A road leading to Lake Turkana in Kenya. The tools were discovered near the lake's western shore. (Byelikova Oksana/Shutterstock) Archaeologists say they’ve unearthed the world’s oldest stone tools made by human ancestors at a dig site in Kenya. The set of 20 stone flakes and anvils, found off the shores of Lake Turkana, appears to have been crafted more than 3.3 million years ago — 500,000 years before our genus Homo, designating the first fully fledged humans, came to be. The implications, if the evidence holds up, will be far-reaching, since it has long been believed that tool-making was a skill exclusive to Homo. Sonia Harmand announced the findings this week at the annual Paleoanthropology Society meeting in California.
When exactly humans started using tools is a hotly debated topic amongst archaeologists. Until Harmand’s announcement this week, 2.6-million-year-old tools discovered in Ethiopia were considered the oldest in the world. That ...
