The big deal about blades: Laminar technologies and human evolution

Despite the rapid expansion of archaeological knowledge of the Paleolithic over the past several decades, some generalized interpretive frameworks inh erited from previous generations of researchers are remarkably tenacious. O ne of the most persistent of these is the assumed correlation between blade technologies, Upper Paleolithic industries, and anatomically (and behavior ally) modern humans. In this paper, we review some of the evidence for the production of early blade technologies in Eurasia and Africa dating to the late Lower and the Middle Paleolithic. The basic techniques for blade produ ction appeared thousands of years before the Upper Paleolithic, and there i s no justification for linking blades per se to any particular aspect of ho minid anatomy or to any major change in the behavioral capacities of homini ds. It is true that blades came to dominate the archaeological records of w estern Eurasia and Africa after 40,000 years ago, perhaps as a consequence of increasing reliance on complex composite tools during the Upper Paleolit hic. At the same time, evidence from other regions of the world demonstrate s that evolutionary trends in Pleistocene Eurasia were historically conting ent and not universal.