Scientist Chips Away at Secrets of Stone Age

A scientist who tried to duplicate the living methods of a Stone Age ape-man says his hardest task was cutting up an elephant carcass with small, sharpened stones.

“It’s like cutting through a tire,” archeologist Nicholas Toth, who spent five years in East Africa, said recently. “It’s pretty exhausting.”

Toth, 32, chief archeologist of the Institute of Human Origins and a research fellow at the University of California at Berkeley, said the experience produced new insights into the life of man’s ancestors 2 million years ago.

The Berkeley researcher was in Africa in 1977-80 and again in 1982.

The primary tools used by the ape-man were probably small rock chips rather than large ones, he said. Large rocks were probably mostly used as sources for very sharp flake tools.

Rock-Chip Tools

The scientist used thousands of rock-chip tools he fashioned to butcher animals, cut wood and harvest grasses on the savannah of East Africa in an effort to find out how early man lived.

“The most useful tools were these little slivers,” Toth said.

He said microscopic examination showed that the edges of flakes found at Stone Age sites had polished finishes similar to those developed on the rock chips he used.

Another finding, he said, was that most early stone users were right-handed, a trait found only in humans. He said chipping patterns on the tools indicated which hand wielded the tools.

He said his discoveries add to a dramatic increase of knowledge in the past decade about the Early Stone Age.

“It is becoming much more of a precise science now,” Toth said. “Ten years ago, we really didn’t have a picture of how early stone tools were used. You can look at the prehistoric sites, but it often doesn’t make a whole lot of sense until you actually get down and do the experimentation.”