A tiny sliver of crystal quartz no larger than a raisin has shed extraordinary new light on the unique adaptations that set humans apart from all other primates.
Though tool-use has long been hailed as trademark of humanity, we’re not the only species to do this; chimpanzees and macaques, for example, are known to use rocks to smash apart hard objects such as nuts or oyster shells.
But, our fixation on miniaturization is unlike anything seen elsewhere in the primate family tree.
Experts say the crystal quartz flake found at Boomplaas Cave in South Africa and previously dismissed as waste was likely a poisoned arrowhead used to take down small prey such as hares and tortoises 17,000 years ago.
The remarkable discovery of the tiny tool indicates our ancestors were not simple-minded brutes, but ‘masters of aerodynamics,’ highlighting a key milestone in human evolution.
A tiny sliver of crystal quartz no larger than a raisin has shed extraordinary new light on the unique adaptations that set humans apart from all other primates. According to the researcher, this tip could have been laced with poison and affixed to an arrow shaft
Researchers have traced the miniaturization of technology as far back as 2.6 million years ago.
The development of high-speed weaponry, such as the bow and arrow, played a key role in changing tool size.
These weapons required lightweight stone tips in order to succeed.
Changing climate and scarcity of resources also played a role, researchers say.
Human ancestors may have started making tools smaller and more efficient as a way to conserve their resources.
Toward the end of the Ice Age, humans were also hunting smaller prey, such as hares and tortoises.
Smaller tools allowed them to be mobile and take down prey with greater efficiency.
Hominin technology experienced at least three waves of miniaturization, with the first occurring at about 2.6 million years ago, according to the researchers behind a new study published to the journal Evolutionary Anthropology.
And, it’s a trend that still dominates our culture today.
‘It’s a need that we’ve been perennially faced with and driven by,’ says lead author Justin Pargeter, an anthropologist at Emory University. ‘Miniaturization is the thing that we do.’
According to Pargeter, evidence of tiny stone tools can be found throughout the archaeological record. Many of these tools measure less than an inch in length.
In the first miniaturization spike, human ancestors two million years ago used stone flakes to cut, slice, and pierce – tasks they previously relied on their teeth or fingernails for.
In a second surge after 100,000 years ago, the development of the bow and arrow and other forms of high-speed weaponry necessitated light-weight stone components.
And, toward the end of the last Ice Age 17,000 years ago, humans were forced to adapt to a changing climate and had to conserve their resources, including rocks used to make tools.
‘When other apes used stone tools, they chose to go big and stayed in the forests where they evolved,’ says co-author John Shea, professor of anthropology at Stony Brook University.
‘Hominins chose to go small, went everywhere, and transformed otherwise hostile habitats to suit our changing needs.’
The iconic, tear-drop shaped hand axe (left) required a large toolkit to produce (left), in contrast to a toolkit for tiny flakes. Examples of miniaturized stone tools (right) have appeared over the last 2.6 million years, showing mastery of aerodynamics
Until Pargeter rediscovered the tiny quartz tool, it sat in storage at the Iziko Museum in Cape Town after it was collected with other artifacts from Boomplaas
‘It was diminutive, about the size of a small raisin, and weighed less than half a penny,’ Pargeter said.
‘You could literally blow it off your finger.’
‘It suddenly occurred to me that archaeologists may have missed a major component of our stone tool record,’ Pargeter says.
‘In our desire to make “big”
