Reconstruction of Paranthropus, an early hominin whose teeth were found alongside stone tools at Nyayanga, Kenya Elizabeth Danes/Science Photo Library
A set of stone tools found in Kenya is the oldest of its kind and one of the oldest known to have been made by ancient humans. This finding adds to the evidence for the widespread use of tools relatively early in human evolution.
Artifacts found in two teeth belonging to a human species called hominins ParanthropusTheir teeth were adapted for chewing food, so they weren’t thought to make tools, but new discoveries suggest they were actually making and using stone tools. .
The find comes from Nyayanga on the northeastern shore of Lake Victoria in Kenya. Mr. Plummer, Tom of his College of the City University of New York, Queens, first learned of their existence more than 20 years ago while working on another archaeological excavation nearby. There, a member of his team at the National Museum of Kenya in Nairobi, Blasto Onyango, mentioned another site with similar tools. “We investigated,” says Plummer.
The team has since recovered 330 stone artifacts. They include the heavy cores of pebbles used for striking and the sharp cutting flakes removed from them. The tool is of the type known as Oldwan, named after the Oldupai Gorge in Tanzania where the first examples were found.
Based on an analysis of the sediments in which the Nyayanga tools were found and the types of fossils found with them, the research team estimates they are between 3 and 2.6 million years old. “I think it’s on the old end of the spectrum,” he says, Plummer. This makes it the oldest Oldowan tool on record. The oldest known example so far was from Lady Gerar in Ethiopia, 2.6 million years ago.
Nyayanga tools were used to process a variety of foods, says Rahab Kiyanjuy of the National Museum of Kenya. The team found bones of animals resembling hippos, some with cut marks, suggesting that these tools were used for slaughter. Heavier tools were also used for beating plant material such as tubers and fruits.
Early Oldwan stone tools at Nyayanga, Kenya TW Plummer, JS Oliver, EM Finestone, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project
Finding evidence of such early use of Oldowan tools in Kenya suggests that the use of stone tools was already widespread 1,300 km from Lady Geral in Ethiopia, Plummer said. say. In line with this, in Algeria he found stone tools dated 2.4 million years ago.
The use of such instruments is primarily homo genera containing our own species clever personand old ones like man standing. the earliest known homo Fossils are 2.8 million years old, but have not been found in Nyayanga.So far, the only humans left there are Paranthropus.
Paranthropus lived with other humans, including homo, more than a million years old. However, it is generally believed that there are no living offspring. Compared to other hominins of our time, they were nothing like us. In particular, it had very large teeth, probably for grinding hard plant foods.
“About Paranthropus Do they really have a special anatomy?” says Plummer. He says it’s unlikely that a tool-using animal would need such a powerful chewing apparatus. Yes, he says. Paranthropus I made a tool and used it.
Others do not hesitate. “People are too shy to say it wasn’t. homo something, handy man Margherita Mussi of the Italo-Spanish Archaeological Mission of Merca Cunture and Baltit, based in Rome, said. She points out that some modern primates, such as chimpanzees and various monkeys, sometimes make crude stone tools. “So why Paranthropus?”
If that’s true, it would match other evidence for species homo Humans weren’t the only ones who made stone tools. The oldest known stone tools are 3.3 million years old and come from Lomekwi, Kenya. They are cruder than Oldwan’s version and were constructed in a different way: by striking rocks on the ground rather than by striking rocks held in the hand.
“We don’t have a genus homo says Sonia Hamand of Stony Brook University in New York, one of the discoverers of the Romekwi tool. “We believe that the first stone tools were probably homo” Australopithecus Seeds are likely candidates.
As for the late Nyayanga tool, it was probably late Australopithecusquick Paranthropus and early homo regional. “You have to imagine that all these species are probably sharing the same territory or the same environment at the same time,” Harmand says.
These studies suggest that the tool’s use is much older than we thought, says Plummer. “We’re going to go back even further into the use of tools,” he says. Furthermore, “the use of tools was important earlier than we realized”.
In line with this, Mussi and her colleagues showed last month that some hominins were making obsidian tools in organized “workshops”. I think there are,” says Mussi.
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