Many mysteries are still hidden underneath the soil of our much-beloved Earth. This is the only safe conclusion one can reach in these times of rapid scientific changes. The recent ape-made prehistoric stone tools found in Kenya serve as an unquestionable proof that mankind is still far from thoroughly knowing Earth’s history.
For centuries, it was believed that the first creatures to have invented tools and set up fire camps, were Homo Sapiens. Yet, scientists will now have to reconsider their past enunciations as newly-found prehistoric tools made of stone come to contradict everything that has been said or known so far.
Recent excavation works completed on the Kenyan territory have led to the unearthing of unprecedented stone tools. Experts have estimated that the utensils date back to 3.3 million years, thus being 700,000 years older than the oldest tools discovered, so far.
The maturity of the tools is not the aspect that intrigues scientists the most, but rather the nature of the beings that might have created them. Based on their findings, the stone-made tools could not belong to a Homo Sapiens tribe as there were no such formations on the territory of Kenya.
Additional findings have helped archeology experts narrow down researchers to two types of hominin, namely, Kenyanthropus platyops and Australopithecus afarensis. These groups are tribes belonging to the subfamily Homininae, a combination between the Homo genus and an ancient primate that is very similar to today’s chimpanzees. The members of the hominin tribe are called hominini.
Researchers in Kenya have linked the recently found tools to the aforementioned tribes because they were the closest to have ever lived in the area. In fact, a hominin skull and unidentified tooth were also found several meters away from the site.
The discovery works both as a confirmation of the hypothesis that early species of chimpanzees were capable of thinking and, hence, designing their own tools and as an argument against the thesis claiming that Homo Sapiens were the first to carry out such intelligent activities. Increasingly more discoveries point to the fact that other species might have preceded humans in finding new intelligent means of survival.
Although difficult to identify, the 3.3 million-old stone tools prove that hominini were interested in developing tools that allowed them to carry out day to day activities. Anvils, hammer stones, cobbles and cores for cutting edges are just some of the stone items that archeologists dug out in Kenya.
The ape-made tools also shed light on humans’ cerebral activity. More specifically, scientists think they can now determine the historical period when primates developed thinking processes by linking these utensils to previous data concerning humans’ evolution.
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Ryan Harris
