CSIC
27 bone tools were found in Tanzania. Previous studies pointed to a maximum of 500 thousand years ac.
As tools created with bones They began to be a reality on planet Earth about 500,000 years ago, according to previous studies.
But a new one suggests that, after all, the first bone tools were created by primitive hominids 1.5 million years. That is, 1 million years before what was thought.
This primitive technology to take advantage of bones to build tools was seen in an archaeological discovery in the gorge of Olduvai, in Tanzania.
Archaeologists found 27 tools made from bones of large mammals – Elephants and hippos, for example.
Our ancestors used stones or hammers to create parts up to 1 kgwhich varied between 20 and 40 centimeters; all model the tools.
“There is a clear desire to modify the shape of the bone to turn them into very heavy and long tools,” Francesco D’Errico archaeologist at France-Presse.
The team believes these tools were used to Cut meat and break bones looking for the tutanothe soft, fat substance inside the bones.
The criterion for choosing those bones was not just availability; The physical properties too: the legs of large animals were well -molded to impact tools and much lighter than stones of equivalent size.
With the date estimated by the investigators, it is suggested that there were very advanced cognitive skills for that time. And in the same phase in which hominids produced rudimentary instruments of stone, in the same region.
That is, it is the notion that the hominids of that time comprised the properties of the bone, which are different from the properties of the stone.
Archaeologists thus suggest that knowledge about different materials and their applicability already existed between first hominids.
These are results that show that, in the transition between the Olduvaiense period and the primitive (medium -pamily paleolithic), the hominids of oriental Africa developed an original cultural innovation, the study authors write.
