Basket

I am suggesting that the term 'basket weaving' be replaced with the term 'woven-fiber technology' when talking about baskets and fiber constructions in prehistory. I say this because the term 'basket weaving' may be outdated. While it once may have been a general term for all kinds of weaving that resulted in a wide variety of products, most people today think of it as meaning baskets only. Furthermore, while basket weaving was a technology and baskets could be thought of as tools and basketry was clearly an industry, none of these words are associated with Paleolithic or Neolithic basket weaving (see Google searches) although all these terms are used when discussing or researching stone tools from those periods. In the discipline of paleoanthropology, this becomes a serious problem as it tends to limit the scope of research and funding for research. I suggest that the term basket weaving should be replaced with a more inclusive term that also emphasizes that the weaving of fibers was a technology and an important one that may have begun early in the development of hominins. The term I suggest is 'woven-fiber technology'.

Recent excavations at the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, Africa have revealed new information about some of the earliest hominins, probably Homo habilis, from 2 million years ago. For the purposes of this article, the main point is that these early humans walked 12 km or 7.5 miles to gather specific stones that they used for making Oldowan stone tools and for putting together a toolkit. And these specific stones made up the majority of stones found. They did this for several hundred thousand years. I argue that to do this, they probably had containers or early baskets to help them carry a large collection of stones back to their settlements, since walking that far would have been counterproductive if they only gathered a few stones. Next in this article, I show how very simple carriers could have been from natural plant materials, carriers that might have been like some of the earliest baskets.

Recent excavations at the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, Africa have revealed new information about some of the earliest hominins, probably Homo habilis, from 2 million years ago. For the purposes of this article, the main point is that these early humans walked 12 km or 7.5 miles to gather specific stones that they used for making Oldowan stone tools and for putting together a toolkit. And these specific stones made up the majority of stones found. They did this for several hundred thousand years. I argue that to do this, they probably had containers or early baskets to help them carry a large collection of stones back to their settlements, since walking that far would have been counterproductive if they only gathered a few stones. Next in this article, I show how very simple carriers could have been from natural plant materials, carriers that might have been like some of the earliest baskets.