Rosa Rubicondior: Refuting Creationism - Stone Tool Manufacture In a South African Cave

Refuting Creationism

Stone Tool Manufacture In A South African Cave
10,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Prehistoric stone tools, specifically the “cores” used to create smaller blades.

Photo by Sara Watson

Left: Prehistoric stone tools, specifically the “cores” used to create smaller blades.

Photo by Sara Watson.

Right: Archaeological team excavating in the seaside cave.

Photo by Sara Watson.

Ancient tools from a South African cave reveal connections between prehistoric people - Field Museum

It's a telling example of how creationists can ignore substantial evidence when it conflicts with their belief that the Earth was created from nothing between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. Among the evidence they dismiss are stone tools made by humans in South Africa at least 20,000 years ago — well over 10,000 years before their proposed timeline even begins. These tools reflect not only human ingenuity, but also the sharing of technology between different groups across southern Africa.

The tools, associated with what archaeologists term the Robberg technocomplex, were likely used in hunting the large game that roamed the vast coastal plains during the Last Glacial Maximum—land that is now submerged following post-Ice Age sea level rise. Evidence for their manufacture and use has been found in sites such as Knysna Eastern Heads Cave 1, which now overlooks the coast but would have stood further inland around 20,000 years ago.

In a recent paper published in the Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology, a research team led by Dr Sara Watson of the Field Museum’s Negaunee Integrative Research Center describes these lithic assemblages in detail. Their analysis of stone tool-making techniques offers insights into the ways prehistoric people moved through the landscape, interacted with one another, and transmitted their technological knowledge.

The team's research is explained in a press release from the Field Museum, Chicago, IL, USA:

What information do you have on the ' Robberg technocomplex' of South Africa?

The Robberg technocomplex is a significant archaeological industry from southern Africa, dating approximately between 26,000 and 12,000 years ago. It represents one of the earliest and most widespread technocomplexes of the Later Stone Age (LSA) in the region.

Key Characteristics

Bladelet Production: The Robberg is primarily defined by its emphasis on producing small, unretouched bladelets. These were typically struck from pyramidal or prismatic cores, often using bipolar percussion techniques.
Raw Materials and Heat Treatment: Silcrete was a commonly used raw material, frequently subjected to heat treatment to enhance its flaking properties. However, the use of heat treatment was not uniform across all sites.
Low Frequency of Retouched Tools: Assemblages from this period generally exhibit a low frequency of retouched tools, indicating a focus on expedient tool production and use.
Geographic Distribution

Robberg assemblages have been identified across various regions of southern Africa, including sites in South Africa, Namibia, and Lesotho. This widespread distribution suggests a broad cultural transmission of lithic technologies during the Late Pleistocene Notable Archaeological Sites

Knysna Eastern Heads Cave 1 (KEH-1): Located on South Africa's southern coast, KEH-1 has yielded lithic assemblages characteristic of the Robberg technocomplex. The site provides insights into technological organization, including bladelet production and core reduction strategies.
Boomplaas Cave: This site contains a sequence of lithic industries, with the Robberg industry represented in specific stratigraphic layers. The assemblages here include unretouched microbladelet cores and small scrapers, reflecting the technological attributes of the Robberg period.

Environmental Context

During the Robberg period, the global climate was transitioning from the Last Glacial Maximum. Lower sea levels exposed vast plains along the southern African coast, providing habitats for large game animals. Human populations adapted to these environments by developing efficient hunting tools, as evidenced by the lithic technologies of the Robberg technocomplex.

Cultural Significance

The Robberg technocomplex illustrates the adaptability and innovation of human groups during the Late Pleistocene. The standardized production of bladelets and the widespread adoption of specific lithic technologies indicate a shared cultural knowledge and possibly social networks facilitating the transmission of technological practices across regions.

Recent studies continue to explore the variability within Robberg assemblages, aiming to understand the nuances of technological organization and cultural interactions during this pivotal period in human prehistory.

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Ancient tools from a South African cave reveal connections between prehistoric people
In a cave overlooking the ocean on the southern coast of South Africa, archaeologists discovered thousands of stone tools, created by ancient humans roughly 20,000 years ago. By examining tiny details in the chipped edges of the blades and stones, archaeologists are able to tell how the tools were made. In a new study published in the Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology, researchers analyzed these stone tools and discussed how the different techniques used to make them hint at the ways that prehistoric people traveled, interacted, and shared their craft.

This is an important insight into how people who lived in this region were living and hunting and responding to their environment.

Dr. Sara Watson, lead author
Negaunee Integrative Research Center, Field Museum, Chicago, IL, USA.

During the period when these blades were made, between 24,000 and 12,000 years ago, the Earth was nearing the end of the last major ice age. Since so much of the Earth’s water was frozen in glaciers and ice caps, the sea level was lower, and the region that’s now the coast of South Africa was a few miles inland.

