Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

In others words, Homo habilis, or whatever creature owned the OH 7 hand, may have spent much of its time hanging by its arms from tree limbs. This apelike image differs from the very humanlike portrait of Homo habilis and other supposed human ancestors one usually encounters in Time-Life picture books and National Geographic Society television specials.

11.7.4 Cultural Level of Homo Habilis

A reevaluation of the cultural evidence at Homo habilis sites also casts doubt on the conventional humanlike interpretation of Homo habilis.

Louis and Mary Leakey designated the Homo habilis sites at Olduvai as “living floors.” They viewed particular combinations of hominid and animal fossils, along with stone tools, as signs of permanent or semipermanent habitation. From such interpretations of the evidence came detailed paintings, showing Homo habilis families living in base camps, with hunting parties returning with animal carcasses to be butchered with stone tools.

But according to Binford (1981, p. 252), the Leakeys’ characterization of Homo habilis sites as “living floors” was the result of wishful thinking: “the researchers have a generalized idea as to what the past was like and they have then accommodated all the archaeological-geological facts to this idea. This is not exactly science.” Binford went on to criticize the notion of living floors in terms of their “integrity” and “resolution.”

Binford believed the Homo habilis sites were of low integrity. By this he meant there was no certainty that Homo habilis was in fact responsible for the animal bones found at the sites. The bones could very well have been the result of natural deaths, which would have occurred fairly often on the shores of the ancient lake that deposited the sediments at Olduvai. The bones might also have been brought to their resting places by carnivorous animals rather than hominids.

For Binford, the term “resolution” meant the time during which the faunal remains and artifacts were deposited. For the concept of a “living floor” to be meaningful, the resolution should be quite high—that is to say, the faunal remains and artifacts should have been deposited over a relatively short period of time. But Binford believed that the resolution at the Homo habilis sites at Olduvai Gorge was low, and that the faunal remains and artifacts were deposited over very long periods of time. This would decrease the certainty that hominid behavior was responsible for the association of a particular assemblage of bones and artifacts.

If, for example, one interprets a scatter of stones and bones as having been deposited simultaneously, one might talk of a habitation site. But if the bones and artifacts were deposited one by one over the course of hundreds or thousands of years, as animals chanced to die, and scavenging hominids chanced to drop stone tools, the supposition that one has found a habitation site becomes far less likely.

About the reputed living floor at the famous Zinjanthropus site at Olduvai, where remains of Homo habilis were also found nearby, Binford (1981, p. 282) said: “given its demonstrably low integrity and resolution, arguments about base camps, hominid hunting, sharing of food, and so forth are certainly premature and most likely wildly inaccurate. The only clear picture obtained is that of a hominid scavenging the kills and death sites of other predator-scavengers for abandoned anatomical parts of low food utility, primarily for purposes of extracting bone marrow. Some removal of marrow bones from kills is indicated, but there is no evidence of ‘carrying food home.’ Transport of the scavenged parts away from the kill site to more protected locations in a manner identical to that of all other scavengers is all that one need imagine to account for the unambiguous facts preserved in Olduvai.”

Thus, according to Binford, Homo habilis was definitely not a hunter. In fact, Binford has concluded that hunting is an activity exclusively characteristic of modern Homo sapiens. “There are many people,” he said, “who are just outraged because I’ve suggested that early men, including the Neanderthals, weren’t hunters” (A. Fisher 1988a, p. 37).

There are some scientists, such as Henry Bunn of the University of Wisconsin (A. Fisher 1988a, p. 38), who have disputed Binford’s conclusions about the Olduvai sites. Nevertheless, Binford’s analysis provides a refreshing alternative to the usual overly humanized presentation of “Homo” habilis.