Latest news with #Acheulean
Time of India
04-05-2025
- Science
- Time of India
Stone Age secrets: Ancient tool-making site discovered in Haryana's Mangar Bani
Gurgaon: Modern-day Haryana has met its prehistoric past in the forests of Mangar Bani. Hidden within the folds of the Aravali hills lies evidence of humanity's earliest toolmakers — a 500,000-year-old workshop that's possibly the oldest in north India. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now The discovery — confirmed by the former joint director-general of Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) SB Ota — has taken the lid off a treasure trove of Lower Palaeolithic artifacts dating back to humanity's earliest known phase of development — the Acheulean culture. "We're peering through a window that opens half a million years into our past. Mangar Bani isn't just another prehistoric site, it's a complete workshop where our ancestors crafted their tools, lived, and thrived," said Ota, who led the survey. The survey, however, traces its roots to the early 90s, when the ASI team conducted a small-scale excavation in Anangpur. "After that, there was a gap. And now, we are starting again," he added. The weeklong exploration unveiled a collection of over 200 artefacts, including stone tools that bear testament to the presence of Homo erectus — a human species from the Pleistocene age. These ancient craftsmen worked primarily with locally sourced sandstone and quartzite, turning them into cleavers, handaxes, and various types of scrapers. What makes this discovery particularly significant is the presence of both finished tools and manufacturing debris — or "lithic debitage" — scattered across the site. "It tells us this wasn't just a place where tools were used, but where they were born," Ota said. The archaeological team conducted the surveys in Mangar Bani, the surrounding hills and nearby Bandhwari. Apart from Ota, the team included his colleague Niharika Srivastava from the Academy for Archaeological Heritage Research and Training; Chetan Agarwal, a senior fellow; and Sunil Harsana, a researcher associated with the Centre for Ecology, Development and Research. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now "The tools we discovered were likely used for a variety of tasks — from butchering animals and cutting trees to cleaning hides and polishing wood. The level of refinement in these tools suggests this site could have existed in the later part of the Acheulean period. So, its estimated age could well be around 500,000 to 200,000 years," Ota said. While Attirampakkam near Chennai is currently the oldest known Acheulian site in India at 1.7 million years old, Mangar Bani is among the most important for this cultural phase in north India, given its tool-making evidence and strategic location in the Aravali hill range. The team plans to submit a preliminary report to Haryana govt within the next month, advocating for legal and environmental protection of the site. Currently, Mangar Bani and its surrounding Aravalis are part of the Natural Conservation Zone, which restricts construction around it, but lacks formal heritage protection. The site lies near the now-defunct Mangar Nallah, a seasonal stream that may have provided water for early human settlers the year round. "The hilltops here are flat, close to raw materials, and would have supported a range of prehistoric activities. It's a textbook example of an ideal Stone Age settlement site," said Chetan Agarwal. Ota agreed that a more detailed and scientific analysis of the site was required, including sampling of sediments to ascertain the date. "This is not just a site of national importance, but of global significance. It deserves protection, study, and recognition," he added. The ASI, however, has no immediate plans to protect the site. "Right now, we haven't had any requests like that. If we do, we will act on it," said Nandini Bhattacharya Sahu, the current joint director-general of ASI. Bhattacharya, however, agreed that the Mangar Bani sites were of utmost importance. "The Lower Paleolithic tools and stone tools found here signify the earliest type of human occupation. Moreover, there are a few rock shelters with painted walls in Mangar, which are equally significant as well. We have another important site in Anangpur, where we found evidence of factories," she added.
