A fact from Heavy Neolithic appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 1 August 2011 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that Gigantolithic tools may predate agriculture?
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Could somebody please explain (or provide a a link to a concise section) how come this technology is called "heavy neolithic", if it was mistaken for acheulean, and so exhibited all the traits of paleolithic, rather than neolithic technique? I was told that the difference between the two was in the actual toolmaking technique and resulting appearance of the tools, not by whether the tool were actually recent? --Svartalf (talk) 21:52, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Your best sources to answer that question are in the Fleisch (1954), Cauvin (1963) and Melaart (1965) sources discussing it. I only have Copeland and Wescombe (1965) to work with. Nothing is on the web about this so those sources will have to be tracked down, which is something I'll put my mind to once finished covering the fundamentals in C & W. My explanation to your question would probably involve the size of the tools, and would suggest that Acheulean assemblages included large pieces resembling Heavy Neolithic ones, but made differently and later hence mistaken. After looking into the Pandora's box that is Lebanese prehistoric archaeology, there is such a spectrum of industries that date through such long periods of time that Wikipedia currently doesn't have pages for half of the naming conventions used - Amudian (Pre-Aurignacian), early Yabrudian, (Acheulio-Yabrudian), Yarbrudian, Micro-Levalloisian or Micro-Mousterian, Levalloisian, Mousterian and Levalloiso-Mousterian - there's the whole range dating back so early I could probably make a case for an "Out of Lebanon" theory as a reasonable argument to challenge the "Out of Africa" brigade! Paul Bedson ❉talk❉21:44, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I have added dating according to the Melaart source, taking the pre-pottery neolithic period he suggests to be 10600 to 6900 BCE from the ASPRO chronology. That's a long date range but I would place the industry contemporary with the large stoneworks and earliest agriculture at Jericho c. 8000 BCE and even suggest that this and other Lebanese specific industries, especially the Trihedral Neolithic could quite possibly be the large stone mauls that Kathleen Kenyon couldn't find, but suggested were used to dig the 27m x 9m x 600m bedrock trench around Jericho at that date. That is of course OR, so cannot go live. Paul Bedson ❉talk❉21:54, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
