Talk:Olduwan

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NO ONE USES THE SPELLING "OLDUWAN". EVERY ARCHAEOLOGISTS, TEXTBOOK, AND PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL USES OLDOWAN.with love, Pre-ski1888 03:23, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Hello! I changed the name to Olduwan as the primary name, even though you sometimes see the other spellings in older literature. The Leakey Foundation, which you can look up on the Internet, uses Olduwan. It makes sense: Olduvai/Olduwan, as opposed to Oldoway/Oldowan. It is better not to mix systems, I think. Agreed? To tell you the truth, I've never seen Oldawan, but I take the author's word that it was used.Botteville 02:51, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi, I've never red Olduwan before and it sounds unusual, even if Leakey foundation uses it. Just check searching Olduwan and Oldowan with Google : you will get 691 results with the former and... more than 50 000 with the latter ! I20 00:05, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I have notice that Louis Leakey used Odowan (not Olduwan) in his first outstanding publication: Leakey, L. S. B. (1936): Stone Age in Africa. Oxford.
--Locutus Borg Image:Logo-Borg.gif, Talk to me 12:06, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Contents 1 photos? 2 Ilustrations of tools 3 Merging of Chopper and Chopping tool with Oldowan 4 regarding tool use, Olduwan 5 Thanks 6 Copy edit and citation tags 7 ¿Acheulian equivocation? 8 Will someone please change the name to Oldowan????

[edit] photos?

If anyone has some photographs, it would help distinguish this technology from other stone tools (e.g. Acheulean). Istvan 05:41, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ilustrations of tools

First, sorry for my very bad english, I am an spanish archaeologist and need to tell you about some mistakes. I hope you understand my language, characteristic of Tarzan.

Some lithic attribution of tools illustrated in the article are wrong. For instance:

Really is a typicall biface acheulean with retouches, but its support es a flake. For this reason no need more knapping. It is the law of minimum effort and maximum efectivity.

Your heart makes up for your English. Thanks for your pointers and pictures.Dave 03:24, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

It is a lithic core very evolved, never an arcaic artifact. This is not a tool, but a remainder of knapping with the objet of obtain flakes, probably near of the Levallois recurrent method. So, it is an Acheulean artifact, not a tool, but a trashed piece of raw material, after her profit.

If you need some really archaic tools, tell me and I look it for, as soon as possible.

sorry and thanks --Locutus Borg 16:40, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merging of Chopper and Chopping tool with Oldowan

I strongly oppose these merges, one of which has already taken place, as my understanding is that choppers and chopper tools are not exclusively Oldowan artefacts but are also used to describe the tools made by homo erectus in Eastern Asia (Source: Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology). Also we have not previously conflated articles on early prehistoric cultures with their characteristic cultural material, ie Acheulean and handaxe. adamsan 09:08, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Template:Opposevote for the same reasons as above - I can see no overwhelming arguement for these merges. :: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)} 09:44, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

I have now reverted the Chopper/Oldowan merge as it became clear that the editor was not aware that choppers are found in East Asia and not considered Oldowan. These tools are part of the East Asian Flake and Chopper Tradition (Scarre, C. The Human Past, Thames and Hudson, London, 2005, p86). The current Oldowan article implies that the East Asian sites belong to the industry which is not correct. The Zhoukoudian assemblage...probably represents a totally distinct, contemporaneous artefact tradition that was widespread in East Asia (ibid, p 100). These finds also post-date the Oldowan technology by quite some degree. adamsan 09:53, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] regarding tool use, Olduwan

There is a lot of material in this article that espouses points of view that are controversial at worst, or at least not universally accepted.

There should be more cites, especially under The tool users section. Terms such as "In truth...", "...the seemingly self-evident, but fallacious, idea..." etc need to be properly attributed as they take a ridged stance, and this POV is not always one that everyone within the field would agree with.

You or someone must have taken out those horrible phrases. They really amount to vandalism so they should have been fixed right away. Your sentence "there is a lot in this article ..." gives me a bad feeling. Who is to say what is controversial and what not, you? If we start cutting out the non-universally accepted you can junk the whole article. The goal of anthropology is not universal acceptance. That is what gives me misgivings about you. Be that as it may, instead of junking the article, why don't you present other points of view? If there is an issue, present the issue! That is the right way to do it. What it smells like you are saying is, "I don't like something in anthropology." Put up or shut up.Dave 03:48, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Additionally, under the same section there is a fallacy that chimpanzees are sophisticated tool users. (in reality chimpanzees use very basic tools, and rely on individual to individual transmission of specific use rather that a wide culture transmission). Just because we can train a dog to catch a Frisbee, for example, does not indicate that the dog will then teach other dogs to catch frisbees. Chimpanzees tool use in general is much more nuanced then the section attributes, and should perhaps be removed completely from this article as is bears only tangentially to the topic at all.

