Stone tools in Ukraine were left by Europe ’s first known humans

Geologic ages ago in what is now Ukraine, a pack of human ancestors approached a crook in the Carpathian Mountains, which held hard but brittle glassy rocks—just right to break into tools with sharp edges. Bashing one rock against another, the humans shaped the stones into simple cutters and scrapers, as their own ancestors had done before them in Africa. More than 1 million years later, archaeologists uncovered their cache and dated cobbles found with the tools and other stone artifacts. In a paper out today in Nature , they conclude that early humans may have settled in Europe some 1.4 million years ago , about 200,000 to 300,000 years earlier than previously thought based on fossils. If the results withstand scrutiny, they will further illuminate the timing and pathways of our ancient relatives’ forays out of Africa. “This is an excellent contribution,” that helps solidify the “notion that there have been excursions out of Africa repeatedly throughout the Pleistocene,” says University of Winnipeg biological anthropologist Mirjana Roksandic. “I’m fascinated by the amount of movement that we can actually find.” Others are more skeptical, especially of the dates assigned to the ancient artifacts. “They do not have a very clear chronology,” says Fabio Parenti, an archaeologist at the Federal University of Paraná. Emerging in Africa roughly 2 million years ago , Homo erectus possessed bodies ...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news