WEDNESDAY, Aug. 31 (HealthDay News) -- Hand axes, picks and
other stone tools that are 1.8 million years old suggest that
ancient humans were using advanced tool-making methods at least
300,000 years earlier than previously thought, a new study
says.
The tools found in East Africa are believed to have been made by
Homo erectus, tall and slender early humans who appeared about 2 million years ago and disappeared about 70,000 years ago.
The tools are called Acheulian tools and "represent a great
technological leap," study co-author and geologist Dennis Kent said
in a news release from the Earth Institute at Columbia
University.
He and his colleagues analyzed the sediments at the site in West
Turkana, Kenya, where the tools were previously excavated, and
dated the site to 1.76 million years ago.
The oldest Acheulian tools previously identified were found in
Konso, Ethiopia (1.4 million years old) and India (1.5 to 1 million
years old).
The study appears in the Sept. 1 issue of the journal
Nature.
More information
The World Museum of Man has more about
prehistoric humans and their tools and weapons.