Human ancestors making 'bone tech' 1.5 million years ago, say scientists
Ancient humans -- also called hominins -- such as the robust Australopithecus are known to have used fragments of bones to dig up tubers from termite mounds.
Even today our closest living relative, chimpanzees, use sticks in a similar way to dig out termites for a tasty treat.
And more than two million years ago, hominins were using crude stone tools in Tanzania's Olduvai Gorge, one of the world's most important prehistoric sites.
But there were no known examples of anyone systematically making bone tools more than 500,000 years ago -- until now.
At Olduvai, a Spanish-led team of researchers found 27 tools made out of the leg and arm bones of big mammals, mainly elephants and hippos.
The discovery "sheds new light on the almost unknown world of early hominin bone technology," they wrote in a study in the journal Nature.
To the untrained eye, the tools might seem like random bits of bone.
But for the researchers, they are proof of the remarkable cognitive abilities of our distant ancestors, showing they were capable of choosing the appropriate material and fashioning it for their needs.
"There is a clear desire to change the shape of the bone to turn them into very heavy, long tools," Francesco d'Errico, an archaeologist at France's Bordeaux University and study co-author, told AFP.
The unknown hominins used rocks as hammers to shape the bones. The resulting tools ranged from 20 to 40 centimetres (eight to 15 inches) long, some weighing up to a kilo.
"In some cases there are even notches in the middle of the bone, possibly so they could hold it better in their hands," d'Errico said.
The big, pointy tools are thought to have been used to butcher the carcasses of large animals.
- From axes to needles -
At the time, stone tools were being made in a far more rudimentary manner.
Very few large stone tools have been found at Olduvai, d'Errico said, possibly because the quartz available at the site was not well-suited to the difficult job of cutting up big animals.
It was the Acheulean culture, which was emerging in Africa at around the same time, that first cut stones into hand axes, also called bifaces.
This invention represented a major advance, making it possible for ancient humans to properly slice or skin their prey.
"The hypothesis of the study is that the bone-cutting at Olduvai is an original invention, during a moment of transition to bifaces," d'Errico said.
According to this theory, the bone techniques developed at Olduvai disappeared from the planet for a million years.
It would eventually reappear in places such as the area of modern-day Rome, where a lack of good big rocks spurred hominins to carve elephant bones into hand axes.
It is also possible that the techniques continued throughout the years "but these bones have not been properly identified in other archaeological sites," d'Errico said.
As the human line evolved, so did the sophistication of the tools we carved out of bone.
For example, the first needles with eyes were made from bone in China and Siberia, only arriving in Europe around 26,000 years ago, d'Errico said.
But that is another "very long story," he added.
pcl/dl/fg
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Never-before-seen cousin of Lucy might have lived at the same site as the oldest known human species, new study suggests
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Roughly 2.6 million-year-old fossilized teeth found in Ethiopia might belong to a previously unknown early human relative, researchers say. The teeth are from a species of Australopithecus, the genus that includes Lucy (A. afarensis). But these newly discovered teeth don't appear to belong to any known species of Australopithecus, according to a new study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday (Aug. 13). What's more, at the same site the researchers found extremely old teeth from Homo, the genus that includes modern humans (Homo sapiens). These teeth may belong to the oldest known Homo species on record, which scientists haven't yet named, the study found. These new discoveries show that at least two lineages of early hominins — a group that includes humans and our closest relatives — coexisted in the same region around 2.6 million years ago, the researchers said. Discoveries at Ledi-Geraru archaeological site The researchers found the teeth at the Ledi-Geraru archaeological site in northeastern Ethiopia, which is known for earlier groundbreaking discoveries: a 2.8 million-year-old jawbone that's the oldest known human specimen, as well as some of the oldest known stone tools made by hominins, which date to 2.6 million years ago. Paleontologists and archaeologists hypothesize that the region was an open and arid grassy plain during this period, based on grass-eating animal fossils from that time. The area offered resources Homo and Australopithecus could use, Frances Forrest, an archaeologist at Fairfield University in Connecticut who was not involved with the new research, told Live Science in an email. Grasslands and rivers would have provided water to drink, plants to eat and large animals to hunt. Related: 'Huge surprise' reveals how some humans left Africa 50,000 years ago But the unusually rich fossil record in this area could also be because of excellent preservation of remains, due to volcanic eruptions, for example — not necessarily that this was a hominin hotspot, Forrest said. Australopithecus and Homo teeth In the new study, the researchers used layers of volcanic ash above and below the newly discovered fossils to determine their age. Of the 13 teeth discovered, the team found 10 are 2.63 million years old and belonged to an unidentified species of Australopithecus, which for now the researchers are calling the Ledi-Geraru Australopithecus. Previously, researchers