{"id":23281,"date":"2025-03-05T15:00:16","date_gmt":"2025-03-05T16:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=23281"},"modified":"2025-03-05T16:46:55","modified_gmt":"2025-03-05T16:46:55","slug":"trove-of-ancient-axes-shows-early-humans-made-tools-from-bones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=23281","title":{"rendered":"Trove of Ancient Axes Shows Early Humans Made Tools From Bones"},"content":{"rendered":"

Deep in a trench in Tanzania, researchers found dozens of tools crafted from animal bones some 1.5 million years old.<\/p>\n

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Scientists have found 1.5-million-year-old tools made from elephant and hippo bones.<\/span>de la Torre et al., Nature 2025<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Humans, unlike most other species, have a knack for making tools.<\/p>\n

Six million years ago, our apelike ancestors probably smashed nuts with rocks or caught termites with sticks. Around 3.3 million years ago<\/a>, hominins began using flakes of stone, perhaps to cut flesh from carcasses or chop plants.<\/p>\n

And by 1.5 million years ago, they were using more sophisticated tools made of bone, according to a new study<\/a> published in Nature, which dates the systematic use of bone tools to a million years earlier than archaeologists had previously thought.<\/p>\n

Ignacio de la Torre, an archaeologist at the Spanish National Research Council who led the research, said the discovery made him wonder what is left to be discovered. \u201cWe may be missing a whole world of tools made by early humans,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Dr. de la Torre has spent years exploring Tanzania, in East Africa, to investigate the early stages of human tool-making. Before 1.8 million years ago, hominins simply knocked one rock against another to split off a sharp-edged flake. But after that point, they crafted a diverse array of stone tools.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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One type, known as a hand ax, is a large, teardrop-shaped stone with a double-sided edge. Hominins also made cleavers and scrapers from bone. These tools \u2014 known as Acheulean technology \u2014 suggest that hominins gained an ability to conceptualize the shape of a complex tool and then sculpt a rock to bring it into existence.<\/p>\n

In 2015, Dr. de la Torre and his colleagues began digging a trench in a gully known as the T69 Complex, where they had previously found Acheulean stone tools on the ground. They hoped to find more of them embedded in the rock below, perhaps alongside bones and other clues to how hominins were using those tools.<\/p>\n

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Deep in a trench in Tanzania, researchers found dozens of tools crafted from animal bones some 1.5 million years old.Scientists have found 1.5-million-year-old tools made from elephant and hippo bones.de la Torre et al., Nature 2025Humans, unlike most other species, have a knack for making tools.Six million years ago, our apelike ancestors probably smashed nuts with rocks or caught termites with sticks. Around 3.3 million years ago, hominins began using flakes of stone, perhaps to cut flesh from carcasses or chop plants.And by 1.5 million years ago, they were using more sophisticated tools made of bone, according to a new study published in Nature, which dates the systematic use of bone tools to a million years earlier than archaeologists had previously thought.Ignacio de la Torre, an archaeologist at the Spanish National Research Council who led the research, said the discovery made him wonder what is left to be discovered. \u201cWe may be missing a whole world of tools made by early humans,\u201d he said.Dr. de la Torre has spent years exploring Tanzania, in East Africa, to investigate the early stages of human tool-making. Before 1.8 million years ago, hominins simply knocked one rock against another to split off a sharp-edged flake. But after that point, they crafted a diverse array of stone tools.One type, known as a hand ax, is a large, teardrop-shaped stone with a double-sided edge. Hominins also made cleavers and scrapers from bone. These tools \u2014 known as Acheulean technology \u2014 suggest that hominins gained an ability to conceptualize the shape of a complex tool and then sculpt a rock to bring it into existence.In 2015, Dr. de la Torre and his colleagues began digging a trench in a gully known as the T69 Complex, where they had previously found Acheulean stone tools on the ground. They hoped to find more of them embedded in the rock below, perhaps alongside bones and other clues to how hominins were using those tools.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23283,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23281"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23284,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23281\/revisions\/23284"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}