Edgeways 00:40, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, edgeways, it is hard to read your last sentence as actual English. I mean, it is grammatical but its content seems to be missing. I suspected as much in your previous comment.Dave 03:48, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm starting to work at this section. Someone needs to cite which Toth article is being talked about for the tool use. I don't have access to Pan the Toolmaker or its follow up article, so I can't tell which study the original editor was talking about. Also, I strongly suspect a good deal of this was "googlepedia" because various people don't have their names ascribed to them, as is common for articles edited from online materials that cite by initials. EG JWK Harris is Dr. John Harris of Rutgers etc.

There is more to do.

Stirling Newberry 07:37, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Hello Stirling I'm seeing some of your changes. You might have a tendency to go a little too far there. Social animals clearly outnumber solitary ones. Do you actually have any solitary mammals in mind? And what do mean, "lower anmimals" is obsolete? Since when, buddy? And what do YOU think replaced it? For the paucity of sources you are right, there are not enough of them. This was an earlier effort. But, it's an ongoing effort. I meant to get back to it and now I am. We can do it together, you and I. Do you contribute or just criticise? But for the time I don't plan to change any changes until the article takes more shape. One of my problems was, there was not too muuch anthropology on Wikipedia, but it is getting better. NOW there are some pictures, and I'm totally impressed with the hominin/hominid distinctions, which weren't there before. In all this however don't think I've accepted your quibbling "lower animal" trashing. Later.Dave 03:48, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Thanks for your efforts on this. Of course, there is always more to do. I put in a few notes on your notes but I'm still building the subject Wikiwide. Oh, those who may have said that this or that person needs an article, go right ahead and do one. This is a self-help type of thing. Help yourself!Dave 03:24, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Copy edit and citation tags

There seems to be an issue over what goes in the tagged subsection. The other current main editor of it cannot agree and he seems to feel there is a question of attack ad hominem. As we are not able to work this out I recuse myself from the subsection. However, I feel that the article, which is slated for the CD at some point, should maintain as high standards as we can get. The paragraphs that have been inserted below the templates in that section need attention from an English point of view. They need to made grammatical, readable, and generally comprehensible, which currently they do not seem to be. Furthermore the current other editor keeps removing my efforts to organize and clean it up; moreover, he does not give any citations or references for the issues, debates and conclusions he cites. Therefore I am recusing my self fom that part of it and am suggesting that other Wikipedians with the required skills and knowledge pay attention to the section. Thank you very much.Dave 18:08, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] ¿Acheulian equivocation?

Why Dave says «The pictures in the introduction to this article are mainly labeled Acheulian, but this is the now false Acheulian, which also includes Abbevilian.».

The pictures have been taken from several researches about the Acheulian in Spain. The investigated sites are definitively acheulians, not oldowayans neither abbevilians. I don't understand the expression false Acheulian. What means? The pre-acheulian sites in Spain are very unusual and the Abbevilian nature it is not proved in the Iberian peninsula (only, perhaps, an early Acheulian).

The lithic typology or technology can't be a chronological or cultural rule: that attitude only lead to mistakes. For instance, the choppers appears in Spain until the Middle Ages and the French prehistorian Pierre Biberson notice that the Moroccan fishers used choppers in 20th century for open shells.

I want say that it is scientifically demonstrated that the pictures of Spanish artifacs are really Acheulian, not Abbevilian. Abbevilian it is only an archaic style of knapping that can appear even in the Mousterian sites. I know that very well, I personally investigated about that, I am an specialist (not in English, obviously 8¬)). See, for instance:

• Benito del Rey, Luis y Benito Álvarez, José Manuel (myself): "La Salamanca Paleolítica", in Congreso de Historia de Salamanca 1989, Tomo 1.- Gráficas Ortega, S. A., Salamanca, 1992.- ISBN 84-604-3130-4.
• Benito Álvarez, José Manuel (2002), Aportaciones al conocimiento del Achelense en la Meseta Norte, University of Salamanca (Doctoral Thesis degree —maxima cum laude—, unpublished, sorry)
• Benito del Rey, Luis y Benito Álvarez, José Manuel (myself), 2000: "Secuencias inferopaleolíticas en la cuenca del Duero", in SPAL n# 9 (Seville University), ISSN 1133-4525.
• Etc.

Thanks--Locutus Borg Image:Logo-Borg.gif, Talk to me 10:52, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Will someone please change the name to Oldowan????

NO ONE USES THE SPELLING "OLDUWAN". EVERY ARCHAEOLOGISTS, TEXTBOOK, AND PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL USES OLDOWAN. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pre-ski18888 (talk • contribs) 02:48, 1 March 2007 (UTC).

• Either one is acceptable and probably the least of this article's concerns. It is taught with both spellings at various universities around the U.S. The comprehension of this article should be the foremost priority. Every archeologist, textbook, and journal does not use the "Oldowan" spelling but thanks for the trivial concern... Stevenmitchell 06:44, 3 April 2007 (UTC)