Human ancestors made oldest known bone tools 1.5 million years ago

Ancient human relatives created sharp edges from animal bones about 1.5 million years ago, scholars say.

Discoveries at the Olduva Gorge of Tanzania, a famous East African fossil site, represent the oldest known evidence of systematic bone tools production by hominides, according to archaeologist Ignacio de la Torre of the National Research Council in Madrid and colleagues.

Excavations carried out from 2015 to 2022 discovered 27 bone tools in sediment that had already been dated, scientists report March 5 in March in Nature. Each of the two fossil hominides who are known to have lived in the Olduva Gorge about 1.5 million years ago – a possible direct human ancestor called Homo erectus or a side branch species called Paranthropus Boisei – They could have created bone objects, they say.

While making stone vehicles appeared at 3.3 million years ago, bone tools generally date back no earlier than 500,000 years ago. The much older origin of bone tools were suggested by identifying a 1.4 million -year -old fashion bone, fashion in a cutting or sawing tool, which had gone unexplained since its discovery in an Ethiopian site in 1994.

Even the oldest objects taken in the Olduvai Gorge come from a bone device device, scientists say. Applications of different sizes and shapes were identified as bone bone pieces, mainly by elephants and hippos. Shock brands appear when hominides sharpen the ends of the bone. The largest tools, made of elephant bones, reached 38 centimeters long. This is approximately the distance, on average, from the elbow of an adult to the fingertips.

Six bone tools displayed a staircase engraved on one side, which probably served as control, and a sharp point on the other end. Some other bone tools resemble pear -shaped stone axis.

Archaeologists consider the axes of the stone hand in the main innovation of the Acheulean industry, a tradition of vehicles that came out about 1.7 million years ago. “We believe that Olduvai bone tools represent a technological transfer [by hominids] From stone to bone, ”says de la Torre.

His group excavated many hippo bones that hold marks of butchers, suggesting that Olduvai hominids used the corpses of hippo for food as well as bones suitable for tools. But some elephants remained displayed. Bone elephants tools were brought to the site from elsewhere, investigators’ suspects.