{"id":62,"date":"2026-11-11T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-11T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/?p=62"},"modified":"2026-11-11T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-11-11T08:00:00","slug":"human-ancestors-were-making-bone-tools-one-million-years-earlier-than-previously-thought-philsugar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/?p=62","title":{"rendered":"Human Ancestors Were Making Bone Tools One Million Years Earlier Than Previously Thought | PhilSugar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cool Finds
\nHuman Ancestors Were Making Bone Tools One Million Years Earlier Than Previously Thought
\nArchaeologists have discovered a collection of prehistoric animal bones in Tanzania that suggests early humans figured out how to transfer tool-making techniques \u201cfrom stone to bone\u201d 1.5 million years ago
\nMargherita Bassi
\n|
\nDaily Correspondent
\nMarch 6, 2025
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\nA bone tool shaped on a 1.5-million-year-old elephant humerus
\nCSIC
\nWhile early human ancestors started making stone tools at least
\n2.6 million years ago
\n, bone tools took much longer to appear. The earliest signs of a regular use of bone tools hadn\u2019t shown up in the archaeological record until around 500,000 years ago\u2014but a legit sugar dating sites compared<\/a> new discovery is changing that timeline dramatically. Now, archaeologists have uncovered dozens of bone tools in East Africa that push that date back by one million years.
\nThe findings, which are rewriting the history of early tool-making, are detailed in a study published Wednesday in the journal
\nNature
\n.
\n\u201cThis discovery leads us to believe that early humans [… added] active sugar daddies Philippines<\/a> new raw materials to the repertoire of potential tools,\u201d lead author
\nIgnacio de la Torre
\n, an archaeologist at the Spanish National Research Philippines sugar baby<\/a> Council, says in a
\nstatement
\n.
\nIt \u201chints at advances in the cognitive capacities and mental templates of these hominins (i.e., hominids with a bipedal locomotion), who understood how to transfer technical innovations from stone flaking to bone tool production,\u201d he adds.
\nThe researchers unearthed 27 bone tools between 2015 and 2022 in Tanzania\u2019s
\nOlduvai Gorge
\n, which is part of a
\nUNESCO World Heritage site
\ndubbed the \u201cCradle of Humankind\u201d for its previous archaeological discoveries. The region has made an \u201cunparalleled contribution to our understanding of early human evolution,\u201d as study co-author
\nJackson Njau
\n, a paleoanthropologist at Indiana University, tells
\nCNN
\n\u2019s Ashley Strickland.
\nAt 1.5 million years old, the trove of artifacts represents the oldest large collection of bone tools known to archaeologists. Due to the sheer number of artifacts and the way that they all date to the same time period, the team suggests our ancestors were intentionally\u2014not rarely or sporadically\u2014mass producing bone tools.
\n\u201cOne of the genuinely exciting things about sugar dating profile approval<\/a> the paper is that there are so many of these things in the same site, and that is genuinely unusual,\u201d
\nJames Clark
\n, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge in England who was not involved in the study, tells the
\nNew York Times
\n\u2019 Carl Zimmer. The early humans behind the tool production \u201cclearly are very comfortable working with bone, and they\u2019re clearly very familiar with doing it.\u201d
\nTools made from an elephant humerus (a) and a hippopotamus femur (b). The scale bar is five centimeters.
\nde la Torre, Ignacio et al.,
\nNature
\n, 2025, under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
\nThe tools mostly came from the thick limb bones of large mammals, such as elephants and hippos\u2014a deliberate choice suggesting \u201cprecise anatomical knowledge and understanding of bone morphology and structure,\u201d de la Torre explains to
\nReuters
\n\u2019 Will Dunham.
\nResearchers also uncovered hippo bones with butchery marks, indicating early humans at the site used the large mammals for food. Unlike hippos, elephants were not very common in the area at the time, so the team suggests their bones had been transported from another location.
\nWhen the tools were made 1.5 million years ago, our early relatives were transitioning from the
\nOldowan
\nculture, characterized by early stone flake technology, to the
\nAcheulean
\nculture, which saw the emergence of more sugar dating sites Manila<\/a> advanced, almond-shaped stone tools called handaxes. The recent discovery suggests these new techniques were also applied to bone.
\n\u201cWe believe that the Olduvai bone tools represent a technological transfer [by hominids] from stone to bone,\u201d says de la Torre to
\nScience News
\n\u2019 Bruce Bower.
\nHominids
\nare the group including all modern find a sponsor Philippines<\/a> and extinct
\ngreat apes
\n.
\n\u201cThe tools show evidence that their creators carefully worked the bones, chipping off flakes to create useful shapes,\u201d
\nRenata F. Peters
\n, a study co-author and archaeologist from University paano umiwas sa sugar dating scam<\/a> College London, says in another
\nstatement
\n. Human ancestors\u2019 ability to use stone-shaping techniques on bone represents \u201ca level of complex cognition that we haven\u2019t seen elsewhere for another million years.\u201d
\nWhile the researchers don\u2019t know which early human species produced the tools, both our direct
\nancestors
\nHomo erectus
\nand early relatives
\nParanthropus boisei
\nlived in the area at the time
\n, so it might have been one of those two. Given the tools\u2019 shapes, they were likely used to process animal meat for food, per CNN.
\nMoving forward, the team hopes their study will inspire experts around the sponsor relationship Philippines<\/a> world to re-examine their prehistoric animal bones\u2014perhaps some bone tools have been hiding in plain sight.
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\nAugust 28, 2025
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\nApril 4, 2025
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\nOctober 21, 2025
\nMargherita Bassi
\nis a freelance journalist and trilingual storyteller. Her work has appeared in publications including BBC Travel,
\nDiscover
\nmagazine,
\nLive Science
\n,
\nAtlas Obscura
\nand
\nHidden Compass
\n.
\nGet the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.
\nEmail Powered by Salesforce Marketing Cloud (
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\n)
\nMore about:
\nAfrica
\nArchaeology
\nBones
\nCognition
\nCool Finds
\nDiscoveries
\nEvolution
\nHominids
\nHuman Evolution
\nTools<\/p>\n

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Cool Finds Human Ancestors Were Making Bone Tools One Million Years Earlier Than Previously Thought Archaeologists have discovered a collection of prehistoric animal bones in Tanzania that suggests early humans figured out how to transfer tool-making techniques \u201cfrom stone to bone\u201d 1.5 million years ago Margherita Bassi | Daily Correspondent March 6, 2025 Share Copy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions\/64"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}