The world’s earliest stone technologies are probably older than previously thought

A new study from the University of Kent’s School of Anthropology and Conservation has found that Oldowan and Acheulean stone tool technologies are likely tens of thousands of years older than current evidence suggests.

They are currently the two oldest and best documented stone tool technologies known to archaeologists.

These results, published by the Journal of Human Evolution, provide a new chronological basis from which to understand the production of stone tool technologies by our early ancestors. They also expand the time frame to discuss changing human technological capabilities and associated dietary and behavioral changes.

For the study, a team led by Dr Alastair Key of Kent and Dr David Roberts, alongside Dr Ivan Jaric from the Center for Biology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, used statistical modeling techniques recently introduced in the study. archaeological science. Models estimated that Oldowan’s stone tools appeared 2.617-2.644 million years ago, 36,000 to 63,000 years earlier than current evidence. The Acheulean origin has been pushed back from at least 55,000 years to 1.815-1.823 million years ago.

Early stone tool technologies, such as the Oldowan and Acheulean, provided early human ancestors with access to new types of food and increased the ease of producing wooden tools or processing carcasses. animals.

Dr Key, a Paleolithic archaeologist and lead author of the study, said: “Our research provides the best possible estimates for understanding when hominids first produced these types of stone tools. This is important for several reasons, but for me at least it is the most exciting because it highlights that there will likely be substantial portions of the artifact record waiting to be discovered.

Dr Roberts, a conservation scientist and co-author of the study, said: “The optimal linear estimate (OLE) modeling technique was originally developed by myself and a colleague for date extinctions. It has proven to be a reliable method for inferring the time of species extinction and is based on the schedules of the last sightings, and therefore applying it to the first sightings of archaeological artifacts was another exciting breakthrough. We hope that the technique will be used more widely in archeology. “

While it is widely believed that older stone tool sites exist and are awaiting discovery, this study provides the first quantitative data predicting the age of these yet-to-be discovered sites.