A mysterious cache of stone tools may end up revising our species鈥� prehistory. It seems people in Africa, Europe and Asia all invented the same kind of tools around 280,000 years ago. The find implies that, even this long ago, ideas could spread over thousands of miles.
of the Sharma Centre for Heritage Education in Chennai, India and her colleagues have spent years excavating a site called Attirampakkam in south India. They have discovered 7,261 stone tools buried in layers of sediment.
Some are relatively primitive 鈥淟ower Palaeolithic鈥� tools, which were used by various hominins that preceded our species until about 200,000 years ago.
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But some are more advanced Middle Palaeolithic tools, which are smaller and more finely crafted. Such tools have previously been attributed to our own species and close relatives like the Neanderthals.
The surprising thing was the age of the Middle Palaeolithic tools. They were found in layers that were dated to between 385,000 and 172,000 years old. That is roughly when such tools first appear in the archaeological record in Africa and Europe, but far earlier than they have ever been seen in Asia.
The fact that Middle Palaeolithic tools appear almost simultaneously in Africa, Europe and now Asia is striking. The question is, who made the Indian tools?
鈥淲e don鈥檛 have any hominin fossils at the site,鈥� says Pappu. As a result, all we can do is make educated guesses based on what we know about the species alive at the time.
One possibility is the Neanderthals. These extinct hominins roamed widely in Europe and Asia at this time. No Neanderthal bones have ever been found in India, but that does not prove they weren鈥檛 there 鈥� and they certainly lived not too far away.
A second hominin species, the Denisovans, were also living in Asia around this time. Little is known about them, but they cannot be ruled out as the toolmakers.
Finally, there is a more radical option. It could have been our own species, Homo sapiens.
An early exodus?
Until recently that idea would have been laughed out of court by most archaeologists. They largely agree that our species arose in Africa and only became widely distributed on other continents from about 70,000 years ago 鈥� although a few humans did make it to the Middle East by 120,000 years ago.
But last week researchers reported that a human jawbone found in a cave in Israel was between 177,000 and 194,000 years old (). This pushed back our earliest exit from Africa at least 50,000 years. What鈥檚 more, it emerged last year that our species is at least 315,000 years old, rather than 200,000 as had been thought.
So it is at least conceivable that the tools in Indian were made by early H. sapiens on an early excursion outside Africa. But this remains speculation.
鈥淯nless it is associated with human remains鈥� one cannot ascertain who manufactured such industries,鈥� says of the University of Haifa, Israel, part of the team that studied the jawbone from Israel.
