May 21, 2015 06:51 PM
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/...0000-years
EXCERPT: The oldest known stone tools, dating to long before the emergence of modern humans, have been discovered in Africa. The roughly-hewn stones, which are around 3.3 million years old, have been hailed by scientists as a “new beginning to the known archaeological record” and push back the dawn of culture by 700,000 years.
The discovery overturns the mainstream view that the ability to make stone tools was unique to our own ancestors and that it was one of a handful of traits that made early humans so special. The new artefacts, found in Kenya’s Turkana basin, suggest that a variety ancient apes were making similar advances in parallel across the African continent. [...] The Homo genus, from which modern humans descend, only emerged around 2.5 million years ago, when forests gave way to open grassland environments in Africa. Until now, it was widely assumed that environmental changes around this time triggered the shift towards a bipedal hunter-gatherer life style.
[...] Professor Fred Spoor, a palaeontologist at University College London and part of the team that discovered K. platytops, said the tools were “a very important find”. “Until now the thinking’s been that if you want to be part of this special club ‘Homo’, you need to be a tool-maker,” he said. “The period before three million years ago was seen as a rather boring period of evolution, but now we know there was stuff happening.”....
EXCERPT: The oldest known stone tools, dating to long before the emergence of modern humans, have been discovered in Africa. The roughly-hewn stones, which are around 3.3 million years old, have been hailed by scientists as a “new beginning to the known archaeological record” and push back the dawn of culture by 700,000 years.
The discovery overturns the mainstream view that the ability to make stone tools was unique to our own ancestors and that it was one of a handful of traits that made early humans so special. The new artefacts, found in Kenya’s Turkana basin, suggest that a variety ancient apes were making similar advances in parallel across the African continent. [...] The Homo genus, from which modern humans descend, only emerged around 2.5 million years ago, when forests gave way to open grassland environments in Africa. Until now, it was widely assumed that environmental changes around this time triggered the shift towards a bipedal hunter-gatherer life style.
[...] Professor Fred Spoor, a palaeontologist at University College London and part of the team that discovered K. platytops, said the tools were “a very important find”. “Until now the thinking’s been that if you want to be part of this special club ‘Homo’, you need to be a tool-maker,” he said. “The period before three million years ago was seen as a rather boring period of evolution, but now we know there was stuff happening.”....