Human evolution: bone tools from 1.5 million yeas ago (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, March 06, 2025, 18:12 (2 days ago) @ David Turell

A new Oldowan discovery:

https://www.sciencealert.com/discovery-of-1-5-million-year-old-bone-tools-rewrites-earl...

"Bone artifacts discovered in Tanzania push back the earliest known date of bone tool technology by over a million years.

"In Olduvai Gorge, archaeologists have discovered a range of bone tools thought to have been made and used by an ancestral human species of hominid called Homo habilis 1.5 million years ago.

"Known as the Oldowan people, the culture responsible for the bone artifacts was already known for their use of stone tools dating back to 2.5 million years ago. The newly identified bone artifacts show that their tool technology was more complex, advanced, and sophisticated than we knew.

"'This discovery leads us to believe that early humans expanded significantly their technological choices, which until this moment was constrained to production of stone artifacts, and now enabled incorporating new raw materials to the repertoire of potential tools," says archaeologist Ignacio de la Torre of the Spanish National Research Council.

"'Additionally, this enhancement of the technological potential hints at advances in the cognitive capacities and mental templates of these hominins … who understood how to transfer technical innovations from stone flaking to bone tool production."

"The development of tool technology is considered a pivotal step in human evolution. Deliberately shaped stones are thought to have emerged in cultures more ancient than our own genus Homo to strip more marrow and meat from kills, which in turn may have played a key role in our own evolutionary success.

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"When the archaeologists looked more closely at some of the bones recovered from a buried layer dated to 1.5 million years ago, though, they were blown away. Twenty-seven of the bones showed signs of having been altered: deliberately broken and flaked (or knapped) to create sharp, heavy-duty tools.

"This suggests that bone tool manufacture may have played a part in the technological transition from the Oldowan culture to the Acheulean culture that followed it, which started around 1.7 million years ago and came to a close around 150,000 years ago.

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"'By producing technologically and morphologically standardized bone tools, early Acheulean toolmakers unraveled technological repertoires that were previously thought to have appeared routinely more than 1 million years later," de la Torre says.

"'This innovation may have had a significant impact on the complexification of behavioral repertoires among our ancestors, including enhancements in cognition and mental templates, artifact curation, and raw material procurement.'"

Comment: the evolving human brain was quite talented and must have been the major driver for new talents to develop.