Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, New York 10964, USA.
Nature. 2011 Aug 31;477(7362):82-5. doi: 10.1038/nature10372.
The Acheulian is one of the first defined prehistoric techno-complexes and is characterized by shaped bifacial stone tools. It probably originated in Africa, spreading to Europe and Asia perhaps as early as ∼1 million years (Myr) ago. The origin of the Acheulian is thought to have closely coincided with major changes in human brain evolution, allowing for further technological developments. Nonetheless, the emergence of the Acheulian remains unclear because well-dated sites older than 1.4 Myr ago are scarce. Here we report on the lithic assemblage and geological context for the Kokiselei 4 archaeological site from the Nachukui formation (West Turkana, Kenya) that bears characteristic early Acheulian tools and pushes the first appearance datum for this stone-age technology back to 1.76 Myr ago. Moreover, co-occurrence of Oldowan and Acheulian artefacts at the Kokiselei site complex indicates that the two technologies are not mutually exclusive time-successive components of an evolving cultural lineage, and suggests that the Acheulian was either imported from another location yet to be identified or originated from Oldowan hominins at this vicinity. In either case, the Acheulian did not accompany the first human dispersal from Africa despite being available at the time. This may indicate that multiple groups of hominins distinguished by separate stone-tool-making behaviours and dispersal strategies coexisted in Africa at 1.76 Myr ago.
阿舍利技术是最早定义的史前技术复合体之一，其特点是具有两面器形的石器。它可能起源于非洲，早在约 100 万年前就传播到了欧洲和亚洲。阿舍利技术的起源与人类大脑进化的重大变化密切相关，这使得技术进一步发展成为可能。尽管如此，阿舍利技术的出现仍然不清楚，因为早于 140 万年前的年代准确的遗址非常稀少。在这里，我们报告了来自 Nachukui 组（肯尼亚 West Turkana）的 Kokiselei 4 考古遗址的石器组合和地质背景，该遗址有典型的早期阿舍利工具，将这种石器时代技术的首次出现时间追溯到了 176 万年前。此外，在 Kokiselei 遗址复合体中同时出现了奥杜威技术和阿舍利技术的工具，这表明这两种技术不是相互排斥的、时间上相继的文化传承的组成部分，这表明阿舍利技术要么是从尚未确定的另一个地点传入的，要么是由附近的奥杜威人类起源的。在任何一种情况下，尽管阿舍利技术在当时已经存在，但它并没有伴随着第一批人类从非洲扩散。这可能表明，在 176 万年前，非洲存在着多个以不同石器制造行为和扩散策略为特征的人类群体。
