Archaeologists find tools dating back 3 million years at site dubbed ‘the cradle of humanity’
Archaeologists have discovered some of the very first tools ever used on Earth at a site in Africa dubbed “the cradle of humanity.”
This region, found on Kenya’s Homa Peninsula, has yielded clues to the early beginnings of humanity, such as other ancient tools and the remains of ‘Lucy’ – a pre-human relative who lived more than three million years ago.
The team discovered three-million-year-old flakes, or small knives, made by hominins, the first pre-human species to walk on two legs, and which hit one stone against another to create sharp edges.
Researchers from the City University of New York said the sharp rock allowed them to peel and cut fruits and vegetables and slice hippo meat.
The tools are known as the Oldowan toolbox, which previously spanned only 1.7 million years ago to 2.9 million years ago.
Lead archaeologist Tom Plummer suggested that the tools found paved the way for everything that followed.
“In terms of technology, I think Oldowan technology is the most important technological innovation that has ever occurred in human history,” Plummer told CBS News.
“It gave hominins access to a whole range of foods they never had access to before, increasing body and brain size.”
Archaeologists have discovered some of the first tools used on Earth. The artifacts are stones that ancient people cut
The new diet would have created a “feedback loop” that led to more advanced creatures and advanced technologies, Plummer said.
While uncovering the tools was an astonishing discovery for Plummer and his team, finding cut marks on nearby animal bones confirmed that a slaughter had taken place.
The team discovered ancient hippopotamus bones at the site showed that technology existed almost three million years ago, CBS News reported.
The site is located on the Nyanga Peninsula, which experts said could help determine the existence of humans on Earth.
Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program and leader of the peninsula’s research, said, “We are the last bipeds standing, as I call it.
‘All those other ways of life are extinct. And that gives us a lot to think about, and draws attention to the fragility of life, including our own journey through time.’
Scientists have found evidence showing that modern humans appeared in Africa about 300,000 years ago – 600,000 years after the hominins went extinct – but they only recently understood that the pre-human group began walking upright at least six million years ago.
“Some things that we thought happened over a very short period of time, within the last one million years, are now stretching out over a period of six million years,” Potts said. “That includes making tools.”
The tools were discovered on Kenya’s Homa Peninsula, a region that has yielded clues to the early beginnings of humanity
Researchers from the City University of New York said the sharp rocks allowed them to peel and cut fruits and vegetables, and slice hippo meat.
Archaeologists discovered the remains of ‘Lucy’ in 1974, while partying with beer and listening to the Beatles.
And when the song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” came on, the team knew what to call the ancient species that lived 3.2 million years ago.
In 2016, researchers re-examined her bones to learn more about how she died. Finding a simple fall from a tree could have caused her death.
Lead author John Kappelman, professor of anthropology at the University of Texas, said: ‘It is ironic that the fossil at the center of a debate over the role of arboreal evolution in human evolution likely died from injuries sustained from falling from a tree.
Kappelman first studied Lucy during her US museum tour in 2008, when the fossil took a detour to the High-Resolution X-ray Computed Tomography Facility (UTCT).
The facility features a machine designed to scan materials as solid as rock and with higher resolution than medical CT.
For ten days, Kappelman and geological sciences professor Richard Ketcham scanned all 40 percent of her complete skeleton to create a digital archive of more than 35,000 CT slices.
Remains of Lucy, an ancient human species that lived more than three million years ago, were also found in the region
Kappelman noticed that the end of her right humerus was broken in a way not normally seen in fossils, preserving a series of sharp, clean fractures with small bone fragments and splinters still in place.
This compression fracture occurs when the hand hits the ground during a fall, causing the elements of the shoulder to collide, creating a unique signature on the humerus,” Kappelman said.
He then consulted Dr. Stephen Pearce, an orthopedic surgeon at the Austin Bone and Joint Clinic, using a modern, human-scale 3D-printed model of Lucy.
Pearce confirmed that the injury was consistent with a fracture caused by a fall from a significant height, with the conscious victim extending an arm in an attempt to break the fall.
Kappelman also saw similar, less severe fractures to the left shoulder and other compression fractures in Lucy’s skeleton.
Overall, Lucy suffered a broken ankle, arm, knee, pelvis and at least one broken rib, indicating that she must have suffered serious internal organ damage.