Afarensis is a 3.5-2.8 million year old hominin from the Kada Hadar member of the Hadar formation in the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. He is approximately 41 inches tall, weighs approximately 60 pounds and has a cranial capacity of a whopping 410 cc (approximately). Afarensis is currently considered to be transitional between apes and humans and displays some traits of both. Since he spends a lot of time on the couch watching monster movies, some observers question whether he is an obligate biped (although no one has observed him climbing a tree). He also has a blog called 
Since there were a number of questions about the previous post on this subject I emailed Dr. Lyman some questions, which he was gracious enough to answer. My questions and his responses are below the fold.
1) What were the geographic areas used and when was the bow introduced into those areas?
We looked at collections from 3 archaeological sites; Verkamp Shelter in Missouri, Gatecliff Shelter in Nevada, and Mummy Cave in Wyoming. The generally agreed upon date for introduction of the bow and arrow into Nevada is about 1700 years ago (about 300 AD). Timing is about the same in Missouri and Wyoming.
2) What time ranges were covered?
There are no radiocarbon dates for the Verkamp Shelter collection but it seems to span the time period from about 5000 years ago until about 500 years ago. The Gatecliff Shelter material we studies spanned the time period 3500 years ago until about 300 years ago. The Mummy Cave collection spans the time period from about 9000 years ago until about 300 years ago.
3) John Shea, in an interesting article in Evolutionary Anthropology (Child's Play: Reflections on the Invisibility of Children in the Paleolithic Record [Volume 15:212-216]) talks about detecting novice flint knappers, possibly children learning to make tools) in the archaeological record, do you see anything like that in the material you studied?
We did not look for any trace of "novice" or "children" flint knappers as that was not our research question. (This one was mine, I didn't expect that would be part of the question, but one can always hope).
4) In addition to taphonomy, you are known for introducing more explicit evolutionary theory (such as cladistics) into archaeology. How much of an impact did this type of thinking have on the study?
I and my two co-authors have all used aspects of Darwinian theory to account for variation in the archaeological record. Cultural innovation and experimentation creates variation (like genetic mutation creates variant phenotypes), some kinds of which are selected against because they do not work well or do not work at all, other kinds are selected for (in a sense) because they do their intended jobs very well, so are replicated. But, as Darwin so astutely noted, variation is what selection must have in order to work and for evolution by natural selection to work.
Humanities & Social Science
Comments
I responded in a blog entry.
Posted by: Martin R | June 17, 2008 2:22 PM
Your remark on cultural evolution in anthropology suggests to me that you might be interested by historian George Basalla's book "The Evolution of Technology".
Posted by: abb3w | June 17, 2008 3:03 PM
speaking on the evolution of technology, one should first inquire abiut the collection of artifacts found recently in indiana. a full blown lavellois tool industry complete with cores, exhousted core tools, backed blades, lavellois points of all sizes, hand axes, spear points burins, scrapers, denticulates, choppers and cleavers, and ochre pencils in red, yellow, and black. virtually every tool in Borde's lower and middle paleolithic typeology all found at an eroded quarry site. bison bone tools as well as some yet unidentified bones along with a now extinct pig skull that has not been in the area for over 5000 years minimum. the tools are mousterian in appearance and style. definitely not like any known american paleolithic assemblage. quite possibly the earliest identifiable stone tool technology found yet in the u.s. the scholars should definitely look at this collection that is made up of thousands of tools that are not the least bit ambiguous as far as the technology used to produce them. quite possibly the american neanderthal collection.
Posted by: rick doninger | June 17, 2008 4:49 PM
Call me skeptical...
Posted by: afarensis, FCD | June 17, 2008 7:44 PM
What?? What is the name of the site in Indiana? Who carried out the excavations and when is this study going to be published?
Posted by: Dave | June 17, 2008 9:44 PM
now, i will start by saying i know next to nothing of Lyman, O'Brien, Dunnell, etc...'s Darwinian Archaeology. But, going back to what was discussed in the original post, it mentioned that there was great variation at the time the bow and arrow was invented, and then variation decreases drastically. Does this jive with evolutionary theory? Is he going for a punctuated equilibrium of cultural adaptations, where something causes a rush of variation? What led to the cultural innovation of the bow itself? Is that also like a mutation?
Posted by: megan | June 18, 2008 12:07 AM
in/re to the indiana discovery;the artifacts were first found by an amateur collector who had found similar stone tools in tennessee. after taking some samples to numerous sources including, the tn. state museum, indiana state universities' glenn black museum, university of southern indiana, and the "clovis in the southeast" conferrence a few years ago he was being told consistently that the samples may be debitage and that the makers of the tools were unknown. an avocational archaeologist by the name of jack wranicky viewed the tools and immediately recognized the technology as middle paleolithic but was shocked to hear they were found in the u.s. archaeologists from the stoneage institute at indiana university, bloomington,indiana also rejected the small sample collection and said that a very small percentage of the tools were actually tools. being doubtful about the expert opinions being given the man continued to put together the assemblage using Bordes typology as a referrence. being a man of meeger financial means the man has been unable to have the necessary analysis done to establish a precise date for the artifacts. there has yet to be a controlled excavation as the artifacts were exposed due to erosion and have since been covered over as a result of the same. not being able to generate interest from academia the determined man hurriedly gathered all that had been revealed by nature convinced that a lithic industry was about to be lost. after working the collection like a huge jigsaw puzzle an amazing flint tool collection began to emerge. tools that were repeatedly made the same way, planes, gouges, burins, points,axes, and yes even venus type effigies such as the ones recently found in poland. time will tell who the makers were, but until then the finder is diligently assembling and sorting the thousands of tools into a one of a kind display of middle paleo style lithics. they just are what they are whether academia likes it or not. a side by side comparison with european mousterian artifacts would certainly tell the tale.
Posted by: rickd | June 21, 2008 7:40 PM
skeptical, you are welcome to see the tools if you willing to trek to indiana
Posted by: rickd | July 16, 2008 11:32 PM