had found remains in the region from A. afarensis and Australopithecus garhi. But the newfound teeth look different from the teeth of those species. "It doesn't match any of these, so it could be a new species," study co-author Kaye Reed, a paleoecologist at Arizona State University, told Live Science. However, the research team hasn't officially named it as a newly identified species because the teeth don't have any especially unique features. "In the fossil record, researchers usually define a new species by finding anatomical traits that consistently differ from those of known species," Forrest said, adding that the evidence from this discovery is too limited to define a new species. The researchers also identified two teeth that are 2.59 million years old, and one that is 2.78 million years old, all belonging to the genus Homo, which Reed believes are from the same species as the oldest known Homo specimen — the jawbone discovered in Ledi-Geraru — although this hasn't been confirmed. Image 1 of 2 Study authors J. Ramón Arrowsmith and Christopher J. Campisano examine the geology of the area near the new fossils. Image 2 of 2 An aerial view of the Ledi-Geraru excavation site, home of the newly discovered fossilized teeth, and where the oldest known Homo specimen has been uncovered. The new discovery means at least three hominin species were living in this region of Ethiopia before 2.5 million years ago: the Homo and Australopithecus species these teeth belong to, as well as A. garhi. At the same time, A. africanus lived in South Africa, and Paranthropus, another hominin genus, lived in what is now Kenya, Tanzania and southern Ethiopia. This evolutionary trial-and-error within the extended hominin family is why humans' evolutionary tree is considered "bushy" rather than linear. "It has become clear over the last decade or so that during most of our evolutionary history … there have been multiple species of human relatives that existed at the same time," John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved in the new research, told Live Science. "The new paper tells us this is happening in Ethiopia … [in] a really interesting time frame, because it's maybe the earliest population of our genus Homo." Next steps The research team is now studying the enamel on the newfound teeth, as their chemistry can reveal what these species were eating. This may shed light on whether these hominins were eating the same things and competing for similar resources. "Right now, we can say very little with certainty about direct interaction between Australopithecus and Homo," Forrest said. "We know that both genera sometimes overlapped in time and space, but there is no behavioral evidence linking the two." RELATED STORIES —300,000-year-old teeth from China may be evidence that humans and Homo erectus interbred, according to new study —78,000-year-old footprints from Neanderthal man, child and toddler discovered on beach in Portugal —Stunning facial reconstructions of 'hobbit,' Neanderthal and Homo erectus bring human relatives to life Chimpanzees and gorillas live in some of the same forests, Hawks pointed out, but they're mostly geographically separated from each other, not living side by side. The fact these early hominins may have lived closer together than primates typically do now is interesting, Hawks said. "They probably weren't eating the same things," Reed noted. "But right now we don't really know." The researchers are also searching for more information and fossils at the site. "Everything we find is a piece in the puzzle of human evolution," Reed said. Human evolution quiz: What do you know about Homo sapiens?
CNN
5 hours ago
- CNN
Two types of ancient human ancestors coexisted more than 2 million years ago, fossils show
Ancient, fossilized teeth, uncovered during a decades-long archaeology project in northeastern Ethiopia, indicate that two different kinds of hominins, or human ancestors, lived in the same place between 2.6 million and 2.8 million years ago — and one of them may be a previously unknown species. The discovery provides a new glimpse into the complex web of human evolution. Ten of the teeth, found between 2018 and 2020, belong to the genus Australopithecus, an ancient human relative. Meanwhile, three teeth, found in 2015, belong to the genus Homo, which includes modern humans, or Homo sapiens. The results were published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Such an overlapping of two hominins in the fossil record is rare, which had previously led scientists to believe that Homo appeared after Australopithecus, rather than the two being contemporaries. Australopithecus species walked upright much like modern humans, but had relatively small brains, closer in size to those of apes. The emergence of Homo species, with their larger brains, is easy for people today to view as some sort of evolutionary upgrade on a path to modern humanity. But the coexistence of the two demonstrates that hominins developed, and lived, in multiple varieties at once. 'This new research shows that the image many of us have in our minds of an ape to a Neanderthal to a modern human is not correct — evolution doesn't work like that,' said study coauthor Kaye Reed, research scientist and president's professor emerita at the Institute of Human Origins and emeritus professor at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University, via email. 