocking stones together in a desert environment. Nobody even suggests such an origin for African stones. After all, oldest hominin fossils come from Africa so any old chipped stone found in the area where these people lived must surely have been made by them.

Below are some stones from Calico (source)

They look man-made don't they? However they are considered as natural.

In America, on the other hand, we all know that Siberians migrated there some 15 kya after spending some time isolated in Beringia so anything found in America that does not resemble a modern Homo sapiens "advanced" tool is not even identified by those looking for stone tools (Mousterian, Acheulean or Oldovan tools are not considered when seeking stone tools in America).

We need scientists with an open mind, seeking the truth, not just seeing what they were taught to see...

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2015 by Austin Whittall © 

Stone tool from Oregon is older than 15,8 kya

Modern humans have been in America for quite some time (and the hard facts of dated tools should be used to adjust the clocks used in molecular studies). An example is this interesting finding from Riley, Oregon:

Evidence of One of the Oldest Human Occupations in Western United States Discovered on BLM Land in Southeast Oregon, which was published by the Bureau of Land Management of the US Government on March 5, 2015.; I quote it below:

"Beneath the layer of volcanic ash, archaeologists discovered a small orange agate tool believed to have been used for scraping animal hides, butchering, and possibly carving wood. A blood residue analysis of the tool revealed animal proteins consistent with bison, the most likely species being Bison antiquus, an extinct ancestor of the modern buffalo.
...what has the archaeological community most excited is a small stone tool found below a layer of volcanic ash.
Near the bottom of a 12-foot deposit, archeologists discovered a layer of ash that was identified as volcanic ash from a Mt. St. Helens eruption about 15,800 years ago. Beneath the layer of volcanic ash, archaeologists discovered a small orange agate tool believed to have been used for scraping animal hides, butchering, and possibly carving wood. A blood residue analysis of the tool revealed animal proteins consistent with bison, the most likely species being Bison antiquus, an extinct ancestor of the modern buffalo. “The discovery of this tool below a layer of undisturbed ash that dates to 15,800 years old means that this tool is likely more than 15,800 years old, which would suggest the oldest human occupation west of the Rockies,” said Scott Thomas, BLM Burns District archaeologist. "

This does open the door to more findings. Below is the tool, BLM photo:

It could have been made by any of our ancestors. Check out these examples:

Acheulean scraper

Mousterian scraper

Oldowan scraper

Native American scraper

Two million years separate the Oldowan and the Native American scrapers, and the Acheulean scraper of Homo erectus and the Neandertal Mousterian scraper lie in between. And all are so very similar!

So, could the Oregon scraper belong to another non-sapiens group?

Possibly, but the official explanation will be: modern human.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2015 by Austin Whittall © 

Lake Manix Acheulean tools

Last Summer my wife and I drove along Interstate 40 between Barstow and Needles, California, we were surprised at how desertic the whole area was. It reminded us of some very arid places in Western Argentina and Northern Patagonia, with shrubs, sand and even extinct volcanoes and black volcanic slag. Then, while crossing a hilly sector close to Needles, the dark stormy clouds overhaed burst in a heavy downpour that slowed the traffic along the highway and flooded some side roads. It was indeed a contrasting event: dry desert and summer thunderstorm.

Only later would I recall that famously controversial Calico site was just a few kilometers northeast of Barstow, along Interstate 15 towards Las Vegas. I also remembered that when I had read and written about Calico, I had asked mysef what were paleoamericans doing in such a dry and desertic place. Now I know: the area was full of lakes until 20,000 to 8,000 years ago, then it dried up and became the desert we see today.

Yesterday I came across a blog post, by Thomas Venner [1], where he summarizes a paper he co-authored with James G., Duvall in 1979 [2], (A Statistical Analysis of the Lithics from the Calico Site (SBCM 1500A), California), which, as its name indicates, deals with that site. However today's post is not about Calico, it is about another site mentioned in Venner's blog and paper: the Lake Manix Basin in California.

