Algeria, new "cradle of humanity"? – CartaCapital



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Humans may have started using stone tools to slaughter animals long before, and in a different part of the world, than previously thought. A team of researchers discovered in Algeria stone and bone tools from cut animals dating back to 2.4 million years ago.

The discovery calls into question the title of "cradle of humanity" attributed to East Africa, according to a published study. in the scientific journal Science on Friday 30

The study revealed the discovery of about 250 primitive tools and 296 bones of animals on the archaeological site of. Ain Boucherit in Setif, about 300 kilometers east of the capital Algiers. The results were obtained by a team of researchers from Spain, Australia, France and Algeria.

The tools look like the ones that we found up to here largely in East Africa. Stone tools were found near many fossilized bones with cut marks, indicating that the site was used for slaughtering animals. "East Africa is widely regarded as the cradle of the use of stone tools by our hominid ancestors – the earliest examples date back to around 2.6 million years ]

"The New Discoveries" [TheNewDiscoveredFairs"AinBoucheritleplusanciensitedAfricaofNorthwithProblems In Situ The Use Of Meat With Tools" in stone, and suggest that other similar sites can be found outside of East Africa, "he continues.

The bones appeared to have been scraped off and cut with the help of a tool called oldowan, a term used to refer to the first lysis tools found in the Olduvai gorge in Tanzania and used by the primitive humans. Although the technology may have come from East Africa, the research team also considered the possibility of having it separately.

The results were drawn from two geological layers – one with 2.4 million years and the second with 1, 9 million years – and suggest that the ancestors of modern humans were present in Africa North at least 600,000 years earlier than scientists thought. Until now, the oldest tools discovered in North Africa were 1.8 million years old.

No human remains were found. As a result, scientists do not know what kind of hominids lived on the site, nor did an ancestor of homo sapiens (appeared hundreds of thousands of years later) used these tools .

"Now Ain Boucherit The archeology of Oldowan, estimated at 2.4 million years, North Africa and the Sahara can be a deposit of more archaeological materials," says the report. "From the potential of Ain Boucherit and adjacent sedimentary basins, we suggest that hominid fossils and artifacts from Oldowan, as old as those documented in Africa 's. 39, East, can also be discovered in North Africa. "

are used to date sites and discoveries in East Africa, but they do not exist in Algeria. In this way, the researchers used other methods, including a method to determine the geological age of the site, including methods for detecting clues on known changes in the Earth's magnetic field over time. .

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