Instead of being right on the water like they are today, these caves would have been near vast, open plains with large game animals like antelope. People hunted those animals, and to do that, they developed new tools and weapons.

Dr. Sara Watson.

The caves, part of what archaeologists call the Robberg technocomplex, no longer overlook a plain— they're in a towering cliff face over a rocky beach.

It’s a 75-foot climb up to the cave from the shoreline. We had safety ropes and a staircase made of sandbags, and we had to be harnessed in while doing the excavation. Since these are extremely, extremely old sites, from before the end of the last ice age, we had to be very careful with our excavation. We used little tiny dental tools and mini trowels so that we could remove each little individual layer of sediment.

Dr. Sara Watson.

Every day, Watson and her colleagues made the climb with all their excavation and photography equipment, weighing up to 50 pounds per person.

Beneath ancient dust and dirt, Watson and her team found thousands of stone tools: small, sharp blades, as well as the larger pieces of rock from which these blades were chipped. The bigger rock that blades are made from is called a core.

When your average person thinks about stone tools, they probably focus on the detached pieces, the blades and flakes. But the thing that is the most interesting to me is the core, because it shows us the particular methods and order of operations that people went through in order to make their tools.

Dr. Sara Watson.

Watson and her colleagues observed several distinct patterns of how the cores had been broken into smaller blades. For instance, one particular method of breaking tiny bladelets off of a core that Watson found in the Robberg caves is a style also found hundreds of miles away in places including Namibia and Lesotho.

In a lot of these technologies, the core reduction is very specific, and it’s something that you are taught and learn, and that’s where the social information is. If we see specific methods of core reduction at multiple sites across the landscape, as an archaeologist, it tells me that these people were sharing ideas with one another. Same core reduction pattern, same intended product. The pattern is repeated over and over and over again, which indicates that it is intentional and shared, rather than just a chance similarity.

Dr. Sara Watson.

Overall, Watson says that the study reveals how much there still is to learn about the Robberg caves and the people who used them thousands of years ago.

We have a very long and rich history as a species, and humans go back a lot farther in time than most people realize. People living around the last ice age were very similar to people today.

Dr. Sara Watson.

Publication:
Watson, S.E., Zwyns, N., Steele, T.E. et al.
Robberg Lithic Technology from Knysna Eastern Heads Cave 1. J Paleo Arch 8, 14 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41982-025-00214-5

Abstract
The Robberg technocomplex of southern Africa (~ 26 to 12 thousand years ago) is the earliest well-defined and widespread technocomplex of the southern African Later Stone Age. Here, we present descriptions of lithic assemblages assigned to the Robberg technocomplex from the site of Knysna Eastern Heads Cave 1 (KEH-1), located on the modern-day southern coast of South Africa. Technological organization at KEH-1 is in line with the main defining characteristics of the Robberg, including a focus on bladelet production, the presence of cores typical to Robberg assemblages, and a low frequency of retouched tools. The majority of silcrete in the KEH-1 assemblage was heat-treated, but the use of silcrete for lithic production was not dependent on the use of heat treatment. While lithic reduction is oriented toward bladelets, large quartzite flakes play a notable but poorly understood role in the system. However, the assemblage from KEH-1 differs in key ways from other published Robberg assemblages, including relatively low reduction intensity, infrequent use of bipolar percussion, and low emphasis on lithic miniaturization. Data from KEH-1 add to our understanding of technological variation within the Robberg and highlight the importance of understanding how site dynamics influence lithic technological organization.

Watson, S.E., Zwyns, N., Steele, T.E. et al.
Robberg Lithic Technology from Knysna Eastern Heads Cave 1. J Paleo Arch 8, 14 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41982-025-00214-5

© 2025 Springer Nature Ltd.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

The Bible’s authors were, quite naturally, unaware of people, cultures, and technologies beyond their immediate surroundings and their own time. Consequently, the implausible stories they invented can now been seen as laughably naïve, by anyone who looks at them objectively and compares them to what we know of the real world and its long, complex history.

Their creation myths were crude attempts to fill gaps in understanding with stories drawn from a world they believed to be small, flat, and governed by unseen magical forces. Unsurprisingly, there's no mention of a Stone Age preceding their Bronze Age world, nor of the deep human past that begins in Africa with our early ancestors crafting stone tools and slowly spreading across the globe.

Bible literalists — those who insist these ancient myths are historical fact — cut themselves off from the true story of humanity. In doing so, they deny themselves the awe-inspiring reality: that an African ape species, through evolution, developed intelligence, curiosity, and creativity — and used those traits to master its environment and uncover the secrets of the cosmos. That is the real human story, and it is far more profound, humbling, and powerful than any myth born of ignorance and superstition.

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