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A team of researchers that has been digging in East Africa announced the discovery of the oldest stone tools that have ever been found so far.
According to the analysis, the tools are 3.3 million years old and they were made approximately 500,000 years prior to the appearance of the human ancestors.
Sonia Harmand, a researcher at Stony Brook University in New York and the leader of the team of scientists, explained that they discovered the 3.3 million year old tools near Lake Turkana, Kenya.
This area is known for its numerous tools and fossils dating back to the earliest human ancestors.
According to the experts who analyzed the findings, the stone tools are approximately 3.3 million years old, which makes them 700,000 years older than the previous “oldest stone tools ever discovered”.
The scientists say this is a remarkable discovery mainly because the tools existed before the human genus, known as Homo, started evolving more than 2.8 million years ago.
This means that the early human ancestors did not make the stone tools.
The researchers theorize that the prehistoric stone tools were crafted by one of the earliest human ancestor, which probably belonged to the Australopithecus genus.
The most famous specimen of Australopithecus is Lucy, the ape-like prehistoric creature that lived in Africa about 4 million years ago.
The recently discovered stone tools were examined by a team of experts and they said that the tools bear the markings of a process known as “knapping”.
According to the experts, the tools were created by knapping a piece of stone, which produced flakes of stone that are sharp enough to cut into plants, meat or nuts, the basic diet of our earliest ancestors.
The flakes of stone can be easily distinguished from the pieces of rock that occur naturally.
The process of knapping leaves specific marks on the rocks from which the flakes have been chipped.
Richard Potts, an expert in stone tools, analyzed the recent findings and said that some of the 3.3 million year old tools are crude looking, while others are more complex.
The findings were detailed in a study published in the journal Science.
Image Source: thenewdaily
