The oldest bone tools for making clothes found in Morocco

Moroccan archaeologists have identified clothing-making tools made from bone dating back 120,000 years, the oldest ever found, one of the researchers said.

“This is a major discovery because while older bone tools have been found elsewhere, this is the first time we have identified bone tools (it’s old) that were used to make clothes,” said the Moroccan archaeologist Abdeljalil El Hajraoui.

The international team discovered more than 60 tools in the Smugglers’ Cave, less than 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the capital of the North African country.

They had been “intentionally shaped for specific tasks which included working with leather and fur,” the team wrote in a study published in the journal iScience.

The discovery could help answer questions about the origins of modern human behavior, said El Hajraoui, a researcher at the National Institute of Archeology and Cultural Heritage (INSAP).

“Sewing is a behavior that lasts” since prehistoric times, he told AFP.

“Tools like those found in the cave have been in use for 30,000 years, proving the emergence of a collective memory.”

Archaeologists walk to enter the cave, the scene of the last significant archaeological discovery in Morocco. By FADEL SENNA (AFP)

The iScience article predicted that “given the level of specialization in the cultivation of bone tool materials at the Smugglers Cave, it is likely that earlier examples will be found.”

The team also discovered living spaces carved into the ground or built into the cave, as well as perforated seashells apparently used as ornaments.

“It was a cultural evolution that still needs to be studied,” El Hajraoui said.

Morocco has been the scene of a number of important archaeological finds, including on Wednesday when the country’s Culture Ministry announced that researchers in a cave near Essaouira, about 400 kilometers southwest of Rabat , had discovered a collection of about 30 shaped marine snail shells dating back as much as 150,000 years.

In a statement, he said they were “the oldest ornaments ever to be found.”

This followed an announcement in July when archaeologists revealed the discovery of the oldest Stone Age hand ax-making site in North Africa, dating back 1.3 million years.

Discovery pushed back by hundreds of thousands of years the start date in North Africa of the Acheulian stone tooling industry associated with a key human ancestor, Homo erectus, team researchers said. to journalists in Rabat.

In 2017, the discovery of five fossils at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, estimated to be 300,000 years old, turned evolutionary science upside down when they were named Homo sapiens.