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{{short description|Knapped flint nodule}}
{{for|the Korean company|Eolith (company)}}
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[[File:Eolith 04 Boule.png|thumb|"[[Hammerstone]]" eolith, recognized to be of natural origin by Boule in 1905<ref name=boule/>]]
An '''eolith''' (from [[Greek language|Greek]] "''eos''", dawn, and "''lithos''", stone) is a  [[flint]] [[Nodule (geology)|nodule]] that appears to have been crudely [[knapping|knapped]].  Eoliths were once thought to have been artifacts, the earliest [[stone tool]]s, but are now believed to be [[geofact]]s (stone fragments produced by fully natural [[Geology|geological]] processes such as [[glaciation]]).
The first eoliths were collected in [[Kent]] by Benjamin Harrison, an English amateur [[natural history|naturalist]] and [[Archaeology|archaeologist]], in 1885 (though the name "eolith" was not coined until 1892, by J. Allen Browne).  Harrison's discoveries were published by Sir [[Joseph Prestwich]] in 1891, and eoliths were generally accepted to have been crudely made tools, dating from the [[Pliocene]] (5.333 million to 2.58 million years ago).  Further discoveries of eoliths in the early 20th century &ndash; in the [[Red Crag Formation]] and [[Norwich Crag Formation#Eoliths_and_early_humans|Norwich Crag Formation]] of [[East Anglia]] by J. Reid Moir and [[Ray Lankester|E. Ray Lankester]] and in continental [[Europe]] by Aimé Louis Rutot and H. Klaatsch &ndash; were taken to be evidence of human habitation of those areas before the oldest known [[fossil]]s.  The English finds helped to secure acceptance of the hoax remains of [[Piltdown Man]].
Because eoliths were so crude, concern began to be raised that they were indistinguishable from the natural processes of [[erosion]]. [[Marcellin Boule]], a [[France|French]] archaeologist, published an argument against the artifactual status of eoliths in 1905,<ref name=boule>Boule, M. (1905) - « L'origine des éolithes », ''L'Anthropologie'', t. XVI, pp. 257-267.</ref> and Samuel Hazzledine Warren provided confirmation of Boule's view after carrying out experiments on flints.<ref>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.</ref>
==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 (anthropologist)|Terry Harrison]], "Eoliths", in [[H. James Birx]] (ed), ''[[Encyclopedia of Anthropology]]'' (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.
[[Category:Archaeological artefact types]]
[[Category:Lithics]]
[[Category:Paleoanthropology]]
[[Category:Petrology]]