'Here we have two hominin species that are together. And human evolution is not linear, it's a bushy tree, there are life forms that go extinct.' Since 2002, Reed has been a codirector of the Ledi-Geraru Research Project, which is focused, in part, on searching for evidence of early Homo species. In 2015, the team announced the discovery of the oldest known Homo jawbone at 2.8 million years old. It has also searched for later evidence of Australopithecus afarensis, which first appeared 3.9 million years ago, but there is no sign of these ancient human relatives in the fossil record after 2.95 million years ago — suggesting they went extinct before Homo's first appearance. Australopithecus afarensis is best represented by the famed fossilized remains of Lucy, discovered in 1974 in Ethiopia. Lucy was shorter than an average human, reaching about 3.3 feet (1 meter) in height, had an apelike face and a brain about one-third the size of a human brain. Her fossil showcased a mixture of humanlike and apelike traits and provided proof that ancient human relatives walked upright 3.2 million years ago. When the team discovered the Australopithecus teeth during two separate digs in 2018 and 2020, it compared them with species such as afarensis and another hominin group known as garhi, but they didn't match up. Instead, the scientists believe the teeth belong to a previously unknown species of Australopithecus that walked the Earth after Lucy — and alongside an early Homo species. 'Once we found Homo, I thought that was all we would find, and then one day on survey, we found the Australopithecus teeth,' Reed said. 'What is most important, is that it shows again, that human evolution is not linear. There were species that went extinct; some were better adapted than others, and others interbred with us — we know this for Neanderthals for sure. So anytime that we have another piece to the puzzle of where we came from, it is important.' The teeth were found in Ethiopia's Afar region, a key place for researchers seeking answers about human evolution. A variety of preserved fossils have been found there as well as some of the earliest stone tools, Reed said. The Afar region is an active rifting environment — the tectonic plates beneath its earth are actively pulling apart and exposing older layers of sediment that shed light on almost 5 million years of evolution, Reed said. 'The continent is quite literally unzipping there, which creates a lot of volcanism and tectonics,' said study coauthor Christopher Campisano, associate director and associate professor at the Institute of Human Origins and associate professor at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State, in a video the school released. 'At 2 1⁄2, 3 million years ago, these volcanoes spewed out ash that contain crystals called feldspars that allow us to date the eruptions that were happening on the landscape when they're deposited.' The Australopithecus teeth documented in the new study were dated to 2.63 million years ago, while the Homo teeth are from 2.59 million and 2.78 million years ago. But the team is cautious about identifying a species for any of the teeth until it has more data and more fossils. 'We know what the teeth and mandible of the earliest Homo look like, but that's it,' said Brian Villmoare, lead study author and associate professor in the department of anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in a statement. 'This emphasizes the critical importance of finding additional fossils to understand the differences between Australopithecus and Homo, and potentially how they were able to overlap in the fossil record at the same location.' The Australopithecus teeth broadly resembled those of the afarensis species in contour and the size of the molars, but features of the cusps and canine teeth had not been previously seen in afarensis or garhi teeth, Villmoare said. The teeth were also different in shape than those of any Homo species, or of the ancient human relative Paranthropus, known for its large teeth and chewing muscles. 'Obviously these are only teeth,' Villmoare said, 'but we are continuing field work in the hopes of recovering other parts of the anatomy that might increase resolution on the taxonomy.' Even just finding the teeth was a complicated task, according to Campisano. 'You're looking at little teeth, quite literally, individual teeth that look just like a lot of other of the little pebbles spread on the landscape,' he said in the video. 'And so, we have a great team of local Afars that are excellent fossil hunters. They've seen these things their entire lives walking around the landscape.' The new study is important because it provides insight into a time frame from 3 million to 2 million years ago, a mysterious period in human evolutionary studies, said Dr. Stephanie Melillo, paleoanthropologist and assistant professor at Mercyhurst University in Pennsylvania. Melillo was not involved in this research, but she has participated in the Woranso-Mille Paleontological Research Project in the Afar Triangle of Ethiopia. Part of the problem in learning about this stretch of prehistory is how ancient layers of dirt were deposited over the course of history in eastern Africa. 'Erosion in rivers and lakes were at a low level and only a little bit of dirt was deposited in the Afar,' Melillo wrote in an email. 'That deposited dirt contains the fossils — of our ancestors and all the animals that lived with us. When there is little deposition, there are few fossils.' A key feature helping archaeologists to understand humanity's evolution are structural basins, or 'bowls' on Earth's surface that naturally collect layers of sediment better than the surrounding landscape does — like the Turkana Basin stretching across southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya, Melillo said. Previous research has found evidence to suggest that Homo and Paranthropus coexisted there 1.5 million years ago. The new study focuses on the Afar Depression, a basin to the north of the Turkana. 'This contribution by Villmoare and colleagues demonstrates that in the Afar there was also some other species around with Homo — but it isn't Paranthropus,' Melillo said. 