Yahoo
24-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
1.5 million-year-old bone tools discovered in Tanzania rewrite the history of human evolution
The ancestors of humans started making tools about 3.3 million years ago. First they made them out of stone, then they switched to bone as a raw material. Until recently, the earliest clear evidence of bone tool making was from sites in Europe, dated to 400,000 years ago. But archaeologists have now found and dated bone tools in Tanzania that are a million years older. The tools are made from the bones of large animals like hippos and elephants, and have been deliberately shaped to make them useful for butchering large carcasses. The discovery of bone implements that are the oldest ever found, by far, casts light on human evolution. It shows that our hominin ancestors were able to think about and make this technology a lot earlier than anyone realised. I am a scientist who co-directs a multidisciplinary research project team at the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, focusing on hominin evolution. Our project's main goal has been to investigate the changes in hominin technology and behaviour that happened between 1.66 million and 1.4 million years ago. We're interested in this time period because it marks a pivotal change in human technology, from the rudimentary stone knives and cores of the Oldowan culture to the more advanced crafted stone handaxes of the Acheulean culture. We found the Olduvai bone tools in 2018 and recently described them in the journal Nature. They show that by 1.5 million years ago, our ancestors (Homo erectus) had already developed the cognitive abilities required to transfer skills from making stone tools to making bone tools. This leap in human history was a game-changer because it allowed early hominins to overcome survival challenges in landscapes where suitable stone materials were scarce. Olduvai Gorge is a Unesco World Heritage site. It became well known in 1959 through the pioneering work of palaeontologists Louis and Mary Leakey, whose discoveries of early human remains reshaped our understanding of human evolution. The site offers an unparalleled window into human history, spanning nearly 2 million years. Read more: Aside from fossilised bones, it has yielded the most detailed record of stone tool cultures in the world. It has documented the evolution from the simple chopping tools and stone knives of the Oldowan industry (about 2 million years ago) to the more advanced Acheulean tools (1.7 million years ago), such as handaxes, cleavers, picks and spheroids and then on – through arrowheads, points and blades (about 200,000 years ago) to the micro-blades of the Later Stone Age (about 17,000 years ago). All these tools provide a glimpse into the ingenuity and cultural advancements of our early ancestors. And now the picture has new detail. Our team uncovered 27 ancient bone tools during excavations at the T69 Complex, FLK West site at Olduvai. We know how old they are because we found them securely embedded underground where they had been left 1.5 million years ago, along with thousands of stone artefacts and fossilised bones. We dated them using geochronological techniques. Unlike stone, bone shafts crack and break in a way that allows the systematic production of elongated, well-shaped artifacts. Flaking them by hitting them with another object – a process called knapping – results in pointed tools that would be ideal for butchering, chopping and other tasks. The knapped tools we found were made from large shaft fragments that came from the limb bones of elephants and hippos, and were found at hippo butchery sites. Hominins likely brought elephant bones to the site on a regular basis, and obtained limb bones from butchered hippos at the site itself. The find shows that 1.5 million years ago, Homo erectus could apply knapping skills to bone. Homo erectus, regarded as the evolutionary successor to the smaller-brained Homo habilis, left a lasting imprint on history. Its fossils, found at Olduvai, offer a glimpse into a span of about a million years, stretching from 1.5 million to roughly 500,000 years ago. Now we know that these hominins not only understood the physical properties of bones but also knew about skeletal anatomy. They could identify and select bones suitable for flaking. And they knew which animals had skeletons large enough to craft reliable tools after the animals' death. Read more: We don't know exactly why they chose bones as a raw material. It may have been that suitable stone material was scarce, or they recognised that bones provided a better grip and were more durable. Why haven't such old bone tools been found before? The answer is likely that they are destroyed by weathering, abrasion from water transport, trampling and scavenger activity. Organic materials don't always get time to fossilise. Also, analysts were not used to looking for bone tools among fossils. This discovery will likely encourage researchers to pay closer attention to the subtle signs of bone knapping in fossil assemblages. This way we will learn more about the evolution of human technology and behaviour. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Jackson K Njau, Indiana University Read more: When did our ancestors start to eat meat regularly? Fossilised teeth get us closer to the answer New technology tells us which animal bones were used to make ancient tools The whole story of human evolution – from ancient apes via Lucy to us Jackson K Njau does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Jordan Times
08-03-2025
- Science
- Jordan Times
Human ancestors making 'bone tech' 1.5 million years ago, say scientists
Bone tools found in Olduvai, photographed in the Pleistocene Archaeology Lab of CSIC (Photo of CSIC) PARIS — Our ancestors were making tools out of bones 1.5 million years ago, winding back the clock for this important moment in human evolution by more than a million years, a study said on Wednesday. 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 2 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 long, some weighing up to a kilograme. "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.
