Researchers found 3 million-year-old tools in Kenya, showing the development of human ancestors

On a peninsula near a lake in East Africa, archaeologists have found clues about a community that lived there more than three million years ago.

The Homa Peninsula, Kenya, is part of the East African Rift Valley, a part of the world often referred to as the “origin of mankind.” Many very old clues about the early days of humanity are preserved beneath the fertile soil of the human valley, including the remains of “Lucy,” i an ancient relative of man who lived more than 3 million years ago.

Tom Plummer and his team are the latest to find objects in space, working on a peninsula called the Moon. The team found flakes, or small knives, at the excavation site. Blades are believed to be some of the first tools ever used on Earth – and even after more than 3 million years, they still have a sharp edge.

Plummer, an archaeologist at the City University of New York, said the blades were made by striking one stone against another. Knives would have been used to peel and cut fruits and vegetables, and to cut meat from game like hippos, Plummer said. The meat was then pounded between stones to soften it. The knife and stone is known as the Oldowan toolkit, and it may have set the stage for technological development down the line.

“I think Oldowan technology is probably the most important technological innovation that has ever happened in human history,” Plummer said on “CBS Saturday Morning.”

“It allowed (prehuman ancestors) to have access to a variety of foods that they would never have had before.”

Plummer said the new food would have stimulated the growth of the body and brain, starting a “feedback loop” that created more complex organisms that “started to do more with technology.” A similar, older cutting tool was also found in Kenya, but that technology apparently died out, so Plummer believes this tool can be credited with the change.

“I think that all starts with Oldowan,” Plummer said.

Who made the tools is another mystery. Along with the tools, Plummer’s team found a tooth from a paranthropus, an early hominin that is not a direct ancestor of humans. That suggests that early tool making is not a human legacy, but a concept that was copied by human ancestors, and then used to dominate other hominins, which eventually died out.

Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian’s human origins program and a research leader on the peninsula, said the discovery could be made. to help organize people’s existence in the world.

“We’re the last ones standing, as I call it,” Potts said. “All those other ways of life disappeared. So that gives us a lot to think about, and it draws attention to the fragility of life, even our journey through time.”

Searches for pre-human history

Searching for these original artifacts has the look and feel of an “Indiana Jones” movie. Finding different pieces of stone that showed evidence of being used as tools was one thing, but the archeological team had to find cut marks on animal bones that confirmed how knives were used.

Blasto Onyango, the local archaeologist legend who helped uncover the Turkana Boy, the most complete hominin skeleton ever found, said his incredible find took “four or five years” to find. As time went on, he and other archaeologists found “cross-sections” of bones, working slowly but surely to find the remains of a young boy who lived more than a million and a half years ago.

Paleontologist Rose Nyaboke said that kind of careful, slow research is what makes up the day-to-day work of archaeology. Sometimes, he and other researchers find small pieces of bone, but they have to leave those pieces where they were found.

“We don’t just choose anything. There must be a paleontological explanation,” Nyaboke explained. “We say to it ‘Sorry. We will not choose you today.’

Important bones are those that can lend space, such as the teeth of pigs. Pigs evolved so quickly that their bones helped to break down the environment. The site is too old to be carbon dated, and the ancient volcanic ash that preserved the artifacts makes other dating methods very difficult to use. This area was actually largely abandoned by researchers after artifacts from the Homa Peninsula led to incorrect claims about the origins of the people. Despite all that, Potts began digging on the peninsula nearly 40 years ago.

“We found a place that was difficult to describe, but we didn’t leave, because science needs persistence,” said Potts.

That patience has been rewarded with discoveries like Plummer’s. New technology has made the sites easier to date, and new discoveries across eastern Africa have improved researchers’ understanding of people’s roots. Researchers knew that modern homo sapiens came from Africa about 300,000 years ago, but it wasn’t until recently that they understood that their hominin ancestors started walking on two legs at least 6 million years ago.

“Some of the things that we thought happened in a very short period of time, within the last million years, are now extended over a period of 6 million years,” Potts said. “That includes making tools.”