'Instead, they identify this 'non-Homo' genus as Australopithecus. They do a very convincing job of demonstrating why the new fossils are not Paranthropus.' The study adds to growing evidence that Australopithecus was not roaming the Afar Depression alone, she said. When Australopithecus and Homo were alive, the Afar Region, now mostly a semidesert, had much more seasonal variation in rainfall than it does today, Reed said. Millions of years ago, the environment there was still dominated by a dry season, but it was interrupted by a brief wet season. Rivers that carried water across the landscape existed for only part of the year. Few trees grew near the river, and the environment nearby was largely wetlands and grasslands. 'We have a fossil giraffe species that was eating grass, which probably indicates they were stressed as they eat trees and bushes almost every place else,' Reed said. 'Were the hominins eating the same thing? We are trying to find out by examining isotopes in their teeth and microscopic scratches on their teeth.' Understanding whether or not Homo and Australopithecus had the same food sources could paint a portrait of how our ancient ancestors shared or competed for resources, Reed said. The team also wants to try to identify which hominin made the stone tools found at the site. At the moment it's impossible to tell exactly how the two hominins coexisted, but Reed said she is hoping that future findings will provide more answers. 'Whenever you have an exciting discovery, if you're a paleontologist, you always know that you need more information,' Reed said. 'You need more fossils. More fossils will help us tell the story of what happened to our ancestors a long time ago — but because we're the survivors we know that it happened to us.' Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.
CNN
5 hours ago
- CNN
Two types of ancient human ancestors coexisted more than 2 million years ago, fossils show
Animal stories Ancient creatures History uncovered AfricaFacebookTweetLink Follow Ancient, fossilized teeth, uncovered during a decades-long archaeology project in northeastern Ethiopia, indicate that two different kinds of hominins, or human ancestors, lived in the same place between 2.6 million and 2.8 million years ago — and one of them may be a previously unknown species. The discovery provides a new glimpse into the complex web of human evolution. Ten of the teeth, found between 2018 and 2020, belong to the genus Australopithecus, an ancient human relative. Meanwhile, three teeth, found in 2015, belong to the genus Homo, which includes modern humans, or Homo sapiens. The results were published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Such an overlapping of two hominins in the fossil record is rare, which had previously led scientists to believe that Homo appeared after Australopithecus, rather than the two being contemporaries. Australopithecus species walked upright much like modern humans, but had relatively small brains, closer in size to those of apes. The emergence of Homo species, with their larger brains, is easy for people today to view as some sort of evolutionary upgrade on a path to modern humanity. But the coexistence of the two demonstrates that hominins developed, and lived, in multiple varieties at once. 'This new research shows that the image many of us have in our minds of an ape to a Neanderthal to a modern human is not correct — evolution doesn't work like that,' said study coauthor Kaye Reed, research scientist and president's professor emerita at the Institute of Human Origins and emeritus professor at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University, via email. 'Here we have two hominin species that are together. And human evolution is not linear, it's a bushy tree, there are life forms that go extinct.' Since 2002, Reed has been a codirector of the Ledi-Geraru Research Project, which is focused, in part, on searching for evidence of early Homo species. In 2015, the team announced the discovery of the oldest known Homo jawbone at 2.8 million years old. It has also searched for later evidence of Australopithecus afarensis, which first appeared 3.9 million years ago, but there is no sign of these ancient human relatives in the fossil record after 2.95 million years ago — suggesting they went extinct before Homo's first appearance. Australopithecus afarensis is best represented by the famed fossilized remains of Lucy, discovered in 1974 in Ethiopia. Lucy was shorter than an average human, reaching about 3.3 feet (1 meter) in height, had an apelike face and a brain about one-third the size of a human brain. Her fossil showcased a mixture of humanlike and apelike traits and provided proof that ancient human relatives walked upright 3.2 million years ago. When the team discovered the Australopithecus teeth during two separate digs in 2018 and 2020, it compared them with species such as afarensis and another hominin group known as garhi, but they didn't match up. Instead, the scientists believe the teeth belong to a previously unknown species of Australopithecus that walked the Earth after Lucy — and alongside an early Homo species. 'Once we found Homo, I thought that was all we would find, and then one day on survey, we found the Australopithecus teeth,' Reed said. 'What is most important, is that it shows again, that human evolution is not linear. There were species that went extinct; some were better adapted than others, and others interbred with us — we know this for Neanderthals for sure. So anytime that we have another piece to the puzzle of where we came from, it is important.' The teeth were found in Ethiopia's Afar region, a key place for researchers seeking answers about human evolution. A variety of preserved fossils have been found there as well as some of the earliest stone tools, Reed said. The Afar region is an active rifting environment — the tectonic plates beneath its earth are actively pulling apart and exposing older layers of sediment that shed light on almost 5 million years of evolution, Reed said. 