While early human ancestors started making stone tools at least 2.6 million years ago, bone tools took much longer to appear. The earliest signs of a regular use of bone tools hadn’t shown up in the ...

At a site in Kenya, archaeologists recently unearthed layer upon layer of stone stools from deposits that span 300,000 years, and include a period of intense environmental upheaval. The oldest tools ...

Have you ever found yourself in a museum’s gallery of human origins, staring at a glass case full of rocks labeled “stone tools,” muttering under your breath, “How do they know it’s not just any old ...

John K. Murray does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond ...

Archaeologists have uncovered a collection of bone tools in northern Tanzania that were shaped by ancient human ancestors 1.5 million years ago, making them the oldest known bone tools by about 1 ...

The Nyayanga excavation site in Kenya, in July 2025. Fossils and Oldowan tools have been excavated from the tan and reddish-brown sediments, which date to more than 2.6 million years old. T. W.

Oldowan stone tools made from a variety of raw materials sourced more than 6 miles away from where they were found in southwestern Kenya. The development of the Oldowan toolkit made it possible for ...

Oldowan stone tools made from a variety of raw materials sourced more than six miles away from where they were found in southwestern Kenya. In southwestern Kenya more than 2.6 million years ago, ...

Long before cities or farms, the earliest humans were standing in a changing northern Kenyan landscape, striking stone to stone with steady hands. Their world was noisy with wind, heat, wildfires, and ...

The oldest handmade stone tools discovered yet predate any known humans and may have been wielded by an as-yet-unknown species, researchers say. The 3.3-million-year-old stone artifacts are the first ...

Adam Brumm receives funding from the Australian Research Council. Basran Burhan is a researcher at Pusat Kolaborasi Riset Arkeologi Sulawesi (BRIN-Universitas Hasanuddin). Gerrit (Gert) van den Bergh ...

CC0 Usage Conditions ApplyClick for more information. (An audio described version of this video will be available soon.) Humans live in a global diaspora more than 8 billion strong, immune to all but ...