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Full-Text Articles in Biological and Physical Anthropology
Oldowan Tool Behaviors Through Time On The Homa Peninsula, Kenya, Emma M. Finestone
Oldowan Tool Behaviors Through Time On The Homa Peninsula, Kenya, Emma M. Finestone
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
The adaptive significance of tool use to genus Homo is a central theme in human origins. However, what we know from the early Oldowan sites suggests that persistent technology may have begun as an opportunistic behavior with minimal investment, rather than a habitual and widespread adaptive revolution. This dissertation seeks to investigate investment in Oldowan tool production on the Homa Peninsula, Kenya, considering raw material selection, transport, and lithic production at two newly discovered Oldowan localities: Nyayanga (ca. 2.6 Ma) and Sare River (ca. 1.7 Ma).
The first section of this dissertation outlines a method that enables the comparison of …
Climate, Ecology, And Human Evolution During The Plio-Pleistocene, Scott Adam Blumenthal
Climate, Ecology, And Human Evolution During The Plio-Pleistocene, Scott Adam Blumenthal
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
A major goal of paleoanthropology is to identify the selective pressures associated with hominin biological and behavioral evolution, yet establishing cause-effect relationships between climate, ecology, and human evolution remains problematic. This dissertation seeks to investigate hominin paleoecology in eastern Africa by reconstructing aspects of climate and ecology using stable isotope analysis.
The first part of this dissertation is focused on the ecology of primates and hominins. Modern tropical African ecosystems provide a useful model for understanding the ecological correlates of isotopic variation in the fossil record, and living primates provide a useful model for understanding the ecological significance of isotopic …