A joint international team of palaeoanthropologists has identified a new site in the Afar Depression of Ethiopia that contains clear evidence of intentional stone tool modification dating back 4 million years. This discovery pushes back the known timeline of hominid tool use by nearly 700,000 years, pre-dating the Australopithecus afarensis lineage and suggesting that even earlier ancestors possessed the cognitive capacity for lithic technology.
The site yielded dozens of basalt and chert flakes with distinct percussion marks, found in direct association with fossilized animal remains showing cut marks. Researchers believe these tools were utilized for marrow extraction and butchery, indicating that meat-eating and tool construction were foundational behaviors much earlier in the hominid evolutionary branch than previously hypothesized.