“Unearthed Secrets: Ancient Bone Tools in Tanzania Could Rewrite the Story of Humanity’s Origins”
Discovering The Animal Bone Tools At Olduvai Gorge In Tanzania
The discovery of the animal bone tools, as described in a new study published in Nature, took place in 2018 at Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge.
CSICStudy lead Ignacio de la Torre holding one of the bone tools discovered in Tanzania.
At the site — where some of the earliest stone tools made by early hominins have also been found — researchers came across a rich cache of 27 carved and sharpened animal bones. The bones came from elephants and hippos, with the large elephant bone tools measuring up to 16 inches long and the slightly smaller hippo bone tools reaching lengths of 12 inches.
The bones show considerable signs of wear. Researchers say that prehistoric humans chipped away small flakes to create a sharp edge, similar to how early humans made tools out of stones (a process that is much older, with the earliest known stone tools dating back 3.3 million years). This “knapping” process allowed them to shape the bones into hand tools.
CSICThe bone tools tell a story about early humans and their ability to craft tools.
“The tools show evidence that their creators carefully worked the bones, chipping off flakes to create useful shapes,” study co-author Renata F. Peters of the University College London’s Institute of Archaeology explained in a statement. “We were excited to find these bone tools from such an early timeframe. It means that human ancestors were capable of transferring skills from stone to bone, a level of complex cognition that we haven’t seen elsewhere for another million years.”
