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‘Running ahead of time’ in the development of Palaeolithic industries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2015

L. B. Vishnyatsky*
Affiliation:
Institute of the History of Material Culture, Dvortsoraya emb. 18, St Petersburg 191065, Russia

Abstract

Palaeolithic people could foresee their technological future no more, or even less, than we are able to. They never said, ‘The Middle Palaeolithic has gone on quite long enough — now we'd better get on with a transition to the Upper.’ So what is one to make of those precocious lithic industries which prefigure key features of later innovations, the industries which ‘run ahead’ of their own time?

Type
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Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 1994

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