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Stone Tool
Location: Walvis Bay
Age: Between c200 000 and 500 years old
Composite: Basalt Rock
Collected by: Lennie Repina
Stone tools in Namibia are notoriously difficult to age as many of them are found on the surface layer – however they are believed to go very far back into history, at least to our oldest common ancestor who lived in the area about 200 millennia ago. This one was discovered in the area of Walvis Bay, a natural port and lagoon that was once teeming with whales (until it was discovered by American whaling expeditions in the 18th century). People who lived in this area were known to use whale bone to construct their dwellings.
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Stone Tool Location: Aus Mountains Age: Between c200 000 to 500 years old Composite: Basalt Rock Collected by: Jackal
In the South of Namibia this stone tool was collected from a poorly researched cave in the Namib Desert. This area is extremely arid, marked by sand storms and decade-long droughts although the climate has had more temperate periods in the past. The area was once so abundant in diamonds that one could literally pick them up by hand from the surface. The last known true hunter-gatherer of the Namib Desert lived here in hiding until the 1960s.
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Stone Tool
Location: Hampi
Age: c 10 000 years ago
Composite: Granite
Collected by: Jackal
Hampi is a world renowned UNESCO heritage site known for its well preserved remains of an 11th century civilization, including citadels, bridges, temples and other structural culture-material remains. However it is not as widely known that the area has an incredibly ancient history and that our ancestors seem to have built their kingdom intentionally on the remains of previous occupants, including hunter-gathering societies who developed dolmens, megaliths and a very skilful rock-painting practice. Over a hundred rock art sites are recorded in the vicinity of Hampi, some of them right next to, or under, the mediaeval constructions. Our ancestors were just as much (likely more) conscious of their historic roots as we are today. This stone tool was found outside a cave with rock paintings in an undisturbed valley just below the remarkable Neolithic dolmens site.
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Stone Tool
Location: Brandberg / Daures
Age: Between c200 000 and 500 years old
Composite: Basalt Rock
Collected by: Jackal
On the edge of the Namib Desert stands a mountain known as Brandberg, or the Burning Mountain. Today this place is uninhabited, the forceful and violent removal of the last dwellers of Brandberg was conducted by German colonial soldiers in the early 20th century. However this mountain has been a haven and sacred home for countless generations as evidenced by the magnificent rock art and material culture remains. Officially, over 60 000 rock paintings have been recorded across the shelters and rock faces of the granite mountain, though many more have been discovered since the last count. Evidence of distant trade and technology including terracotta and copper smelting are also present.
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Stone Tools
Location: Rato Khola, South Nepal
Age: c 14000 – 7000 years ago
Composite: Stone
Collected by: Jackal
A dazzling and confusing landscape, the Rato-Khola valley of South Nepal has steep ravines and dangerous cliffs. It is characterized by an enormous assembly of river stones, deposited in multiple sedimentary layers by the Rato river. Despite using a (rather poorly drawn) map, it took me 6 hours of searching before I could locate these stone tool examples. However further research in the area is likely to reveal a sophisticated stone tool industry. The only academic paper* I found on this site suggested that these stone tools belong to the Hoabinhian pebble tool industry prevalent in South East Asia (i.e. Thailand), which would date these tools to somewhere between 14000 and 7000 thousand years ago.
