Stone tools unearthed in Kenya reveal ancient human relatives regularly moved raw materials several miles

In southwest Kenya more than 2.6 million years ago, former humans exercised a range of stone tools – known collectively as the Oldowan toolbox – to pound plant material and carve out great prey such as hippopotamia.

These sustainable and versatile tools were made from special stone materials collected up to eight miles away, according to new research by scientists from Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, Cleveland Museum of Natural History and Queens College.

Their results, published in the journal Scientific advancesPush up the first known evidence of ancient humans carrying resources over long distances of around 600,000 years.

“People often focus on the tools themselves, but the true innovation of the Oldowan can actually be the transport of resources from one place to another,” said Rick Potts, the main study of the study and the president of Peter Buck of the human origins of the National Museum of Natural History.

“Knowledge and intention to provide stone materials to rich food sources apparently part of the tool manufacturing behavior at the start of Oldowan.”

In the new study led by Emma Finestone, the president of Robert J. and Linnet E. Fritz on the human origins of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Finestone and Potts worked with several colleagues to analyze the stone tools discovered on the Kenya peninsula, a region rich in fossils which was walking in the oriental margins of Lake Victoria.

Potts first questioned the region’s fossil sites in 1985. During the years that followed, he worked closely with colleagues from the national museums in Kenya to search the Ravins of the region as part of the Paleoanthropy project of the Homa Peninsula, which is another co-autoroute of Potts.

Finestone joined the project in 2012, when she started working with Plummer to rebuild the behavior of hominin tools on the Homa peninsula and understand how tool manufacturers have moved to the landscape.

One of the most important sites in the peninsula is known as Nyayanga and contains archaeological discoveries dating back three million years. A series of recent excavations has given a mine of stone tools and hundreds of massacred hippopotamus bones.

In an article in 2023, Plummer, Potts, Finestone and their colleagues applied that these bones represent the oldest known proof of old hominines using stone tools to massacre large animals.

“Hominines used stone tools for a variety of hammer and cuts, including plant and animal and workwood treatment,” said Plummer. “The diversity of activities that have used stone tools suggests that, even at this early stage of cultural development, stone tools have improved the adaptability of hominines that use them.”

The development of the Oldowan toolbox allowed the first humans to consume great prey. About three million years ago, the former hominines began to refine their manufacturing tools, using Hammersones to hit the stone nuclei and create flakes with lively edges. By beating, by cutting and scratching, these stone tools could treat and refine a greater variety of vegetable and animal materials.

Finding the right rocks was vital. Oldowan tools had to be shaped from strong stones but brittle enough to get rid of easily.

However, the local rocks of Nyayanga are relatively soft and would produce cutting tools which finished quickly and hammering tools which would be more likely to break. Like using a fragile plastic knife trying to cut a well -made steak, these stones would have been little useful for hammering hard plants or breaking animal bones.

As a result, Nyayanga hominins seem to have brought stronger stones from other regions. The researchers have analyzed the geochemistry of hundreds of stone nuclei and flakes found in Nyayanga which have dated at least 2.6 million years. They discovered that these tools were made from volcanic rocks such as rhyolite and metamorphic rocks like quartzite.

Scientists studied local geology and discovered that these types of rocks were common in drainage basins several kilometers east of the Homa peninsula.

According to Finestone, Nyayanga stones are significantly older than other known examples of transport of old stones. Previously, the oldest evidence of homes moving rocks over significant distances was a site of $ 2 million known as Kanjera South which is also located on the Homa peninsula.

“It is surprising because the assembly of Nyayanga is at the start of the Oldowan and we previously thought that longer transport distances may have been linked to changes that have occurred in our more recent scalable history,” she said.

The old distance traveled for stones analyzed in this study is also remarkable. While many non -human primates carry food and rocks, they only use nearby materials. Some, like chimpanzees, are known to transport stones over short distances. But nyayanga homes seem to have always bought equipment more than six miles away.

The ability to transport resources is an important step in human evolution. According to Potts, it presents the ability of old hominins to plan in advance and assess food processing requirements. It also illustrates an ability to mentally map their environment and remember the locations with high quality rocks.

“The mental cards of the oldest hominines known to ensure that stone tools have exceeded their immediate environment, even exceeding a few kilometers,” said Potts.

Once the ancient hominines brought their lithic transport to Nyayanga, they shaped the stones in flakes and nuclei. But the identity of these tool manufacturers remains elusive.

On the oldest hippo butcher’s site, the team discovered a molar tooth of a hominin of the genus Paranthropus, a group that sported skulls and strong teeth to grind difficult equipment. Another Paranthropus tooth was found nearby on the surface of the same geological bed.

The existence of Paranthropus teeth alongside Oldowan Stone Tools suggests that these hominines may have used stone tools like their close scalable parents in the genus Homo.

However, the case is far from closed.

“Unless you find a hominin fossil that really has a tool, you will not be able to definitively say what species are making the assemblies of stone tools,” said Finestone. “But I think that Nyayanga’s research suggests that there is a greater diversity of homes that make first stone tools than we thought before.”

Nyayanga artifacts also highlight that ancient humans have transported raw materials to fuel technological innovations for millions of years.

“Humans have always relied on tools to resolve adaptive challenges,” said Finestone. “By understanding how this relationship started, we can better see our link with it today, especially since we are faced with new challenges in a world shaped by technology.”