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Product Description
Mode 1 Oldowan tool technology of the Lower Paleolithic, is the earliest known tool industry of primitive humans. It is mainly associated with two primary tool types: choppers and flakes. Choppers originate from a core such as a stone cobble. They are characterized by their crude, irregular forms, often resembling a rough cobblestone with one or more sharp edges created by the removal of flakes from the core. They were primarily used for breaking open bones or cutting. Flakes are usually smaller, sharp-edged fragments detached from a stone core, that were then made into tools for various cutting and scraping tasks. While both tools are rare, detecting and finding Oldowan flake tools are difficult, making them especially scarce.
From a very limited private French collection we acquired decades ago, of African pebble core chopper axes, there ONLY A FEW pebble flake tools. This is only one of three that were in the collection! Like the larger pebble axes, once these sell, we will never have the opportunity to make such a rare offer again. This is a classic Mode I Oldowan pebble flake tool. It features a prominent edge and pointed tip, which would have made it function like an engraver or small piercing tool. It is made from a unique olive green vesicular basalt that has been polished by extreme desert wind exposure for thousands of millennia. There is a SPECTACULAR wind erosion feature giving the surface a 'melting ice cream" lustrous appearance, called "desert varnish", from millennia of exposure to the Saharan wind. Workmanship and form is superb with no modern damage.
African pebble tools are not common on the market compared to their much later Acheulean relatives. This specimen is part of a very limited collection we acquired. Despite the fact that there are probably more Oldowan tools in Africa compared to the European specimens we offer, very few African pebble tools are collected or available for public acquisition. This offering poses a rare opportunity to own an AUTHENTIC example of the first known tool type made by humans - a window into the mind and design thought process of our earliest ancestors.
No one can doubt the importance that pebble tools hold in the history of human development. Their very emergence in Africa nearly two million years ago allowed the earliest humans to butcher animals for their meat - the needed nourishment that allowed humans to survive and flourish to one day populate and rule the earth.
HISTORY
The Oldowan (or Mode I) was a widespread stone tool archaeological industry (style) in prehistory. These early tools were simple, usually made by chipping one, or a few, flakes off a stone using another stone. Oldowan tools were used during the Lower Paleolithic period, 2.9 million years ago up until at least 1.7 million years ago (Ma), by ancient Hominins (early humans) across much of Africa. This technological industry was followed by the more sophisticated Acheulean industry (two sites associated with Homo erectus at Gona in the Afar Region of Ethiopia dating from 1.5 and 1.26 million years ago have both Oldowan and Acheulean tools.
The term Oldowan is taken from the site of Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, where the first Oldowan stone tools were discovered by the archaeologist Louis Leakey in the 1930s. However, some contemporary archaeologists and palaeoanthropologists prefer to use the term Mode 1 tools to designate pebble tool industries (including Oldowan), with Mode 2 designating bifacially worked tools (including Acheulean handaxes), Mode 3 designating prepared-core tools, and so forth.
Oldowan pebble tools are THE FIRST recognized tools invented by the earliest of primitive humans from Africa. These tools are seldom seen in private collections or public exhibits. Oldowan sites exist in numerous regions of the continent but it takes a very knowledgeable collector to be able to weed out all the naturally-occurring rocks that litter the ground from an actual pebble tool specimen. As the origin of humanity and as the earliest of tool technologies, this African Oldowan specimen poses a very important potential addition to any advanced collection of Paleolithic artifacts. It was made by the African Homo erectus known as Homo ergaster.
