On a lakeside peninsula in East Africa, archaeologists have found clues to a society that lived there more than 3 million years ago.
Kenya’s Homa Peninsula is part of the East African Rift Valley, a part of the world often called “the cradle of humanity.” So many of the oldest clues on the first days of humanity have been preserved beneath the valley’s fertile, human soil, including the remains of “Lucy”, a ancient human relative who lived more than 3 million years ago.
Tom Plummer and his team are the latest to make discoveries in the region, working at a site on the peninsula called Nyanga. The team found shards, or small knives, at the excavation site. These blades are believed to be among the first tools ever used on Earth – and even after more than 3 million years, they still have an edge.
Plummer, an archaeologist at the City University of New York, said the blades were made by hammering one stone against another. The knives would have been used for peeling and cutting fruits and vegetables, as well as cutting the flesh of prey like hippos, Plummer said. The meat was then pounded between stones to tenderize it. The knife and stones are known as the Oldowan toolbox and likely paved the way for further technological advancements.
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“I think the Oldowan technology is probably the most important technological innovation ever made in human history,” Plummer told “CBS Saturday Morning.”
“This allowed (prehuman ancestors) access to a whole range of foods that they would never have had access to before.”
Plummer said this new diet would have stimulated body and brain growth, triggering a “feedback loop” that would create more sophisticated beings who would “start doing more with technology.” A similar, even older cutting tool was also found in Kenya, but this technology appears to have died out. Plummer therefore believes that this tool is the one to which these developments can be attributed.
“I think it all starts with the Oldowan,” Plummer said.
Who made the tools is another surprise. Along with the tools, Plummer’s team found the tooth of a paranthropus, an early hominid that is not a direct ancestor of humans. This suggests that early tool making is not a human legacy, but an idea that humanity’s ancestors copied, then used to dominate other hominids, who eventually died out.
Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program and leader of research on the peninsula, said the discovery may help to regulate the existence of humans on the planet.
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“We are the last bipeds standing, as I call it,” Potts said. “All these other ways of life have disappeared. So it gives us food for thought and draws attention to the fragility of life, even in our own time travel.
In search of pre-human history
The search for these early artifacts has the look and plot of an “Indiana Jones” movie. Finding the splintered rocks that showed evidence of use as tools was one thing, but the archeology team then had to find the cut marks on the animal bones that confirmed the knives’ use.
Blasto Onyango, a local archaeological legend who helped discover the Turkana Boy, the most complete hominid skeleton ever discovered, said his impressive discovery took “four or five years” to find. Over time, he and other archaeologists discovered “different parts of” the skeleton, working slowly but surely to uncover the remains of a young boy who lived more than a million and a half years ago.
Paleontology researcher Rose Nyaboke said this kind of slow, painstaking research is what makes up the day-to-day work of an archaeological dig. Sometimes she and other researchers find small pieces of bone, but have to leave them where they were found.
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“We don’t choose just anything. This must have paleontological significance,” Nyaboke explained. “We tell him, ‘Sorry.’ We can’t choose you today.
The bones that matter are those that can give context to the area, like pig teeth. Pigs evolved so quickly that their skeletons help date the surrounding area. The site is too old for carbon dating, and the ancient volcanic ash that preserved the artifacts makes other dating methods too difficult to use. The area had actually been largely abandoned by researchers after artifacts from the Homa Peninsula led to inaccurate claims about human origins. Despite all this, Potts began digging on the peninsula nearly 40 years ago.
“We found a place that was difficult to date, but we didn’t leave it, because science requires perseverance,” Potts said.
This perseverance was rewarded by discoveries like Plummer’s. New technologies have made dating sites easier, and new discoveries in East Africa have refined researchers’ understanding of human roots. Researchers knew that modern Homo sapiens appeared in Africa about 300,000 years ago, but only recently realized that their hominid ancestors began walking on two legs at least 6 years ago. millions of years.
“Some of the things that we thought happened over a very short period of time, in the last million years, now extend over a period of 6 million years,” Potts said. “This includes tool making.”