A team led by Jeffrey Rose at the Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and the Evolution of Human Behavior (ICArEHB) of the UAlg has identified hundreds of stone tool manufacturing sites in southern Oman over the past 15 years. This region served as a crucial corridor for early ‘Homo sapiens’ migrations.
The analysis of environmental corrosion changes experienced by the stone tools over time revealed two distinct waves of migration, separated by thousands of years. The second wave is notable for an innovation: the creation of significantly smaller and more efficient stone tools during a period of severe aridity in Arabia.
“We discovered a story literally scattered across the desert floor,” says Jeffrey Rose, the study’s lead author, adding that the miniaturized tools “suggest a significant leap in creativity and problem-solving, potentially representing one of the first instances of our species finding a way out of an environmental crisis.”
The team applied methods akin to forensic research to study how desert conditions affect stone tools over millennia, according to the report.
“By observing the development of a surface mineral alteration on the artifacts known as patination, we could distinguish older artifacts from more recent ones, revealing two groups with radically different tool styles,” it specifies.
While both groups used the African technology known as ‘Levallois Nubian’, the first manufactured large, robust tools, whereas the second shifted to smaller, more standardized implements.
According to the researchers, the set of miniaturized tools emerged during a period when climate records show Arabia becoming more arid. This suggests that these smaller stone tips “could make weapons more effective in tough times, requiring less raw material and offering greater precision and penetration power in hunting.”
However, this innovation is not isolated, as similar miniaturization trends appeared worldwide around the same period, suggesting a broader change in human problem-solving capability.
“Oman’s position along the Southern Dispersal Route, which many scientists believe was the path for early humans leaving Africa, makes this discovery a key piece in that global transformation,” it emphasizes.
The research, published this month in the Journal of Palaeolithic Archaeology, provides new insights into how our ancestors developed the behavioral flexibility that later allowed them to colonize diverse environments worldwide.
The study involved researchers from institutions in Oman, Portugal, Czech Republic, Ukraine, the United States, and France, underscoring the international collaboration required to unravel humanity’s prehistoric past.
