Saturday 30 October 2010

Pressure flaking from Africa 75,000 years ago

Pressure flaking originated not in Europe, but in Africa some 75,000 years ago in the Palaelithic period.  That is the finding of new research by a team from University of Colorado.  The technique of pressure-flaking, which scientists previously thought was invented in Europe some 20,000 years ago, involves using an animal bone or some other object to exert pressure near the edge of a stone piece and precisely carve out a small flake.
Researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder examined stone tools dating from the Middle Stone Age, some 75,000 years ago, from Blombos Cave in what is now South Africa.

Read the full story on Discovery.com here:-
http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/stone-age-tools-africa.html

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