Humans May Have Been Crafting Stone Tools for 2.6 Million Years

[Judi Lynn]

A new study pushes the origins of early human tool-making back by some 10,000 years earlier than previously believed

By Meilan Solly
smithsonian.com
June 4, 2019

Members of the Homo genus have been making stone tools for at least 2.6 million years, a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests. The findings, based on the discovery of a collection of sharp-edged stone artifacts at the Bokol Dora 1 site in Ethiopia’s Afar Basin, push the origins of early human tool-making back by some 10,000 years earlier than previously believed. Additionally, the research suggests that multiple groups of prehistoric humans invented stone tools on separate occasions, adapting increasingly complex techniques in order to best extract resources from their environment.

Although 3.3 million-year-old stone instruments known as "Lomekwian" tools predate the newly described trove, these were likely made by members of early hominin groups such as Australopithecus afarensis rather than members of the Homo genus. Until now, the oldest known Homo tools—dubbed “Oldowan” in honor of the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania where the first examples of such artifacts were found—dated to between 2.55 and 2.58 million years ago. Excavated in Gona, Ethiopia, the sharpened stones are technologically distinct from the more rudimentary Lomekwian tools, which were first catalogued by researchers conducting fieldwork in West Turkana, Kenya, in 2015. Compared to the Oldowan tools found in Gona and now Bokol Dora, the earlier Lomekwian tools are decidedly less advanced.

The Bokol Dora trove, also known as the Ledi-Geraru collection, consists of 327 stone tools likely crafted by striking two rocks together to create sharp edges capable of carving up animals, as Phoebe Weston reports for the Independent. The ancient artifacts were found three miles away from the site where the oldest known Homo fossil, a 2.8 million-year-old jawbone, was unearthed in 2013, pointing toward the tools’ connection with early modern humans rather than ape-like hominins belonging to the Australopithecus genus.

“This is the first time we see people chipping off bits of stone to make tools with an end in mind,” study co-author Kaye Reed, an anthropologist at Arizona State University, tells Weston. “They only took two or three flakes off, and some you can tell weren’t taken off quite right. The latest tools seem slightly different in the way they’re made from other examples.”

More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/humans-have-been-crafting-stone-tools-26-million-years-180972346/

[exboyfil]

1. 10,000 years on 2.6 million years

Dating is not that precise. It is well within the band of error. Still a remarkable find.