Where now there is sand, once there were lakes

The currently arid region that spans Nevada, parts of northwestren Utah and the Mojave in California, was not always parched. During the Pleistocene glaciar periods, ice melt and rainfall created many large lakes in this region (Paleolakes). All of the modern lakes (Great Salt Lake, Carson Lake, Lake Tahoe, etc.) in these states are actually the shrunk remnants of those grand archaic lakes. As the following map, by the U.S. Geological Survey [3] shows, there were large surfaces of freshwater in the Southwest of the US in those days:

Pleistocene Lakes California, Nevada, Utah, From [3]

At the end of the Pleistocene, deglaciation accompanied by climate change and global warming led to increased evaporation which in turn caused the gradual desiccation of those bodies of water. Their level dropped and they broke up into smaller lakes. Most of them dried up quickly while others shrunk to their current size some 8 kya. Their ancient coasts are marked along the valleys that were once filled with freshwater.

Lake Manix

The Manix basin is part of the Lower Mojave Valley which is set right in the center of the Mojave Desert to the north of Interstate 40. The Mojave river flows sporadically through the area, from the San Bernardino Mountains in the west, draining the region towards the east.

Sediments laid down during the Holocene and even earlier, during the Pleistocene have buried the possible remnants of ancient lithic assemblies made by pre-Colvis people. The rainfall events like the one I experienced moves silt and erodes the slopes, covering superficial objects.

However, at the Manix basin some environmental factors have worked to keep sedimentary layers spanning 350,000 years of geological history, accesible to archaeological studies.

The lake itself formed about 400 - 500 kya, and disappeared during the late Pleistocene. Its level rose and fell with the dry and wet periods. The last period of maximum lake surface ended 18,100 years ago when it drained suddenly breaching its terminal dam perhaps due to an earthquake or excessive water inflow. At that time it covered a surface of 236 km² or 91.1 sq. mi.

It has a "T" shape, with Coyote arm on the northwestern part of the "T", Troy Arm on the southeastern part, and Afton Arm as the main body with a norteastern orientation. Calico Site is just to the west of th base of Coyote arm. Interstate 15 runs along the middle of the paleolake's bed.

Fossils of Pleistocene animals are found in the sediments around the ancient lake: mammoth, horse, bear, coyote, saber-tooth cat and many birds spanning a period from 20 to 350 kya.

It is logical to assume that water and such a collection of potential preys would have attracted human hunters to the region, and stone tools have been found in the area.

Stone tools from Manix

The image below [4] shows some tools found along the ancient shores of Lake Manix:

Lithic assembly from Lake Manix. From [4]

The tools look rather coarse, roughly hewn, primitive and have caused debate. As Venner writes: [1]

"Thousands of rocks that bear a strong resemblance to prehistoric tools have been found at the site, both on the surface, and up to 8 m (26 ft) below the surface. Scientifically dated to over 200,000 BP, the excavated subsurface objects are many times older than the traditional date of the first human entry into the Americas, approximately 11,000 BP.
The Debate – The debate centers on whether the “tools” were made by humans (i.e., artifacts), or through typical geological processes (i.e. geofacts). The general scientific consensus is that the subsurface items are geofacts." [1]

Background

The original study on the Manix Lake Industry was conducted by Ruth Simpson in 1942. She surveyed the area leater between 1954 and 1964 and wrote papers in which she provided evidence for an ancient date for the stone tools found in the Manix area:

"She noted that the sites of the Manix Lake Industry occur on or above the highest beach lines of Lake Manix, whereas "Playa" and later industries were found along lower beach lines. Since Manix Lake Industry sites were on higher beaches relative to the other assemblages, Simpson reasoned that the Manix Lake Industry was the oldest Simpson also asserted that her conclusion was supported by the absence of projectile points in the Manix Lake Industry and by its typological similarity to the Paleolithic of the Old World. Furthermore, radiocarbon dates on tufa from the highest beach line of Manix Lake dated to 19,500+⁄-500 and 19,300+⁄-400 years ago..."[5]

The primitive aspect of some tools led to the argument that they were not paleolithic implements but refuse. Furthermore Simpson was accused of not collecting more "advanced" tools, thus skewing the study by making it appear to contain "older" artifacts.

Cores, axes and bifaces

What I find interesting is that: "... a large number of bifaces [and] cores ... Large bifaces. broken and complete, both roughly flaked and finely flaked. were found in all of these sites..." [5]. Big bifaces and cores spell out, in my opinion (as a layman, not an archaeologist): archaic lithic traditions, not the work of modern men, but ancient technology applied by pre-modern humans.

Could these sites along Lake Manix be the quarries or workplaces of archaic humans? It could be possible...

