Dictionary Definition
eolith n : a crude stone artifact (as a chipped
flint); possibly the earliest tools
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Noun
- Crudely chopped flints, believed to be naturally produced by geological processes such as glaciation.
Extensive Definition
An eolith (from Greek
"eos", dawn, and "lithos", stone) is a chipped flint nodule.
Eoliths were once thought to have been artefacts, the earliest
stone tools, but are now believed to be naturally produced by
geological
processes such as glaciation.
The first eoliths were collected in Kent by
Benjamin Harrison, an amateur naturalist
and archaeologist,
in 1885
(though the name "eolith" wasn't coined until 1892, by J. Allen
Browne). Harrison's discoveries were published by Sir Joseph
Prestwich in 1891, and eoliths were
generally accepted to have been crudely made tools, dating from the
Pliocene.
Further discoveries of eoliths in the early 20th century
– in East Anglia
by J.
Reid Moir and in continental Europe by A. Rutot and
H.
Klaatsch – were taken to be evidence of human
habitation of those areas before the oldest known fossils. Indeed, the English finds
helped to secure acceptance of the hoax remains of Piltdown
man.
Because eoliths were so crude, concern began to
be raised that they were indistinguishable from the natural
processes or erosion.
M.
Boule, a French
archaeologist, published an argument against the artifactual status
of eoliths in 1905 , and S.
Hazzledine Warren provided confirmation of Boule's view after
carrying out experiments on flints .
Although the debate continued for about three
decades, more and more evidence was discovered that suggested a
purely natural origin for eoliths. This, together with the
discovery of genuine late-Pliocene tools in Africa (the Olduwan tools),
made support for the artefact theory difficult to sustain.
References
- Terry Harrison, "Eoliths", in Encyclopedia of Anthropology ed. H. James Birx (2006, SAGE Publications; ISBN 0-7619-3029-9)
eolith in Romanian: Eolit