The blade-tool industries of normal size we talked about earlier spread from Europe to central Siberia. We noted that blade tools were made in western Asia too, and early, although Professor Garrod is no longer sure that the whole tradition originated in the Near East. If you look again at my chart ([p. 72]) you will note that in western Asia I list some of the names of the western European industries, but with the qualification “-like” (for example, “Gravettian-like”). The western Asiatic blade-tool industries do vaguely recall some aspects of those of western Europe, but we would probably be better off if we used completely local names for them. The “Emiran” of my chart is such an example; its industry includes a long spike-like blade point which has no western European counterpart.
When we last spoke of Africa ([p. 66]), I told you that stone tools there were continuing in the Levalloisian flake tradition, and were becoming smaller. At some time during this process, two new tool types appeared in northern Africa: one was the Aterian point with a tang ([p. 67]), and the other was a sort of “laurel leaf” point, called the “Sbaikian.” These two tool types were both produced from flakes. The Sbaikian points, especially, are roughly similar to some of the Solutrean points of Europe. It has been suggested that both the Sbaikian and Aterian points may be seen on their way to France through their appearance in the Spanish cave deposits of Parpallo, but there is also a rival “pre-Solutrean” in central Europe. We still do not know whether there was any contact between the makers of these north African tools and the Solutrean tool-makers. What does seem clear is that the blade-tool tradition itself arrived late in northern Africa.
NETHER AFRICA
Blade tools and “laurel leaf” points and some other probably late stone tool types also appear in central and southern Africa. There are geometric microliths on bladelets and even some coarse pottery in east Africa. There is as yet no good way of telling just where these items belong in time; in broad geological terms they are “late.” Some people have guessed that they are as early as similar European and Near Eastern examples, but I doubt it. The makers of small-sized Levalloisian flake tools occupied much of Africa until very late in time.
THE FAR EAST
India and the Far East still seem to be going their own way. In India, some blade tools have been found. These are not well dated, save that we believe they must be post-Pleistocene. In the Far East it looks as if the old chopper-tool tradition was still continuing. For Burma, Dr. Movius feels this is fairly certain; for China he feels even more certain. Actually, we know very little about the Far East at about the time of the last glaciation. This is a shame, too, as you will soon agree.
THE NEW WORLD BECOMES INHABITED
At some time toward the end of the last great glaciation—almost certainly after 20,000 years ago—people began to move over Bering Strait, from Asia into America. As you know, the American Indians have been assumed to be basically Mongoloids. New studies of blood group types make this somewhat uncertain, but there is no doubt that the ancestors of the American Indians came from Asia.
The stone-tool traditions of Europe, Africa, the Near and Middle East, and central Siberia, did not move into the New World. With only a very few special or late exceptions, there are no core-bifaces, flakes, or blade tools of the Old World. Such things just haven’t been found here.
This is why I say it’s a shame we don’t know more of the end of the chopper-tool tradition in the Far East. According to Weidenreich, the Mongoloids were in the Far East long before the end of the last glaciation. If the genetics of the blood group types do demand a non-Mongoloid ancestry for the American Indians, who else may have been in the Far East 25,000 years ago? We know a little about the habits for making stone tools which these first people brought with them, and these habits don’t conform with those of the western Old World. We’d better keep our eyes open for whatever happened to the end of the chopper-tool tradition in northern China; already there are hints that it lasted late there. Also we should watch future excavations in eastern Siberia. Perhaps we shall find the chopper-tool tradition spreading up that far.