What Do Stones, Elephants, and Water Have In Common?
Researchers from Tel Aviv University have proposed a model that may explain the proximity of stone quarries, elephants, and bodies of water
When archaeologists come across ancient living spaces, a primary question they will ask is, ‘Why here?’
For a modern person, where they choose to live in an area is often determined by their proximity to work, grocery stores, and retail stores. If one has children, one considers areas with schools; as a pet owner, you look for a place with a garden or a nearby park.
So, what informed early hominins’ (referring to modern and extinct human species) choices of where they lived and where they sourced the stone with which they made their tools?
The Triad Model
A new model, called the triad model, was proposed by Tel Aviv University (Israel) researchers. They looked for the answer by examining a variety of Lower Palaeolithic (3.3 million to 300 thousand years ago) sites and paleolithic stone quarries in Galilee, Israel.
They argue that while scholars often make the connections between butchery sites and stone tools, they usually neglect to examine the quarry from which these stone tools were sourced and their relation to megafaunal butchery sites.
Many paleolithic stone quarries were revisited for generations, and they were used to procure and produce the necessary stone tools these hominins needed for daily life. But why these specific locales when the stone can be found elsewhere? What made these stone quarries special?
The researchers postulate that the stone quarries’ immediate proximity to water sources and elephant butchery sites informed hominins’ choice of quarries.
The Almighty Elephant and the Hominin
Both hominins and elephants require a steady supply of water. Lower Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers were likely aware that elephant tracks led to water sources and that these elephants would reuse the same trackways for generations. These trackways would then provide the lower paleolithic hunter-gatherers with a reliable means of finding water and a predictable food source that would migrate through the area annually.
Additionally, given an elephant’s enormous weight and size, butchering or scavenging one would ensure a high-energy food capable of sustaining a group of hominins whose relatively large brain and body required a lot of calories to maintain. In a time before agriculture, pastoralism, and even cooking, a large animal like an elephant would have been a very prized resource.
However, the very size and weight of the prized animals also made transporting the obtained resources increasingly difficult. It is easy to carry a butchered antelope back to camp, even if that camp is a few kilometers away; however, attaining all the resources required from a butchered elephant would pose a far greater challenge.
Both archaeological and ethnographic studies indicate that people would need to butcher the animal at the procurement site and bring the spoils (meat, bone, ivory, etc.) back to camp, which meant the camp had to be close to the procurement site.
Once an elephant was successfully hunted or scavenged, the next challenge was butchering it. Lower paleolithic hunter-gatherers needed an adequate stone tool kit to replace when lost, broken, or dull/blunted.
This, in turn, required a nearby stone quarry to procure the raw material.
The researchers suggest that these lower paleolithic hunter-gatherers would choose a nexus between a nearby water source necessary for hominin life, a stone quarry for tool production, and a known migratory/grazing area of elephants.
Proving the Postulated
Various sites show evidence of hominin-elephant cohabitation, these sites include (but are not limited to) the palaeolithic sites of Schöningen (Germany), Ileret (Kenya), and Tora-Piccilli (Italy).
However, the researchers needed sites that evidenced the triad model to support their claims.
To do this, they looked into archaeological sites within Israel, specifically within the Eastern Galilee, adjacent to the Jordan Rift Valley. They found sites that perfectly exemplify the connection between elephants, stone, and water.
The area served as a significant route connecting Africa and Eurasia during the Pleistocene, with evidence of hominin occupation dating as far back as 1.4 million years.
The lower paleolithic sites in the area are rich in stone-tool assemblages and elephant remains. Additionally, various flint extraction and reduction (Flint E&R) complexes are located within a day’s walk of the Jordan Rift Valley.
Researchers analysed three sites in particular, Gesher Benot Ya’akov, Ma’ayan Barukh and Ubeidiya, to support their claims. All three sites are located in the northernmost segment of the Dead Sea Rift, near the modern Sea of Galilee.
Currently, Gesher Benot Ya’akov is situated on the banks of the Upper Jordan River; however, during the middle Pleistocene, when the site was occupied, it was located on the banks of a palaeo-lake, Hula Lake. It yielded butchered elephant remains, flint, and basalt artifacts and was situated between elephant herds' spring and summer grazing areas.
Ma’ayan Barukh and Ubeidiya were once similarly situated on the banks of lakes and within a day’s walk of the stone quarries. The difference was that Ma’ayan Barukh was closer to the summer grazing areas of elephants, while Ubeidiya was closer to spring grazing areas.
Each site was perfectly positioned so that no one resource would be too far away. The nearby elephant herds provided a regular and predictable source of food.
If the triad model holds, it would explain why Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers would revisit the same stone quarries for decades, perhaps even centuries, when other stone resources were available elsewhere. Because those stone quarries were ideally situated in relation to all the other resources the hominins needed to survive.
The researchers propose that the triad model could be implemented at other megafaunal sites too, such as Gombore II-2, Melka Kunture in Ethiopia, where a hippo butchering site was discovered along the shores of a lake and with evidence of flint knapping activity. Another site where the triad model could apply is the site of Nadaouilyeh Ain Askar in Syria, where camel bones and flint handaxes were found near Pleistocene springs and flint outcrops.
Suppose further research into these sites and surrounding sites is done. In that case, a reoccurring pattern can be seen in settlements seemingly always situated at the nexus of these three vital resources: water, megafauna and stone.
The triad model attempts to answer the previously enigmatic question: why were some stone quarries used for generations when others existed elsewhere? Developed based on long-term investigations of archaeological sites within Galilee. It integrates knowledge on the positioning of significant stone quarries and Lower Paleolithic hominin dependency on elephants and water to better understand early hominin adaption, settlement patterns, and environmental interactions.
If the model holds beyond Galilee, it could rewrite our understanding of how and why hominids chose to settle or migrate into areas and what strategies they adopted to survive in an otherwise hostile world.
References
- Finkel, M. and Barkai, R., 2024. Quarries as Places of Significance in the Lower Paleolithic Holy Triad of Elephants, Water, and Stone. Archaeologies, p.1–30.
