More than 2.6 million years ago, the old hominids used stone tools collectively known as Olduvayense industry. It was now discovered that they sought the raw material at several kilometers, that is, they could develop strategies on land use and remember the location of resources.
The ability to use mental maps, plan in advance and evaluate the quality of the stone would thus be qualities whose appearance is advanced in about 600,000 years, compared to what was believed, indicates a study published by Science Advance.
The manufacture of stone tools was strengthened approximately 3.3 million years ago, and 700,000 years later the practice was perfected, which marked the beginning of the Olduvayense industry. These tools served to crush plant material and dismembered large dams, such as hippos.
Scientists theorized, until now, that the first manufacturers of Olduvayenses tools depended on local resources until two million years ago.
In the new study, a team headed by the Natural History Museum of Cleveland (EU) made genoche analysis of 401 Olduvayenic artifacts found in the Nyayanga site, in southwest Kenya, dating from at least 2.6 million years ago.
The result was that these tools were made of volcanic rocks such as riolite and metamorphic rocks such as quartzite. The researchers mapped the sources of these raw materials and discovered that they were common in the hydrographic basins located east of the Homa Peninsula, about 13 kilometers away.
The team indicates that Nyayanga’s stones are significantly older than other known examples of transport of stones in antiquity.
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Thus their tools manufactured the hominids
Previously, the oldest hominid evidence moving rocks at significant distances was a two -million year site known as Kanjera South, also in the Homa Peninsula.
“People often focus on tools, but the true innovation of Olduvai can actually be the transport of resources from one place to another,” according to Rick Potts, one of the signatories of the article.
The knowledge and intention to bring stone material to abundant food sources “was apparently an integral part of the manufacturing behavior of tools at the beginning of the Olduvai,” added Potsss, cited by the National Museum of Natural History of Smithsonian (EU).
The transport of resources is an important milestone in human evolution and demonstrates – he said – the ability of ancient hominids to plan in advance and evaluate the requirements to process food, as well as their ability to mentally draw a map of their environment and remember the places where high quality rocks were found.
The Olduvayans tools were manufactured using stones such as hammer to hit stone nuclei and create sharp lacquers, so choosing the right rocks was fundamental. They had to be resistant, but fragile enough to get rid of easily.
However, Nyayanga’s local rocks are relatively soft, so cutting tools would be quickly dwarf and the tools to hit would break easily.
On the other hand, the Nyayanga site contains fossils of Paranthropus, an extinct genre of hominids. Finding those remains with Olduvayenses tools suggests that they could have used them, as well as their close evolutionary relatives of the Homo genre.
“Unless a hominid fossil is really holding a tool, it cannot be determined with certainty what species manufactured what sets of stone tools,” said Emma Finestone, of the Clivend Natural History Museum.
The scientist believes that this research “suggests that there is a greater diversity of hominids that manufactured primitive stone tools of what was previously thought.”
With EFE information
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