A new study suggests that Homo erectusa precursor to modern humans, was using advanced tool-making methods in East Africa 1. The study, published this week in Nature, raises new questions about where these tall and slender early humans originated and how they developed sophisticated tool-making technology. Early humans were using stone hand axes as far back as 1.
Homo erectus appeared about 2 million years ago, and ranged across Asia and Africa before hitting a possible evolutionary dead-end, about 70, years ago. Some researchers think Homo erectu s evolved in East Africa, where many of the oldest fossils have been found, but the discovery in the s of equally old Homo erectus fossils in the country of Georgia has led others to suggest an Asian origin.
The study in Nature does not resolve the debate but adds new complexity. Study co-author, Craig Feibel, is among the team of researchers that returned in to West Turkana to put dates on hand axes excavated earlier. Credit: Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
Their goal: to establish the age of the tools by dating the surrounding sediments. The researchers chiseled away chunks of the mudstone at Kokiselei to later analyze the periodic polarity reversals and come up with ages.
The oldest Acheulian tools ly identified appear in Konso, Ethiopia, about 1. Tools made by early humans were found at Kokiselei, Kenya, in Lake Turkana's ancient shoreline sediments pictured above.
Credit: Lamont-Doherty. Anthropologists have yet to find an Acheulian hand axe gripped in a Homo erectus fist but most credit Homo erectus with developing the technology.
Acheulian tools were larger and heavier than the pebble-choppers used ly and also had chiseled edges that would have helped Homo erectus butcher elephants and other scavenged game left behind by larger predators or even have allowed the early humans to hunt such prey themselves. The skill involved in manufacturing such a tool suggests that Homo erectus was dexterous and able to think ahead.
At Kokiselei, the presence of both tool-making methods—Oldowan and Acheulian-- could mean that Homo erectus and its more primitive cousin Homo habilis lived at the same time, with Homo erectus carrying the Acheulian technology to the Mediterranean region about a million years ago, the study authors hypothesize. The East African landscape that Homo erectus walked from about 2 million to 1.
The team is currently excavating a more Dating hand axes 2 million year old site in Kenya to learn more about the early Oldowan period.
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Other inquiries, please see contacts. Humans Shaped Stone Axes 1.
