NAIROBI: Scientists working in Kenya have unearthed the oldest known stone tools, simple cutting and pounding implements crafted by ancient members of the human lineage 3.3 million years ago. At about 700,000 years older than the other stone tools excavated to date, the discovery hints that anthropologists may have had
By our correspondents
May 23, 2015
NAIROBI: Scientists working in Kenya have unearthed the oldest known stone tools, simple cutting and pounding implements crafted by ancient members of the human lineage 3.3 million years ago. At about 700,000 years older than the other stone tools excavated to date, the discovery hints that anthropologists may have had the wrong idea about the evolution of humans and technology, said Stony Brook University archeologist Jason Lewis, coauthor of a study describing the find published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Traditionally, Lewis said, scientists believed that stone toolmaking emerged with the first members of our own large-brained genus, Homo, as they fanned out into savannah grassland environments about 2.5 million years ago. Until now, the earliest-known stone tools dated back 2.6 million years, bolstering that hypothesis. But the discovery of tools crafted nearly three quarters of a million years earlier — during a period from which no Homo fossils have ever been found — suggests that the story might have played out differently, with human capabilities unfolding over a far longer period of time and with other branches of our family tree playing a more significant role than previously thought. “We can’t associate this with creatures linked to our genus,” said Erella Hovers, an archeologist at the Hebrew University of al-Quds who was not involved in the study and who wrote an editorial accompanying the research, also in Nature. “Many thought Homo was the only toolmaker. Now that’s a position that’s hard to defend.” Lewis and study lead author Sonia Harmand, also of Stony Brook University, lead the West Turkana Archaeological Project, an effort spanning two decades that explores northern Kenya’s Lake Turkana basin, a region famous for important fossil finds dating back 2.3 million years. The newly discovered tools, which the scientists called “Lomekwian” after the Lomekwi 3 site where they were found, are different from so-called Oldowan tools from 2.6 million years ago, Harmand said.
