14 DAY TRIAL // Not long ago, scientists exploring a site in northwestern Kenya uncovered several stone tools obviously dating back to ancient times. The thing is that, when they found them, they couldn't tell exactly how old they were.
Having carried out a series of tests, however, they established the age of the stone tools to be one of about 3.3 million years. This means the artifacts are much older than all previously recovered stone tools and even predate the first modern humans.
In a report published in the journal Nature, researchers say that, prior to the discovery of these ancient tools in northwestern Kenya, the oldest artifacts of this kind on record dated back to just 2.6 million years back.
Specialists have no idea who made these tools
Since the 3.3-million-year-old stone tools were created long before modern humans came about, scientists are pretty much in the dark when it comes to explaining their origin.
It might be that the tools were carved by a previously undocumented species of human ancestors. Then again, it could also be that they were made by a species not related to us.
If not created by any of our direct ancestors, the stone tools would count as proof that our forefathers in ancient times were not the first trained in the art of making and using tools.
“The discovery is the first evidence that an even earlier group of proto-humans may have had the thinking abilities needed to figure out how to make sharp-edged tools,” Columbia University researchers and their colleagues explain.
“They also may challenge the notion that our own most direct ancestors were the first to bang two rocks together to create a new technology,” the specialists further detail.
Judging by their size and design, scientists suspect that the recently discovered 3.3-million-year-old stone tools were used to strip animal carcasses of their meat.
Interestingly, the stone tools' shape would have also allowed their handlers to break open nuts and tubers, even cut into dead logs in search of edible insects, researchers say.
A possible origin of the millennia-old stone tools
In their report in the journal Nature, the team of scientists who found and dated these stone tools explain that the artifacts were found not far from the spot where, years back, a skull was discovered.
The skull in question was unearthed by a group of anthropologists in 1999. Eventually, it was identified as belonging to a hominin species dubbed Kenyanthropus platytops.
Since the stone tools were found about 1 kilometer (about 0.6 miles) from the location of the 1999 skull, it's not that far-fetched to say that the artifacts might be the work of a Kenyanthropus platytops group in the area.
Kenyanthropus platytops is known to predate the first Homo species by about 0.5 million years, so these hominins are a fairly safe bet when it comes to establishing the origin of the stone tools.
Still, this does not rule out theories saying that the artifacts could be the work of some other species that populated this corner of the world 3.3 million years back or maybe an undocumented Home species.
