The World's Oldest Stone Tools Discovered in Kenya are 3.3 Million Years Old

Researchers have made a startling find while working in the desert badlands of northwestern Kenya. They've discovered stone tools dating back 3.3 million years, the oldest in the world that date back long before the advent of modern humans.

"The whole site's surprising, it just rewrites the book on a lot of things that we thought were true," said Chris Lepre, co-author of the new study, in a news release.

Previously, researchers believed that human ancestors were the first to use tools. But these latest findings may suggest otherwise. Currently, scientists aren't quite sure what made the stone tools, but a skull may suggest an answer. The skull of a 3.3 million-year-old hominin, Kenyathropus platytops, was discovered in 1999 only about a kilometer from the tool site. In addition, a bone and tooth from this species was found just a few hundred meters away from the site.

The precise family tree of modern humans is contentious. In fact, researchers aren't sure how K. platyops relates to other hominin species. This particular hominin predates the earliest known Homo species by a half a million years. The species could have made the tools, or perhaps some other species from the era did so.

The researchers also tried knapping stones themselves to better understand how the tools were made. They decided that the techniques used could actually represent a stage between a hypothetical pounding-oriented stone created by an earlier hominin and the flaking-oriented knapping behavior of later toolmakers. Chimps and other primates are known to use stones to hammer open nuts on top of other stones.

"This is a momentous and well-researched discovery," said Bernard Wood of George Washington University, a paleoanthropologist who was not involved in the study, in a news release. "I have seen some of these artifacts in the flesh, and I am convinced they were fashioned deliberately."

The findings are published in the journal Nature.

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