The technology of the first Europeans

This paper reviews current knowledge about the technology of the first humans who inhabited Europe, from the end of the Early Pleistocene (about 1.4 million years ago) to the beginning of the Middle Pleistocene (around 600,000 years ago). The oldest tools in Europe belong to the Oldowan technology, while the boundary between the Early and Middle Pleistocene shows the first signs of the emergence of the Acheulean. Beyond this apparently simple picture, several questions arise: 1) Is the Oldowan identified in the oldest sites uniform, or is there an evolution of this technology in Europe? 2) Which human species made the oldest tools in Europe? 3) Was the earliest Acheulean found in Europe a local development from the Oldowan, or was it introduced from outside Europe? 4) If the European Acheulean originated elsewhere, was it brought by human populations belonging to a different species than those already present on the continent? This paper aims to address these questions based on archaeological and palaeoanthropological evidence uncovered in Europe during the last decades.