'The continent is quite literally unzipping there, which creates a lot of volcanism and tectonics,' said study coauthor Christopher Campisano, associate director and associate professor at the Institute of Human Origins and associate professor at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State, in a video the school released. 'At 2 1⁄2, 3 million years ago, these volcanoes spewed out ash that contain crystals called feldspars that allow us to date the eruptions that were happening on the landscape when they're deposited.' The Australopithecus teeth documented in the new study were dated to 2.63 million years ago, while the Homo teeth are from 2.59 million and 2.78 million years ago. But the team is cautious about identifying a species for any of the teeth until it has more data and more fossils. 'We know what the teeth and mandible of the earliest Homo look like, but that's it,' said Brian Villmoare, lead study author and associate professor in the department of anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in a statement. 'This emphasizes the critical importance of finding additional fossils to understand the differences between Australopithecus and Homo, and potentially how they were able to overlap in the fossil record at the same location.' The Australopithecus teeth broadly resembled those of the afarensis species in contour and the size of the molars, but features of the cusps and canine teeth had not been previously seen in afarensis or garhi teeth, Villmoare said. The teeth were also different in shape than those of any Homo species, or of the ancient human relative Paranthropus, known for its large teeth and chewing muscles. 'Obviously these are only teeth,' Villmoare said, 'but we are continuing field work in the hopes of recovering other parts of the anatomy that might increase resolution on the taxonomy.' Even just finding the teeth was a complicated task, according to Campisano. 'You're looking at little teeth, quite literally, individual teeth that look just like a lot of other of the little pebbles spread on the landscape,' he said in the video. 'And so, we have a great team of local Afars that are excellent fossil hunters. They've seen these things their entire lives walking around the landscape.' The new study is important because it provides insight into a time frame from 3 million to 2 million years ago, a mysterious period in human evolutionary studies, said Dr. Stephanie Melillo, paleoanthropologist and assistant professor at Mercyhurst University in Pennsylvania. Melillo was not involved in this research, but she has participated in the Woranso-Mille Paleontological Research Project in the Afar Triangle of Ethiopia. Part of the problem in learning about this stretch of prehistory is how ancient layers of dirt were deposited over the course of history in eastern Africa. 'Erosion in rivers and lakes were at a low level and only a little bit of dirt was deposited in the Afar,' Melillo wrote in an email. 'That deposited dirt contains the fossils — of our ancestors and all the animals that lived with us. When there is little deposition, there are few fossils.' A key feature helping archaeologists to understand humanity's evolution are structural basins, or 'bowls' on Earth's surface that naturally collect layers of sediment better than the surrounding landscape does — like the Turkana Basin stretching across southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya, Melillo said. Previous research has found evidence to suggest that Homo and Paranthropus coexisted there 1.5 million years ago. The new study focuses on the Afar Depression, a basin to the north of the Turkana. 'This contribution by Villmoare and colleagues demonstrates that in the Afar there was also some other species around with Homo — but it isn't Paranthropus,' Melillo said. 'Instead, they identify this 'non-Homo' genus as Australopithecus. They do a very convincing job of demonstrating why the new fossils are not Paranthropus.' The study adds to growing evidence that Australopithecus was not roaming the Afar Depression alone, she said. When Australopithecus and Homo were alive, the Afar Region, now mostly a semidesert, had much more seasonal variation in rainfall than it does today, Reed said. Millions of years ago, the environment there was still dominated by a dry season, but it was interrupted by a brief wet season. Rivers that carried water across the landscape existed for only part of the year. Few trees grew near the river, and the environment nearby was largely wetlands and grasslands. 'We have a fossil giraffe species that was eating grass, which probably indicates they were stressed as they eat trees and bushes almost every place else,' Reed said. 'Were the hominins eating the same thing? We are trying to find out by examining isotopes in their teeth and microscopic scratches on their teeth.' Understanding whether or not Homo and Australopithecus had the same food sources could paint a portrait of how our ancient ancestors shared or competed for resources, Reed said. The team also wants to try to identify which hominin made the stone tools found at the site. At the moment it's impossible to tell exactly how the two hominins coexisted, but Reed said she is hoping that future findings will provide more answers. 'Whenever you have an exciting discovery, if you're a paleontologist, you always know that you need more information,' Reed said. 'You need more fossils. More fossils will help us tell the story of what happened to our ancestors a long time ago — but because we're the survivors we know that it happened to us.' Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.
