The artifacts found in China are among the nearly four dozen that reflect an elaborate tool-making technique. In an article published in Nature, researchers dated these artifacts 80,000 to 170,000 years ago.(Photo: Marwick et al.)

Forget the clubs. The "real cavemen" actually used complicated tools 170,000 years ago, a new study said.

In fact, artifacts recently discovered on an archaeological site in China show that a type of sophisticated tool technology has appeared in East Asia much earlier than expected. The discovery also challenges the idea that the manufacture of advanced tools has been introduced in Asia from the West.

One of the tools – called the "Swiss Army knife" of prehistoric tools – was particularly effective and durable, indispensable to a hunter-gatherer society in which a broken spearhead could mean some death to claws or to the jaws of a predator.

The tools are called "Levallois", named after a Parisian suburb where tools made with this method have been discovered. "To our knowledge, this is the oldest proof of Levallois technology in East Asia," says the study.

Manufactured by cutting stone into tools, Levallois tools are considered an "intermediate stage" in the development of stone tool technology, reported Archeology magazine.

According to Smithsonian magazine, these tools result from a set of very specific steps of chipping a stone to create tools of similar size that can be shaped for a variety of purposes.

"Formerly, it was thought that Levallois nuclei had arrived in China with modern humans," said Ben Marwick, an anthropologist at the University of Washington and co-author of the study. "Our work reveals the complexity and adaptability of people there, equivalent to those of the rest of the world.This shows the diversity of the human experience."

According to the Smithsonian, several human species lived on Earth at that time, including modern species like us. But scientists have not found any human bones from which these tools were discovered. They do not know what kind of man made these tools.

"Hopefully our study will lead to new excavations and more detailed studies in this region," said Bo Li, co-author of the study, from the University of Wollongong (Australia) in a statement. . "There are many caves in this area that are perfect for the conservation of tools and fossils, but there has not been much excavation.

"If we can find a human fossil – or the fossil of a different species – then we can find out more about who made these tools and the origin of the technique," Li said. .

The study was published Monday in the British journal Nature, peer-reviewed.

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