Long before humans walked the Earth, someone began chipping away at a rock by the side of a river. Eventually, this chipping formed the rock into a tool which was used to prepare meat and other foods.
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| 3.3 million-year-old artifacts predate human genus |
An analysis of the finding was published in the May 2015 edition of Nature Magazine and it said that 3.3 million years ago, before humans were on Earth, someone made a variety of tools by chipping away at a rock to form a sharp edge and used them as hammers and cutting instruments, as knives and spears to perform daily tasks and to prepare food.
It is the oldest set of stone tools ever discovered. Though it is unknown who made the tools, this archaeological find is the latest and most convincing evidence that toolmaking began before any humans ever walked the Earth.
Before this find, the earliest evidence of stone tools came from a 2.6-million-year-old site in Ethiopia. Evidence suggests that an early human ancestor called Homo habilis likely created the tools.
The common assumption has always been that as Africa’s climate changed around 2.8 million years ago, that early hominins became diversified and the Homo genus emerged —that is the species that would eventually produce modern humans.
As new environments developed, new food sources were found and there was a need to create tools to process those foods.
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| Excavations at the Lomekwi 3 site in 2012 |
149 artifacts that were eventually excavated from the site showed magnetic minerals and volcanic ash tufts embedded in the local rocks which dates the age of the stones at 3.3 million years.
Source: Smithsonianmag.com
Click the link below if you are interested in more history about this set of stone tools.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/oldest-known-stone-tools-unearthed-kenya-180955341/
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