World’s Oldest Stone Tools Found in Africa

Archaeologists say they’ve unearthed the world’s oldest stone tools made by human ancestors at a dig site in Kenya.

The set of 20 stone flakes and anvils, found off the shores of Lake Turkana, appears to have been crafted more than 3.3 million years ago — 500,000 years before our genus Homo, designating the first fully fledged humans, came to be. The implications, if the evidence holds up, will be far-reaching, since it has long been believed that tool-making was a skill exclusive toHomo. Sonia Harmand announced the findings this week at the annualPaleoanthropology Society meeting in California.

Revising Timelines

When exactly humans started using tools is a hotly debated topic amongst archaeologists. Until Harmand’s announcement this week, 2.6-million-year-old tools discovered in Ethiopia were considered the oldest in the world. That discovery fit neatly with the emergence of the Homo species, which was recently dated to 2.8 million years ago.

In 2010, things got hairy. Archaeologists found cut marks in animal bonesnear the resting place of an australopithecine child — a species ancestral to the Homo genus. The team dated the cut marks back 3.4 million years, and argued that the marks were made by human forebears. Others researchers argued that the marks were the result of trampling by humans or animals.

Now, with the discovery of actual tools, the theory backing the ancient cut marks’ origin is all the more convincing. As University of Wisconsin anthropologist John Hawks wrote in his popular blog

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The obvious implication is that stone tools were invented and used by multiple lineages of early hominins. Just as there were different styles of body shape and bipedal mechanics among early hominins, there were likely different styles of technical traditions.