How do archeologists know that old tools they find were made by Homosapiens and not another species of homonid?
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Usually when they find tools, they also find bones of the people using them. In caves or nearby in burial sites. They use those bones to determine the classification for the people that were using the tools.
It’s not 100% accurate but it’s pretty close.
Tools are found in Graves and in known cave dwellers caves, so tools found outside of those situations can be cross referenced. In cases of multiple use caves there is little overlap so where they are in the layers is indicative of the time made. And finally in a mixed use cave they are using context clues and best guess scenario. Overall it is inexact and bound to be wrong on some.
Archaeologists find tools with skeletons and conclude that the skeletons were the users and makers. That’s a good bet if they find similar tools with similar sets of skeletons in different places.
When they find tools in isolation, they compare it to other tools and assume it was made by whatever hominid in the area was already known to use that tool.
Since tool use seems to only go back about 2 million years, that imposes some limits on the particular hominid species that could have made them. Often it’s pretty clear simply by the location of the find the era and hominid types present in the time period.
Archaeologist here! If another archaeologist wants to correct me please do; I’ve been out of the field for a few years.
What the other two comments said, but also;
Most tools can be categorized based on features and location and cross referenced to a catalogue of previously identified tools. Ie. A Clovis point will look drastically different from a plains point. This is a good visual https://relicrecord.com/blog/projectile-point-identification-guide/
We also use other indicators as tools are typically found with other items in the site. Bones, jewellery, ritual items, ceramics, plant matter, wood.
We can date these as well, especially organic items via carbon dating, dendrochronology (using tree rings to date the wood), and comparative analysis of ceramics. We see different artistic styles throughout the evolution of cultures for art, jewellery, and ceramics and these occur at relatively specific periods. I didn’t study bioarchaeology, but as I understand it there’s also the ability to date via the mitochondria – but this is outside my experience and knowledge, I’ve just heard of it in passing.
Through paleoethnobotany techniques we can analyze plant cells and learn about the contemporary plant life that may have also differed in time periods.
Usewear would be another indicator. Through microscopic analysis we can analyze what’s basically the fingerprint of the tool; the traces indicating what it was used on. Depending on the culture and their known diet, we can also use this to date tools.
Other homonids did make tools, like Homo Habilis who made some of the earliest tools (known as Olduvan Complex tools). The Acheulean complex followed this. These are both fairly simplistic tool styles, using cores (ie. Larger rocks with little working) or primary flakes (hit two stones together, first flake that comes off the core is a primary flake) as hammerstones, scrapers, and simplistic knives. Oftentimes these older pieces are also made from more quartz heavy rocks (in my experience – I’m in western Canada, this could and likely does differ elsewhere), whereas later dated tools are made from stones that can achieve a much finer point and blade, ie. Obsidian and chert (note: what we call chert is different than what geologists would call chert. Don’t ask me how; not a geologist lol). This is very simplified though, as later cultures still used cores, primary flakes, and high quartz content stones, they just also used more processed tools.
The materials used will also indicate cultural complexity. Obsidian is fascinating in North america; its use was incredibly widespread but the sources of it are less so. This is one way we know of a trade network spanning the north to south americas.
Soil stratigraphy (the soil layers) could also be used to help, but it’s less reliable thanks to things like mudslides.
So we would identify tools based on context in the site, geographic location, material, complexity, and other cultural items found within the site.
None of this is set in stone (ha!) though. Since I graduated (2016) we’ve seen a pushback in date of North American habitation via Clovis point dating. We also don’t have a ton of evidence for early homo species, or pre homo species (ie. Australopithecus) compared to homo sapiens/Neanderthals. It’s possible that coexisting species may have traded tools, learned techniques from one another, or that tools may be dated wrong.
If you want to learn more, learning about flint knapping is a very fun hobby. I’ll also edit this with the title of a book I use frequently for info on lithics (stone tools) when I’m home.
Other archaeologist here. I work on pretty old stuff (around 50k-500k years old) in Southern Africa. The truth is that at least where I work we typically don’t know for sure what species made a particular assemblage of tools. Younger than 100k or so it’s a safe bet it’s sapiens, but when you go older to time periods when we know for sure that other human species were running around it’s very difficult if not impossible to determine a species unless tools are found in direct association with fossils. We have vastly higher numbers of artifacts that are *not* associated with fossils compared to ones that are.
In North or South America to date we have no evidence whatsoever of any non-sapiens species so we can be pretty damn sure it was us who made everything. In other places like Europe we have a fairly good idea of when sapiens got there, but there was definitely a period of overlap and coexistence with other species so it’s not always clear who made any
individual artifact. A good example would be the chattelperronian industry that was long thought to have been made by early sapiens in the region, but now is thought to have been made mostly by Neanderthals.
The big overarching point is that stone tools themselves don’t carry reliable markers of what species made them. We can only make hypotheses based on the evidence of what hominins we know were around, and when there were multiple types of hominin in the same area at the same time, it’s very difficult to tell.
u/cassious64 got excited and went way beyond explain like I’m 5. Making stone tools is a complex skill, and people usually make the same tools that their teachers made. When a type of tool is found with a type of human remains, archaeologists assume that the tools found alone came from the same type of person. There are archaeologists who make stone tools and butcher animals with them, so they have a really detailed understanding of the techniques that go into shaping them.
Early humans made tools according to simple patterns that didn’t change for thousands of generations. With more recent finds, archaeologists can be a little rigid in assuming that, for example, a certain style of pottery is *always* from one place, and that someone from another place never decided to copy it. But early hominids seem to have been pretty rigid about the stone tools they used- although they must have been creative and adaptable in other areas of their life in order to survive.
I’m not sure if your question is how do we know if particular tools were made by homo sapiens or if you are asking why we do not think other species of hominids made tools.
Hobo habilis made tools a million years before homo sapiens evolved.
Tool use, language, clothing, and controlled use of fire all existed before homo sapiens. Homo sapiens evolved because those existed and they allowed naked, big brained hominids to be successful.
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