Bifacial tools in Middle Paleolithic in Europe: The Emergence of Localized cultural behaviors

This study argues that the standard narrative currently used in the Korean Paleolithic academic community is the result of the formal taxonomic approach, which was the dominant stone tool research methodology from the late 19th century to the early 19th century, and also attempts to clarify that such a standard narrative does not fit well with archaeological reality even in Europe, where it originated. The bifacial tools cultures that emerged in the late Middle Paleolithic in Europe can be largely divided into five regions: the MTA in southwestern France, the KMG, which is widely observed from the east of the Rhine River to the Altai Mountains, the MOB in northern western Europe, the Bout-Coupé culture in Britain, and the Vasconian, which developed along the northern slope of the Pyrenees. What is interesting is that the various bifacial tools cultures that developed independently in each region of the European continent were concentrated in MIS 3 (60,000–24,000 years ago). It was also the first time in human history that ‘localized cultural practices’ in some sense appeared. In the past, it was thought that such localized cultural practices were first confirmed in the stone tool culture of early modern humans in the Middle Paleolithic period in Africa, but it is now believed that they already existed in Neanderthal society. The fact that localized cultural practices were confirmed in the Neanderthal society, which was not related to early modern humans by blood, sheds new light on the long-standing debate over the cognitive abilities of early modern humans and Neanderthals. Excluding Jeongok ri, which is currently controversial in terms of dating, the bifacial stone tools found in the Korean Peninsula show a pattern of being concentrated in the MIS 3 period, as in Europe, but it is still unknown why such a phenomenon appeared almost simultaneously in the eastern and western parts of Eurasia. As in the cases of Europe and Africa, it is necessary to examine whether ‘localized cultural behaviors’ centered on biface stone tools existed on the Korean Peninsula.