Stone tools were used for longer we expected

Evidence has been unveiled that stone tools were used to cut the meat and break the bones of animals 3.4 million years ago, about a million years earlier than scientists have thought until now. The evidence consists of some mammal bones found in Ethiopia that have marks of sharp-edge stones on them.

The bones, found in Ethiopia’s Afar region, are about 3.4 million years old, and bear cut marks and chippings that could have been done by sharp stones. The bones were cut where our ancestors carved the flesh and broken where the same hungry humanoid smashed them to get to the marrow.

The two bones were found close to the site where paleontologists have unearthed the most complete skeleton of Selam, an Australopithecus Afarensis who lived 3.3 million years ago. These findings make it likely that Selam has carried sharp stone flakes used for butchering animal remains.

Zeresenay Alemseged, lead researcher of the California Academy of Science says that this discovery has a huge impact on the story of humanity, dramatically shifting the time frame of a game-changing behavior of our ancestors.

It is not known if these sharp stone tools were crafted by our distant ancestors or simply found by them, but the fact that they used tools like this show that these primitive beings have gained two of their distinctive features – meat-eating and the use (and later manufacturing) of tools earlier than we thought.