Stone survives. Bone sometimes survives. Wood almost never does. Fibers, plants, leather, cordage rarely survive outside exceptional conditions. For most of human history, perishables were primary. We're seeing only durable scraps.
Archaeological record heavily biased toward stone; perishable materials rarely survive from deep prehistory
Key facts
- Stone survives in archaeological record; bone sometimes survives; wood almost never does
- Fibers, plants, leather, cordage vanish completely
- For most of human history, perishable materials were likely primary medium of behavior
- Shelters were made of wood and vegetation; knowledge lived in memory, speech, and practice, not stone
- Archaeological record massively biased towards simplest, most durable traces of human life
- Pleistocene was climatically unstable with repeated glacial cycles, sea level changes, and landscape reshaping that wiped clean entire regions
- Long stretches of apparent silence in prehistoric record represent only rarest accidents of survival, not absence of activity
Sources
Scientists Discover Oldest Evidence of Stone Tool Use and Meat ...calacademy.org
New finds from Ethiopia push tool use back by almost a million years; Fossils provide the first evidence that Lucy's species used stone tools to butcher meat.
Perishable Material Culture in Prehistory: Investigating the Missing ...researchgate.net
Perishable organic raw materials such as wood, plant fibres, and skins have been widely used since the time of the earliest human groups.
The Oldest String Ever Found May Have Been Made By Neanderthalswamu.org
Bits of twisted plant fibers found on a stone tool show that Neanderthals used sophisticated yarns and cords.
Oregon cave holds 12,000-year-old sewn materials - HPPR.orghppr.org
Oregon caves housed evidence of sewn materials from the end of the last Ice Age.
Cro-Magnon - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
Cro-Magnons or European early modern humans (EEMH) were the first early modern humans (Homo sapiens) to settle in Europe and Siberia, migrating from Western ...
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