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Hot take: the oldest stone tools in the world might be 3.3 million years old, not 2.6
I was reading a dig report from a site called Lomekwi 3 in Kenya last week and it stopped me cold. For decades the story was that the first tools showed up around 2.6 million years ago with Homo habilis, but these stones were dated to 3.3 million, way before our genus even existed. The makers were probably Kenyanthropus or some other early hominin nobody expected to be knapping. It made me realize how much of the timeline we treat as settled is really just the oldest thing we have dug up so far. What discovery do you think will force textbook writers to reprint next?
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riley86025d ago
Wait, 3.3 million years? That's older than Lucy, that scrambles everything I thought I knew about who was making tools. Honestly the next bombshell is probably gonna be genetics, like finding out some "extinct" hominin actually bred with us way later than anyone claims.
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