In another, a limpet shell was used as a scraper, resulting in a smooth edge. Szabo said these finding suggest humans were using shell, rather than stone as their raw material of choice. She said, this made sense because while Europe has high quality flint. East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Guinea generally have very poor quality stone, but a high diversity of marine mollusks. "The story is that stone tools should encapsulate the story of humanity," said Szabo. "But if we're an adaptable, flexible species, living in a range of habitats around the world from the subarctic to the humid tropics, then we should really expect to see a lot of variation in the way that humans are going about solving problems." Szabo said there has been some debate among archaeologists over what qualifies as good evidence for shell tools. She emphasizes shell does not fracture the same way as stone tools. Therefore they need to be analyzed using different protocols to those usually used to analyze stone tools. Szabo now plans to re-excavate the Indonesian site to obtain more samples and develop a robust methodology for analyzing shell tools. Related Links: Discovery News Blog: Archaeorama Katherine Szabo of the University of Wollongong in Australia |
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