The advent of bone technology in Africa is often associated with behavioral modernity that began sometime in the Middle Stone Age. Yet, small numbers of bone tools are known from Early Pleistocene sites in East and South Africa, complicating our understanding of the evolutionary significance of osseous technologies. These early bone tools vary geographically, with those in South Africa indicating use in foraging activities such as termite extraction and those in East Africa intentionally shaped in a manner similar to lithic tool manufacture, leading some to infer multiple hominin species were responsible for bone technology in these regions, with Paranthropus robustus assumed to be the maker of South African bone tools and Homo erectus responsible for those in East Africa. Here, we present on an assemblage of 52 supposed bone tools primarily from Beds III and IV, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, that was excavated by Mary Leakey in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but was only partially published and was never studied in detail from a taphonomic perspective. The majority of the sites from which the tools were recovered were deposited when only H. erectus is known to have existed in the region, potentially allowing a direct link between this fossil hominin and bone technology. Our analysis confirms at least six bone tools in the assemblage, the majority of which are intentionally flaked large mammal bones. However, one of the tools is a preform of the oldest barbed bone point known to exist anywhere in the world and pushes back the initial appearance of this technology by 700 kyr.

非洲骨骼技术的出现通常与始于中石器时代的行为现代性有关。然而，在东部和南非的早更新世遗址中已知少量骨骼工具，这使我们对骨骼技术进化意义的理解变得复杂。这些早期的骨骼工具在地理上各不相同，南非的那些表明用于觅食活动，例如白蚁提取，而东非的那些故意以类似于石器制造的方式塑造，导致一些人推断多种人类物种负责这些地区，其中粗壮副人猿被认为是南非骨骼工具和直立人的制造者负责东非的那些人。在这里，我们展示了主要来自坦桑尼亚奥杜威峡谷的床 III 和 IV 的 52 种假定骨骼工具的组合，这些工具由 Mary Leakey 在 1960 年代末和 1970 年代初出土，但仅部分出版，从未从语音学的观点。大多数回收工具的地点都是在只有直立人已知该地区存在过，这可能使这种古人类化石与骨骼技术之间存在直接联系。我们的分析证实组合中至少有六个骨骼工具，其中大部分是故意剥落的大型哺乳动物骨骼。然而，其中一个工具是世界上已知存在的最古老的带刺骨尖的预制件，并将这项技术的最初出现推迟了 700 基尔。