JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA—A new study of 71,000-year-old stone tools from Sibudu and Blombos, two South African archaeological sites that are more than 600 miles apart, shows that these two groups of people used similar types of tools, but made them differently and from different materials. Lyn Wadley of the University of the Witwatersrand and an international team of scientists examined two types of Middle Stone Age tools—Still Bay and Howiesons Poort—from the two sites. The two sets of Howiesons Poort tools were crafted in a similar pattern that may have been socially transmitted by teaching and verbal instruction. But the team concluded that although similar, the differences between the Still Bay-type tools from Sibudu and Blombos suggest that the toolmakers from the two sites did not share the same rules and traditions. “This was not the case at 65,000 years ago when similarities in stone tool making suggest that similar cultural traditions spread across South Africa,” Wadley said in a press release. To read about the oldest stone tools yet discovered, go to "The First Toolkit."
