Tool production is intrinsically tied to the evolution of our species as it allows us to occupy nearly every environment on the planet. The widespread production of sharp-edged tools known as the Oldowan, 2.6 million years ago, is regarded as a major adaptive leap as it may have fundamentally changed the ecology of our ancestors. This major adaptative shift resulted in a change in diet, enhanced ecological versatility for a range of environments, and, ultimately, the proliferation of the human lineage across the globe. However, it remains unclear if the emergence of Oldowan technologies resulted from a watershed innovation or if it represents a technological continuity of the tool repertoire of apes. The OLAF project aims to determine the adaptive significance of the appearance of the Oldowan by implementing a new set of theoretical tools while shifting the scale of archaeological analysis from the site to a broader landscape level. OLAF will use agent-based modeling to directly investigate the relationship between stone tool use, environmental factors, and site formation processes at the landscape scale and generate concurrent expectations for how hominin-environment interactions produce patterns in the archaeological record. In parallel, we will reconstruct the portions of the Ledi Geraru (Ethiopia) research area where sediments have preserved the 2.6-million-year-old artifact and fossil-rich paleolandscape, over an area of 33 square kilometers. Agent- based models that are tailored to local data, will validate, or reject predictions concerning mobility, diet, or space use. OLAF will thus provide a comprehensive understanding of the tool-mediated foraging behaviors of the earliest Oldowan tool makers, allowing us to examine the adaptive benefits of tool use at the dawn of humanity.

Palavras chave - Stone Tools, Oldowan, Human Evolution, Hominin Behavior, Hominin Ecology