The Oldowan stone tool industry, which is among the earliest documented archaeological technologies, has long been associated with the genus Homo. Despite being named for its first discovery at Olduvai (or Oldupai) Gorge in Tanzania, the Oldowan has been found across the eastern African rift valley as early as 2.6 million years ago (Ma) in Ethiopia, and later spread to northern and southern Africa and Eurasia. Writing in Science in February 2023, Plummer and colleagues challenged all of this by reporting the discovery of 3.032–2.595-million-year-old Oldowan technology at Nyayanga, Kenya at sites associated with Paranthropus rather than Homo. This discovery expands the geographical range of the earliest (pre-2.4-Ma) Oldowan by more than 1,300 km, and its temporal range by over 400,000 years. The close proximity of Oldowan tools at Nyayanga to cut-marked hippopotamid bones and the presence of use wear on the tools suggests that they were used in megafaunal butchery and plant processing, at an earlier date than has previously been supported for this behaviour. That Paranthropus, rather than Homo, might have been the tool user is suggested by the presence of Paranthropus molars at the locality, one of which is in close association with the lithics and cut-marked bones at the hippopotamid butchery site. Although the authors acknowledge that the presence of Homo spp. in eastern Africa at this time means that the Nyayanga artefacts cannot be definitively attributed to a specific hominin genus, we chose this paper for our Year In Review as the most convincing evidence yet that several Pliocene hominin species made and used stone tools — something that has long been proposed, but which has until now lacked direct support.
Original reference: Science 379, 561–566 (2023)
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