Tools may dig up historical clues

Wednesday, 3 October 2007

A University of Alberta anthropologist has found thousands of ancient tools and artifacts left by early man in Iringa, Tanzania.

In 2006, associate professor Pam Willoughby, along with graduate students Pastory Bushozi and Katie Bittner, found 182kg of historical artifacts such as pottery, animal bones, and, most importantly, stone tools.

Willoughby first went to Tanzania in 2005 in search of rock shelters that ancient peoples would have used as instant housing over 200 000 years ago. She had hoped that these caves might contain the garbage left behind by our ancestors thousands of years ago, but when she arrived, she found artifacts literally covering the floor.

“The surface had pieces of pottery and iron from early smelting on it. [It] was just littered with artifacts,” Willoughby explained. “[However], my permit wasn’t for [that] region, but the next region over, so even though I saw stuff and took lots of pictures, I couldn’t collect anything.”

When she returned the next year, her intent was just to prove that artifacts were there so that she could get a grant and return later. However, she found so much in the 30 days of digging that another trip back has been put on hold until all of the artifacts could be properly documented and studied. This is due in large part to the stringent rules of the Tanzanian government, which still owns the artifacts even though Willoughby found and collected the them.

“We have [the artifacts] on loan for, in theory, as long as we want, but the understanding is that we don’t go back to get more until we return [the ones we’ve already taken],” Willoughby explained.

The artifacts that Willoughby brought back to the U of A range in age from over 100 000 years old—the Middle Stone Age—to about 3000 years old, in the period known as the Iron Age. Although the focus of the study is on Middle Stone Age artifacts, the newer ones, because they lie on top, must also be collected and analyzed.

Through her work, Willoughby hopes to answer two pressing issues: first, how the tools of the Later Stone Age emerged from the larger, earlier type; and second, what prevented the tools’ makers, our ancestral Homo Sapiens, from leaving Africa.

According to Willoughby, although they had the technology to make these tools more than 100 000 years ago, they didn’t emerge from Africa until only 40–60 000 years ago.

With those questions in mind, Willoughby hopes to return next year to collect and study more samples and continue her work answering the questions of the past.

“In theory, we’re looking for the magical, hypothetical site where [Middle Stone Age tools] change into [Later Stone Age tools],” Willoughby explained. “I think one of our sites, Mlambalasi, could be that site.”

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