uniface
Silver Member
There is a pretty common misconception among people interested in artifacts that only bifaces (flaked on both sides) with more or less recognizable forms are really "artifacts" and everything else "just rocks."
I'm here to point out that this idea completely collapses when an attempt is made to apply it to tools made previously to the very end of the Pleistocene (the "ice age"), anywhere. In fact, and completely unsuspected by most people in the Western Hemisphere in general, elaborate categories exist of flaked stone tools have been compiled by archaeologists, made and used over the course of a much longer time than people are supposed to have been here -- and they look nothing like the hafted points, knives and scrapers we assume were the only ones that were "real" artifacts.
A useful little teaser bearing on this appeared this morning:
https://www.sott.net/article/408923...Neanderthal-workshop-with-17000-flint-objects
Notice also (in the picture) the number of round, water-worn pebbles found in association with these.
The point isn't that there were the Neanderthals here who made these; it's that the things they left for us to find were, and no doubt about it, tools. That being the case, the argument that similarly unsophisticated items found here could not have been tools collapses.
Anyone interested could easily start by looking up (search term) Mousterian and clicking on Images. From there, one thing leads to another.
FWIW
I'm here to point out that this idea completely collapses when an attempt is made to apply it to tools made previously to the very end of the Pleistocene (the "ice age"), anywhere. In fact, and completely unsuspected by most people in the Western Hemisphere in general, elaborate categories exist of flaked stone tools have been compiled by archaeologists, made and used over the course of a much longer time than people are supposed to have been here -- and they look nothing like the hafted points, knives and scrapers we assume were the only ones that were "real" artifacts.
A useful little teaser bearing on this appeared this morning:
https://www.sott.net/article/408923...Neanderthal-workshop-with-17000-flint-objects
Notice also (in the picture) the number of round, water-worn pebbles found in association with these.
The point isn't that there were the Neanderthals here who made these; it's that the things they left for us to find were, and no doubt about it, tools. That being the case, the argument that similarly unsophisticated items found here could not have been tools collapses.
Anyone interested could easily start by looking up (search term) Mousterian and clicking on Images. From there, one thing leads to another.
FWIW
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