Discovery of stone tools points to new old tech

Early members of our genus Homo have been making tools for 10,000 years longer than we thought. The finding comes from science team’s recent discovery of sharp-edged stone tools in Ethiopia, which belong to a class known as Oldowan.

Kaye Reed, an evolutionary anthropologist on this team and the director of the School of Human Evolution and Social Change, spoke to Smithsonian Magazine about how these artifacts are unique from later examples of Oldowan tools.

“This is the first time we see people chipping off bits of stone to make tools with an end in mind,” she said. “They only took two or three flakes off, and some you can tell weren’t taken off quite right.”

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