Saber-tooth cat (Megantereon) jaw and teeth fossil found at the Nyayanga site. J.S. Oliver, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project
The earliest stone tool industry in prehistory, Oldowan technology, was more ancient and widespread than previously believed, according to archaeological findings in Nyayanga, Kenya.
The study, published in Science found that tools found were used to process a variety of foods, including ancient hippopotamuses, at least 600,000 years earlier than evidence at other Oldowan sites had suggested.
Thomas Plummer, a professor in the department of Anthropology at Queens College, New York, United States, and the study’s lead author says Oldowan is the oldest widespread and long-lasting culture in the archaeological record. “We suspected when we started working at Nyayanga that the tools there were very old. This was confirmed with a variety of dating methods, and we decided to investigate what our ancient relatives were using them for.”
Previous claims have suggested that stone toolmaking was used in either butchering animal carcasses, or processing plants, the researchers say. For decades, the Oldowan technology was believed to have emerged approximately 2.6 million years ago in a particular region of Ethiopia, and then gradually spread across Africa, they added.
Index map showing location of Nyayanga Oldowan site on the Homa Peninsula in southwestern Kenya. J.S. Oliver, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project
“Our discovery of sites that are between 3 and 2.6 million years old at Nyayanga, southwestern Kenya, expands the geographic range of the earliest Oldowan people by 1,300 kilometres, demonstrating that this technology was more widespread at its inception than previously recognized, Rahab Kinyanjui, senior research scientist from the National Museums of Kenya explained.
She adds that stone tool butchery marks on fossils, and microscopic wear formed on stone tools used for cutting and pounding, indicate that a diverse array of plant and animal foods was processed by the Nyayanga tool users.
