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PhDs struggle to master caveman technology

November 15, 2005

UNE archaeologist Mark MooreThe “primitive” stone tools of our ancestors apparently required a lot of brain power to make.

A group of academics at The University of New England struggled to reproduce even the simplest stone tools at a workshop organised by the university's multi-disciplinary Language and Cognition Research Centre. They were attempting to establish what sort of cognitive abilities were required to produce basic stone tools of the type used by Homo floresiensis, the hobbit-like hominid discovered by UNE researchers on the Indonesian island of Liang Bua. Some scientists have suggested that making such tools requires little more skill than that possessed by the average ape.

This was not the experience of those who participated in the workshop, however.

“It looks easy, but once you have the lump of stone in your hands, it's very hard,” said Dorothea Cogill-Koez, a postdoctoral fellow at UNE's School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures. Holding up a jagged sliver of quartz, she said, “I'm really proud of this piece, for instance. It mightn't look like much, but it's actually quite sharp. It can cut meat.”

Many of her colleagues – linguists and psychologists, PhDs all – were less successful, and managed to produce more bashed thumbs and sliced fingers than usable stone tools. Their instructor, archaeologist Mark Moore, said it had taken him about eight years to master the art.

“You have to have a good understanding of geometry,” Mr Moore said. “You have to know where to hit, how to hit, how hard to hit, and you have to know which stones to use.”

The hobbits of Flores were experts at striking flakes from stones, he said, and artifacts recovered from Indonesia showed they had “all the essentials of stone toolmaking down pat”. Comparisons with chimpanzees seriously underestimated the hobbits' cognitive abilities, he said, as demonstrated by the difficulty today's humans had in reproducing their tool kit.

“The people who have come to that conclusion [that stone toolmaking is not cognitively intensive] tend to be people who have never actually tried it themselves,” he said.

Mr Moore has received an Australian Research Council grant to compare the stone tools of Homo floresiensis with those of Australian Aboriginals. Australia was only ever colonised by modern humans, giving him a benchmark against which to gauge the cognitive abilities of the hobbits.

So is there hope for our struggling academics?

“Floresiensis was much better at making stone tools than any of the academics that attended the workshop,” Mr Moore said. “If they applied themselves, then maybe they could reach the level of Homo floresiensis in a couple of months. But they still have a ways to go, despite their PhDs.”

For more information, contact Mark Moore on (02) 6773 5075 or Leon Braun (UNE Public Relations) on (02) 6773 3771. A photograph is available to accompany this story.

Posted by Leon Braun at November 15, 2005 10:36 AM