Contact: Dann Hayes, Director of Media Relations, 641/269-4834 or at home at 641/236-9014, or Grant McCall at (314) 261-8432 or (314) 429-6433 and by cell phone at (314) 422-2603 or at [email protected].
To contact Manuel Dominguez-Rodrigo, associate professor of prehistory and archaeology, Universite Complutense de Madrid, Spain, from December 17 to 25, call (732) 933-0596, or by email at [email protected].
December 15, 2000
Student discovers artifacts that suggest early humans more widely dispersed throughout Africa
GRINNELL, Iowa -- A recent discovery in Namibia of early human stone tools by a Grinnell College anthropology student has a leading anthropologist suggesting that scientists might have to reevaluate what they know about "the oldest periods in human evolution" in Africa.
While researching and examining an extinct watercourse in the Kaudom National Park, Namibia, in Southwestern Africa, Grant McCall, a 20-year-old Grinnell College student from St. Louis, unearthed one of the earliest documented early stone age sites in the country.
Manuel Dominguez-Rodrigo, associate professor of prehistory and archaeology, Universite Complutense de Madrid, Spain, said that "when all the proper analyses are made, the wealth of information Grant is going to obtain will be remarkable for understanding how early humans lived."
The site, according to Goodman Gwasira, curator of archeology at the National Museum of Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia, "could be a very important discovery."
Estimated from 1.7 to 1.9 million years old, the ancient stone tools were found in the Kaudom National Park, a 3,840 square kilometer range of wilderness and dry Savannah woodland in the remote Kavango region on the Kalahari rim of Namibia. Anthropologists have compared the tools to similar items found at Sterkfontein, South Africa, and Olduvai, Tanzania, both well-known locales for early human habitation.
The discovery, says Dominguez-Rodrigo, a well-known anthropologist who has researched the Tanzanian Acheulian sites in Africa, was in an area where there had been no previous evidence that people had existed in the region.
"So far, most of our evidence for the oldest periods in human evolution come from East Africa," Dominguez-Rodrigo said. "This discovery in Namibia adds important information regarding early human dispersal in Africa. The result could be a major contribution towards understanding early human activities and the intellectual skills of our ancestors."
According to McCall, the artifacts are so old, "You can't attribute them to true humans." They were more likely some combination of Homo habilis and Homo erectus.
"I think the discovery will expand our understanding of where early Hominids were living and is comparable to the Rift Valley," McCall said, adding that the Rift Valley, which runs through Ethiopia and Mozambique in Eastern Africa, has a large number of early human excavation sites.
"The real virtue of the site is that it's in an area relatively unexamined," McCall said. It is so untouched that he and his co-workers found artifacts lying in the dirt roadway near the site. "New artifacts turned up in the roadway every day---probably due to the vibrations caused by park rangers passing through in various vehicles," he said.
With a waterhole nearby, McCall estimated the site had been through five or six major periods of occupation. "Basically, there is repeated use of the same place," he said. "The finds imply the use of the specific area for exploitation of a certain resource, such as the waterhole."
Researchers have seemingly ignored the region because the acidic soil in the area means that human remains aren't commonly found there, he said. The potential dangers of the area might also have been a concern. Elephants, leopards, hyenas, and lions are just a few of the animal species that still use the water hole.
Web Address: http://www.grinnell.edu/
For high resolution scanned images, please go tohttp://www.grinnell.edu/images/namibia/highres/index.htmFor high resolution location maps, please go tohttp://www.grinnell.edu/images/namibia/map/index.htmNational Museum of Namibia: http://www.natmus.cul.na/newindex.html
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