fit, making a rock with his left hand, another with your right hand and prepares to hit the right side of the rock on the left side. The process requires all his concentration, coordinated action of their limbs and muscles, the precision of their movements. He has an experience of almost 40 years producing stone tools has used different materials, has tried various ways and methods is an expert in its preparation.
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| B ifaz Acheulean. Image taken from Wikimedia commons . |
| But he is not a hominid from the Lower Paleolithic : he is a modern hominid. So modern is now at the Department of Archaeology, University of Exeter, UK. Bruce Bradley is dedicated, among other things, to teach others the art of contemporary hominid development of tools that were originally created by other hominids, but several thousand years ago. In one of his last works Bruce used a special cyber-glove with an electronic tracking system that recorded by the angles of their joints when preparing stone tools from two different types. This was carried out with three other authors ( Aldo Faisal, Dietrich Stout and Jan Apel ) and the idea was to characterize and compare the complexity in the development of two types of prehistoric lithic technology: the Acheulean and the Oldowan . Their findings were recently published in the journal PLoS ONE . related behavioral patterns with reproduction, obtaining food and other critical issues in the survival of the species are crucial to understanding its evolution. The presence and characteristics of stone tools in the fossil beds is an important source of information about human cognitive evolution, among other things. The fact that the sophistication and complexity of the technology of our ancestors were increasing with time also suggests that cognitive abilities have evolved. For example, the Oldowan lithic industry is characterized by sharp flakes of rock that were developed by direct percussion of a rock with another. Then about about 1.7 million years ago, began appearing Acheulean tools that suggested a greater intent in drafting and include sharp and large drop-shaped tools to which they are known as bifaces ( handaxes ). |
late Acheulean technology (about 0.5 million years) achieved a considerable standardization and refinement. It is proposed that the development of these tools reflects the existence of novel cognitive and well-established procedures in preparing them. That is, there was a definite intent in drafting, was not only arbitrary shapes. Such observations have led some researchers to suggest that just as there was a jump in the complexity of tools may also have an associated leap in the evolution of language, as discussed in detail later.
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| Oldowan tool. Image taken from Wikimedia commons . |
However, the development of Acheulean tools produced additional activity in the right hemisphere, including Brodmann area 45 a region associated with high-level hierarchical cognition, such as certain processes language. This could suggest the possibility that during the late Acheulean period there is also a more complex language processing.
However, these results were not conclusive in that regard, as it was necessary to rule out the possibility that an increase in the activity of the right hemisphere involve simply an increase in the demands of control of grip. Hence then, it was necessary to characterize and compare the complexity of the movements performed during the development of both types of tools.
| To answer this question was necessary, in addition to designing the chidÃsimo cybergloves-devise a statistical method that allowed them to rely on the results, even considering the complexity of other tasks performed in daily life as boxes and pull over small objects in a box. Aldo, Dietrich, Jan and Bruce found no differences in the complexity of the movements during the development of both types of tools. This attention is considering the differences between Oldowan lithic technology and the Acheulean. The authors suggest then that differences in brain activation observed during the development of both types of technology involve differences in behavioral organization of high level, rather than differences in response to the complexity of object manipulation. Therefore, during the early stages of human technological developments necessary cognitive abilities might be more related to perceptual and motor skills, while later stages may have been characterized by the existence of improved control mechanisms. Consequently, the observed increase in the activity of the right hemisphere during the development of Acheulean tools can be attributed to an increase in other functions. In theory, these functions would be related to, for example, the regulation of complex actions in sequence. For example, for proper weight loss of Acheulean biface is necessary that whoever is creating stop, turn and prepare the double-sided before striking again in order to achieve the desired shape and edge. This requires planning, organization and prioritization of activities to be performed. Similarly, the language prosodic (stress and intonation) requires the hierarchical integration of information over time. The fact that the regions involved in the development of tools and overlap on language production suggests the existence of not only media, if not functional features shared by both processes. This would imply then that the action of selection on the language or the development of tools might have favored the neural substrates of the other. Aldo's study, Dietrich, Jan and Bruce adds new elements to the proposal that the evolution of language and skills related to the development of tools may have gone hand in hand for most of the human evolution. Reference article: |
Faisal, A., Stout, D., Apel, J., & Bradley, B. (2010). The Manipulative Complexity of Lower Paleolithic Stone toolmaking PLoS ONE, 5 (11) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0013718
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