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Human ancestors making 'bone tech' 1.5 million years ago, say scientists
Our ancestors were making tools out of bones 1.5 million years ago, winding back the clock for this important moment in human evolution by more than a million years, a study said Wednesday. 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
New York Times
05-03-2025
- Science
- New York Times
Trove of Ancient Axes Shows Early Humans Made Tools From Bones
Humans, unlike most other species, have a knack for making tools. Six million years ago, our apelike ancestors probably smashed nuts with rocks or caught termites with sticks. Around 3.3 million years ago, hominins began using flakes of stone, perhaps to cut flesh from carcasses or chop plants. And by 1.5 million years ago, they were using more sophisticated tools made of bone, according to a new study published in Nature, which dates the systematic use of bone tools to a million years earlier than archaeologists had previously thought. Ignacio de la Torre, an archaeologist at the Spanish National Research Council who led the research, said the discovery made him wonder what is left to be discovered. 'We may be missing a whole world of tools made by early humans,' he said. Dr. de la Torre has spent years exploring Tanzania, in East Africa, to investigate the early stages of human tool-making. Before 1.8 million years ago, hominins simply knocked one rock against another to split off a sharp-edged flake. But after that point, they crafted a diverse array of stone tools. One type, known as a hand ax, is a large, teardrop-shaped stone with a double-sided edge. Hominins also made cleavers and scrapers from bone. These tools — known as Acheulean technology — suggest that hominins gained an ability to conceptualize the shape of a complex tool and then sculpt a rock to bring it into existence. In 2015, Dr. de la Torre and his colleagues began digging a trench in a gully known as the T69 Complex, where they had previously found Acheulean stone tools on the ground. They hoped to find more of them embedded in the rock below, perhaps alongside bones and other clues to how hominins were using those tools. They indeed found thousands of fossils of hippopotamuses, crocodiles and fish — animals that had lived in a pond or lake some 1.5 million years ago. The researchers discovered cut marks on the hippo bones as well as more than 10,000 stone tools. They did not find any fossils of the hominins who scavenged the animals, but judging from similar sites nearby, they suspected Homo erectus — a tall, bipedal hominin — was responsible for the butchering. Then, in 2018, the scientists unearthed a surprise in their trench. As described in the new study, they found a hand ax, made not from stone but from elephant bone. To create the hand ax, hominins must have found an elephant carcass and smashed one of its massive limbs. Then, after breaking off a bone fragment, they gave it a sharp cutting edge. Before this discovery, researchers had only found a few bones at other sites in East Africa. In 2020, for example, researchers reported finding a hand ax in Ethiopia dating back 1.4 million years, made from a hippo's femur. Compared with thousands of stone tools that had been found, bone tools were so rare that it was hard to know what to make of them. 'We were not expecting at all that these humans were making bone tools,' Dr. de la Torre said. 'It led us to think there might be others.' So the researchers dug a much bigger trench and found more bone tools, some from elephants and others from hippos. The researchers then looked back at pieces of bones they had previously unearthed, which they had assumed were just fragments broken open by hominins to eat the marrow inside. On closer inspection, they could see that some of those remains were tools as well. In total, Dr. de la Torre and his colleagues found 27 bone tools, some as long as 15 inches. They were not rarities that hominins created once every 100,000 years: The scientists found all the tools in the same 20-inch-thick layer of sandstone, suggesting they were all used in a period of 'dozens of years,' he said. 'One of the genuinely exciting things about the paper is that there are so many of these things in the same site, and that is genuinely unusual,' said James Clark, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge who was not involved in the study. The hominins living there, he said, 'clearly are very comfortable working with bone, and they're clearly very familiar with doing it.' They also seemed to plan how to use them in advance. Eight of the tools came from elephant bones, and yet the researchers found no trace of an elephant carcass. Dr. de la Torre said it was likely that the hominins had crafted the elephant-bone tools somewhere else. He speculated that the brains of hominins in this era were already so sophisticated that they could do more than just apply the image of a particular tool to any rock lying around. They went to extra lengths to obtain the bones and then turn them into tools. Dr. de la Torre said it was likely that other troves of bone tools await archaeologists at other ancient sites in Africa. 'It may be the case that we archaeologists have not looked hard enough, with the right eyes,' he said.
