Ancient Origins Reconstructing the story of humanity's past
BY NATHAN FALDE
A multi-year series of excavations at a site near Lake Victoria in Kenya unearthed a collection of Oldowan stone tools that are likely the oldest ever found on Earth, dating back to the Pliocene epoch (between 5.3 and 2.5 million years ago). According to the American and British researchers involved in the latest study of the recovered artifacts, these tools (estimated to be a bit under 3 million years old) would have been used to butcher deceased hippos and pound edible plant material into a more appetizing shape.
Who, exactly, was doing the butchering and the pounding?
Past studies of Oldowan artifacts, which represented a huge leap forward in toolmaking technology, have credited their creation and use to the forerunners of modern humans . But the scientists found no fossilized remnants of human ancestors at the site in Kenya. What they discovered instead were two huge molars that belonged to an extinct ape-like creature known as Paranthropus. This hominin was distantly related to ancient humans, but its three different varieties ( Paranthropus aethiopicus, boisei and robustus) comprise a unique and separate genus, completely distinct from the Homo genus that includes modern humans and our ancestors.
The Oldowan tool collection and the fossilized molars found surprisingly close to it were uncovered during excavations at Nyayanga, a Pliocene site on the Homa Peninsula in western Kenya. In a study just published in the journal Science, the team responsible for this discovery, which included researchers from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Queens College in New York, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Liverpool John Moors University in the UK, and the National Museums of Kenya, discussed the possibility that Paranthropus might have been the toolmaker.
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE… (ancient-origins.net)
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