World's earliest sophisticated stone tools found in northwest Kenya.
Submitted by mikeaitch on Tuesday, 13 September 2011 Page Views: 2490
DiscoveriesCountry: Tanzania The teardrop-shaped hand-axes date to about 1.76 million years ago, and would have been used for a range of tasks from chopping wood to cutting up meat. They would have been so useful in fact that scientists describe them as the "Swiss army knife" of the Stone Age.Researchers tell the journal Nature that the tools were probably made by the human ancestor Homo erectus.
This was a bigger-brained, smarter and more dextrous creature than any human species before it.
Homo erectus ranged across Africa and Asia before going extinct about 70,000 years ago. Many suspect it was on the direct evolutionary line to modern humans - Homo sapiens.
Careful design
Palaeolithic stone tools can be grouped into a number of different styles. The type unearthed at the Kokiselei archaeological site is referred to by anthropologists as Acheulian technology.
Such objects are larger and heavier than the pebble-choppers (Oldowan technology) that were used previously and which are associated with a more primitive human known as Homo habilis.
The Acheulian hand-axes also have distinctive chiselled edges.
Manufacturing them would have required forethought in design and the careful selection of particular types of starting rocks from which to fashion the final product.
"The Oldowan is a little more haphazardly made," said lead author Christopher Lepre from Rutgers University and Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
"It's not until you start seeing Acheulian culture do you get into tools that are very systematic and more recognisable to the lay person as tools," he told the BBC.
More, with photos and audio at BBC News.
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