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<p>We identify the oldest known example of systematic heat treatment of chert in the world. The specimens come from the base of one of Australia’s oldest archaeological sequences, Nauwalabila I, in Arnhem Land, which is dated to at least 45–40&#xa0;ka and probably older than 55&#xa0;ka. The presence of this heat-based transformative technology in Australia has significance for reconstructions of technological evolution. One possibility is that chert heat treatment in Australia was an independent innovation. The early Australian practice of chert heat treatment is almost twice as old as is known anywhere in Eurasia, and if this developed independently in multiple places, the Australian antiquity need not be an indication of the antiquity of innovations in other regions. The difficulty with this interpretation is that chert is technically challenging to transform, creating a large innovation gap if more simple heat treatment technologies are not already in place. An alternative model is that groups of <i>H. sapiens</i> dispersing from Africa/West Asia possessed knowledge of stone heat treatment. Heat treatment may have spread to Australia, through South Asia and Southeast Asia, as dispersing groups continued existing practices of chert heat treatment, revealing maintenance and transmission of complex technological knowledge throughout the initial eastward spread of humans. If heat-treating knowledge persisted in the long-term, it is likely that chert treatment evolved through transference/modification of knowledge from different rock materials, such as silcrete, a material with wider thermal tolerances and more suited to the spontaneous discovery of heat treatment knowledge. This is the case in Africa, where silcrete heat treatment long predates chert treatment. However, in Australia, no silcrete treatment is evident prior to this early chert heat treatment. Silcrete at Madjedbebe, a contemporaneous site near Nauwalabila, was not heat-treated. If the transfer of heat treatment practices from silcrete (or similar rocks) to chert was a typical step in the evolution of this kind of technology, the early Australian assemblages we report here set a minimum age for this reconfiguration of thermal technology.</p>

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Earliest Lithic Heat Treatment in Australia is the World’s Oldest Known Treatment of Chert

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  • 发表日期：

    2026年4月11日

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  • Patrick Schmidt,
  • Peter Hiscock

摘要

We identify the oldest known example of systematic heat treatment of chert in the world. The specimens come from the base of one of Australia’s oldest archaeological sequences, Nauwalabila I, in Arnhem Land, which is dated to at least 45–40 ka and probably older than 55 ka. The presence of this heat-based transformative technology in Australia has significance for reconstructions of technological evolution. One possibility is that chert heat treatment in Australia was an independent innovation. The early Australian practice of chert heat treatment is almost twice as old as is known anywhere in Eurasia, and if this developed independently in multiple places, the Australian antiquity need not be an indication of the antiquity of innovations in other regions. The difficulty with this interpretation is that chert is technically challenging to transform, creating a large innovation gap if more simple heat treatment technologies are not already in place. An alternative model is that groups of H. sapiens dispersing from Africa/West Asia possessed knowledge of stone heat treatment. Heat treatment may have spread to Australia, through South Asia and Southeast Asia, as dispersing groups continued existing practices of chert heat treatment, revealing maintenance and transmission of complex technological knowledge throughout the initial eastward spread of humans. If heat-treating knowledge persisted in the long-term, it is likely that chert treatment evolved through transference/modification of knowledge from different rock materials, such as silcrete, a material with wider thermal tolerances and more suited to the spontaneous discovery of heat treatment knowledge. This is the case in Africa, where silcrete heat treatment long predates chert treatment. However, in Australia, no silcrete treatment is evident prior to this early chert heat treatment. Silcrete at Madjedbebe, a contemporaneous site near Nauwalabila, was not heat-treated. If the transfer of heat treatment practices from silcrete (or similar rocks) to chert was a typical step in the evolution of this kind of technology, the early Australian assemblages we report here set a minimum age for this reconfiguration of thermal technology.