Yet orthodoxy argues the opposite They look old but are modern: "... the bifaces may have been made from necessity rather than choice. This creates the further possibility that these bifaces may represent the convergence of two or more independent technological trajectories." [5], in other words, not primitive but modern using primitive techniques due to restrictions in the features of the quarry.

N. Nobora Nakamura studied the area in 1966 but remained unpublished until 1991 [6]. He too noticed the coarseness and simplicity of the Manix Lake Industry and gave the following explanation: tools that have the same shape may have three different origins: (a) they are really ancient, primitive tools -i.e. Lower Paleolithic implements. (b) They look primitive because complex tools have moved towards a simplified shape either because the available stone is of poor quality or because the makers are seeking more specialized toolage. (c) They are "Juvenescent artifacts", which are unfinished tools and they are not finished because of faulty materials or because they were used in an unfinished form out of necessity.

N. Nakamura argues that although they look primitive, they may be new, recent tools and not ancient ones. They are the work of modern humans. [5]

As expected, instead of accepting the most parsimonious explanation (if it barks and wags its tail, it is a dog - if it looks old it is old), orthodoxy must defend a recent peopling of America at all costs. The tools are dismissed as being either geofacts or, if man made, they are recent, even though they look very primitive.

It is interesting to point out that in 1958, the Lake Manix tools were shown to European scholars, familiarized with archaic toolage (Neanderthal and older) and, these [7]:

"European scientists agreed that the specimens brought from America were man-made, were different and probably older than any American material they had seen previously. The concensus of opinion was that, until stratigraphic relationships can be established for the desert lithic material, no age determination should be attempted; that it should be considered in its own right as a separate American industry with Lower Paleolithic-like attributes. The speaker therefore now designates the Mojave Desert hand axes and related implements as the Manix lithic assemblage, in recognition of the type site: Pleistocene Lake Manix." [7]

But, after 1958 and the mid 1960's initial studies, the tides turned slowly against these strange findings: Calico flourished under L. S. B. Leaky and soon overshadowed the Lake Manix site; and later, when Calico became a hotly debatable issue, Manix was almost forgotten: Pleistocene peopling of America became tabu and those supporting it faced heavy flak. The whole issue was left alone, no deep studies were conducted, no funding was obtained. Manix was forgotten and until today remains an open question.

I have read some posts in blogs (which I will not cite since they don't mention their sources), that attribute a 200,000 year age to the Lake Manix tools. Venner also mentions this date in his blog post (200,000 BP) but does not give any Manix specific reference (Calico es mentioned, but Manix is not). Perhaps these dates are reasonable, considering the rise and fall of the lake's water level over the past 350 - 400 ky. It is also reasonable that lacustrine sediments would have buried any tools left on its shores by early hominids. So the subsurface stone tools would be old if they are accepted as being man-made and not the outcome of natural processes.

Let's try to figure out who was the maker of the Manix cores and hand axes. The technology is Homo erectus, the dates (200 kya) are quite recent (compared to their Asian remains), but not improbable. Another alternative would be the Neanderthals, they were living in Eurasia at that time but their Mousterian technology is different to H. erectus' Acheulean industry. So, if these tools were made by humans, it was the work of Homo erectus, in America, 200,000 years ago.

Sources

[1] Thomas Venner, (2010). A Statistical Analysis of the Lithics from the Calico Site (SBCM 1500A), California”, Journal of Field Archaeology, Winter 1979. Posted July 6, 2010
[2] Duvall, James G., and Venner, William Thomas, (1979). A Statistical Analysis of the Lithics from the Calico Site (SBCM 1500A), California. Journal of Field Archaeology, Winter 1979: Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 455-462.
[3] U.S.G.S., Paleoclimate Variability of the American Southwest
[4] Lake Manix and Calico lithic industries. Topic ID #807 www.archaeologyfieldwork.com posted 4/13/2007 9:29 AM [5] Claude N. Warren, (1996) The Manix Lake Lithic Industry in Historical Perspective. Proceedings of the Society for California Archaeology. 1996, Vol. 9, pp. 120-126.
[6] N. Nobora Nakamura, Mark Q. Sutton, (1991). The Baker Site: a Non-Projectile Point Assemblage at Pleistocene Lake Mojave. In Papers on the Archaeology of the Mojave Desert:2. Pp. 11-42: Coyote Press. 1991 (tDAR ID: 261259)
[7] Proceedings of the Academy. Bulletin, So. Calif. Academy of Sciences Vol. 58, Part 1, 1959. pp. 54.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall ©