An eolith (from

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

"''eos''", dawn, and "''lithos''", stone) is a knapped

flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and start ...

nodule. Eoliths were once thought to have been artifacts, the earliest

stone tool A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric (particularly Stone A ...

s, but are now believed to be

geofact A geofact (a portmanteau of ''geology'' and ''artifact'') is a natural stone formation that is difficult to distinguish from a man-made artifact. Geofacts could be fluvially reworked and be misinterpreted as an artifact, especially when compared ...

s (stone fragments produced by fully natural

geological Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other E ...

processes such as

glaciation A glacial period (alternatively glacial or glaciation) is an interval of time (thousands of years) within an ice age that is marked by colder temperatures and glacier advances. Interglacials, on the other hand, are periods of warmer climate bet ...

). The first eoliths were collected in

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

by Benjamin Harrison, an English amateur naturalist and

archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsca ...

, in 1885 (though the name "eolith" was not coined until 1892, by J. Allen Browne). Harrison's discoveries were published by Sir

Joseph Prestwich Sir Joseph Prestwich, FRS (12 March 1812 – 23 June 1896) was a British geologist and businessman, known as an expert on the Tertiary Period and for having confirmed the findings of Boucher de Perthes of ancient flint tools in the Somme vall ...

in 1891, and eoliths were generally accepted to have been crudely made tools, dating from the

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58Red Crag Formation The Red Crag Formation is a geological formation in England. It outcrops in south-eastern Suffolk and north-eastern Essex. The name derives from its iron-stained reddish colour and ''crag'' which is an East Anglian word for shells. It is part of th ...

and

Norwich Crag Formation The Norwich Crag Formation is a stratigraphic unit of the British Pleistocene Epoch. It is the second youngest unit of the Crag Group, a sequence of four geological formations spanning the Pliocene to Lower Pleistocene transition in East Anglia. I ...

East Anglia East Anglia is an area in the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, a people whose name originated in Anglia, in ...

by J. Reid Moir and E. Ray Lankester and in continental

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

by Aimé Louis Rutot and H. Klaatsch – were taken to be evidence of human habitation of those areas before the oldest known

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

s. The English finds helped to secure acceptance of the hoax remains of

Piltdown man The Piltdown Man was a paleoanthropological fraud in which bone fragments were presented as the fossilised remains of a previously unknown early human. Although there were doubts about its authenticity virtually from the beginning, the remains ...

. Because eoliths were so crude, concern began to be raised that they were indistinguishable from the natural processes of

erosion Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as water flow or wind) that removes soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust, and then transports it to another location where it is deposited. Erosion is d ...

Marcellin Boule Pierre-Marcellin Boule (1 January 1861 – 4 July 1942), better known as merely Marcellin Boule, was a French palaeontologist, geologist, and anthropologist. Early life and education Pierre-Marcellin Boule was born in Montsalvy, France. Care ...

, a

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

archaeologist, published an argument against the artifactual status of eoliths in 1905,Boule, M. (1905) - « L'origine des éolithes », ''L'Anthropologie'', t. XVI, pp. 257-267. and Samuel Hazzledine Warren provided confirmation of Boule's view after carrying out experiments on flints.Warren, S.H. (1905) - « On the origin of "Eolithic" flints by naturals causes, especially by the foundering of drifts », ''Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland'', t. 35, pp. 337-364. Although the debate continued for about three decades, more and more evidence was discovered that suggested a purely natural origin for eoliths. This, together with the discovery of genuine early

Lower Pleistocene The Early Pleistocene is an unofficial sub-epoch in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, being the earliest division of the Pleistocene Epoch within the ongoing Quaternary Period. It is currently estimated to span the time ...

Oldowan The Oldowan (or Mode I) was a widespread stone tool archaeological industry (style) in prehistory. These early tools were simple, usually made with one or a few flakes chipped off with another stone. Oldowan tools were used during the Lower ...

tools in

East Africa East Africa, Eastern Africa, or East of Africa, is the eastern subregion of the African continent. In the United Nations Statistics Division scheme of geographic regions, 10-11-(16*) territories make up Eastern Africa: Due to the historica ...

, made support for the artifact theory difficult to sustain.

References

{{Reflist

Bibliography

*O'Connor, A. ‘Geology, archaeology, and ‘the raging vortex of the “eolith” controversy’, ''Proceedings of the Geologists' Association'', 114 (2003). * Terry Harrison, "Eoliths", in

H. James Birx Harry James Birx (born June 1, 1941 in Canandaigua, New York), is an American anthropologist and a professor of Anthropology at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York. He is a distinguished research scholar at the State University of New York at Ge ...

(ed), ''

Encyclopedia of Anthropology The ''Encyclopedia of Anthropology'' is an encyclopedia of anthropology edited by H. James Birx of Canisius College and SUNY Geneseo. The encyclopedia, published in 2006 by SAGE Publications, is in five volumes, and contains over 1,200 articles ...

'' (Sage, 2006). * Roy Frank Ellen, "The Eolith Debate, Evolutionist Anthropology and the Oxford Connection Between 1880 and 1940," ''History and Anthropology'', 22,3 (2011), 277–306. Archaeological artefact types Lithics Paleoanthropology Petrology