Archaeologica.org

Oldest tool-use claim challenged

The idea that human ancestors were using stone tools about 3.4 million years ago has been challenged by a Spanish-led team of researchers.

The original claim was based on what were purported to be butchery marks on animal bones found in Ethiopia.

It pushed back the earliest known tool-use and meat-eating in our ancestors by some 800,000 years.

But Manuel Dominguez-Rodrigo and his team tell PNAS journal that the marks are more likely to be animal scratches.

"A mark made with a stone tool could be morphologically similar to a mark that is accidentally made by an animal trampling on a bone, if the bone is lying on an abrasive [surface]," said Dr Dominguez-Rodrigo from the Complutense University of Madrid.

"We can match mark-by-mark every single mark on the fossils [...]

Oldest tool-use claim challenged
But Manuel Dominguez-Rodrigo and his team tell PNAS journal that the marks are more likely to be animal scratches.

"A mark made with a stone tool could be morphologically similar to a mark that is accidentally made by an animal trampling on a bone, if the bone is lying on an abrasive [surface]," said Dr Dominguez-Rodrigo from the Complutense University of Madrid.