Technologically mediated landscapes: Examining the adaptive benefit of the early Oldowan.

Tool production is intrinsically tied to the evolution of our species as it allows us to occupy nearly every environment on the planet.

The widespread production of sharp-edged tools known as the Oldowan, 2.6 million years ago, is regarded as a major adaptive leap as it may have fundamentally changed the ecology of our ancestors.

This major adaptative shift resulted in a change in diet, enhanced ecological versatility for a range of environments, and, ultimately, the proliferation of the human lineage across the globe.

However, it remains unclear if the emergence of Oldowan technologies resulted from a watershed innovation or if it represents a technological continuity of the tool repertoire of apes.

The OLAF project aims to determine the adaptive significance of the appearance of the Oldowan by implementing a new set of theoretical tools while shifting the scale of archaeological analysis from the site to a broader landscape level.

OLAF will use agent-based modeling to directly investigate the relationship between stone tool use, environmental factors, and site formation processes at the landscape scale and generate concurrent expectations for how hominin-environment interactions produce patterns in the archaeological record.

In parallel, we will reconstruct the portions of the Ledi Geraru (Ethiopia) research area where sediments have preserved the 2.6-million-year-old artifact and fossil-rich paleolandscape, over an area of 33 square kilometers.

Agent-based models that are tailored to local data, will validate, or reject predictions concerning mobility, diet, or space use.

OLAF will thus provide a comprehensive understanding of the tool-mediated foraging behaviors of the earliest Oldowan tool makers, allowing us to examine the adaptive benefits of tool use at the dawn of humanity.