ArticleScientific reports2022
Stone toolmaking difficulty and the evolution of hominin technological skills.
Article in Scientific reports, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Human Digestive Physiology and Evolutionary Diet: A Metabolomic Perspective on Carnivorous and Scavenger Adaptations.Metabolites · 2025Review
- Costs of Early Stone Toolmaking cannot Establish the Presence of Know-how Copying.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- Skill and efficiency in Acheulian giant core reduction.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Back(s) to basics: The concept of backing in stone tool technologies for tracing hominins' technical innovations.Evolutionary anthropology · 2024Review
- Protracted development of stick tool use skills extends into adulthood in wild western chimpanzees.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Design and development of a sensorized hammerstone for accurate force measurement in stone knapping experiments.PloS one · 2024Article
- The limestone spheroids of 'Ubeidiya: intentional imposition of symmetric geometry by early hominins?Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- The evolution of hierarchically structured communication.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Stone tools are a manifestation of the complex cognitive and dexterous skills of our hominin ancestors. As such, much research has been devoted to understanding the skill requirements of individual lithic technologies. Yet, comparing skill across different technologies, and thus across the vast timespan of the Palaeolithic, is an elusive goal. We seek to quantify a series of commensurable metrics of knapping skill across four different lithic technologies (discoids, handaxes, Levallois, and prismatic blades). To compare the requisite dexterity, coordination, and care involved in each technology, we analysed video footage and lithic material from a series of replicative knapping experiments to quantify deliberation (strike time), precision (platform area), intricacy (flake size relative to core size), and success (relative blank length). According to these four metrics, discoidal knapping appears to be easiest among the sample. Levallois knapping involved an intricate reduction sequence, but did not require as much motor control as handaxes and especially prismatic blades. Compared with the other Palaeolithic technologies, we conclude that prismatic blade knapping is set apart by being a skill intensive means of producing numerous standardised elongate end-products.
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