Lower Palaeolithic

Foce del fiume Coghinas a Valledoria. Fotografia di Bruno Manunza, da Sardegna DigitalLibrary

The history of human presence in Sardinia began in the Lower Paleolithic, as evidenced by the discovery of stone objects dating between 450,000 and 120,000 years ago. We are referring, as is evident, to very remote times. It therefore seems intuitively understandable what difficulties scholars face in trying to find human fossils dating back to this period (if not even to previous ages) which, by their very nature, are subject to rapid organic decay. This also applies to any tools made of wood or bone, destined (with rare exceptions) to disappear within a short time. For this reason, scholars must take great care not to make an error of overestimating the importance of lithic (i.e. stone) finds, much more resistant than other categories of finds and therefore more easily present in archaeological deposits. This argument also applies to Sardinia. The oldest 'objects' found, in flint and quartzite, come from the northern part of the island, from the Anglona region and can be classified, from a typological point of view, in the lithic industries classified under the names of 'Clactonian' and 'Tayazian'. The expression “stone industry” refers to the set of techniques and activities through which a human group transforms raw materials to obtain objects. These finds come from the towns of Giuanne Malteddu, Interiscias, Laerru, Preideru and Rio Altana. These are about six hundred objects, including beaks, burners, graters, spikes, scrapers. However, the absence of human bone finds and floro-faunistic data makes it particularly difficult to reconstruct this phase of Sardinian prehistory. This kind of artifacts should have been produced by individuals belonging to the species 'Homo erectus', one of those that make up the genus' Homo 'to which we, modern men, also belong. The discovery that took place in the Logudoro, in the Nurighe cave of Cheremule, of a human phalanx complete with the thumb, deserves to be noted. The proposed dating for this important bone find is 250,000/300,000 years BC.

Update

16/7/2025 - 14:45