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Stone Age Humans Were Picky About Which Rocks They Used for Making Tools, Study Finds
Researchers found early humans traveled long distances to acquire specific rocks for tool-making, showing cognitive advances 600,000 years earlier than previously believed, study says.
- On August 15, 2025, researchers published in Science Advances that ancient hominins transported stone tools up to 13 kilometers from Kenya's Nyayanga site.
- This finding extends the timeline for the oldest documented instance of long-distance raw material transport by approximately 600,000 years and challenges the belief that early toolmakers had simple, limited foraging behaviors.
- Scientists analyzed hundreds of volcanic and metamorphic stone cores and flakes dated at least 2.6 million years old, showing hominins selected durable materials for versatile cutting and pounding tasks.
- Rick Potts emphasized that beyond the tools themselves, a key advancement of the Oldowan culture was the deliberate movement of materials across different locations, demonstrating early planning abilities and an understanding of the environment.
- The findings imply a major evolutionary milestone with early humans integrating resource gathering and toolmaking during extended foraging, indicating greater cognitive complexity and hominin diversity than previously thought.
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Ancient humans went the extra mile (literally) for quality stone tools
By Stephen Beech Man's ancestors transported stones over long distances to craft tools 2.6 million years ago - 600,000 years earlier than previously thought. Stone tools unearthed in Kenya reveal that hominins regularly moved raw materials up to eight miles,…
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Stone Age humans were picky about which rocks they used for making tools, study finds
New research finds early human ancestors during the Stone Age were more picky about the rocks they used for making tools than previously thought.
A New Discovery Might Have Just Rewritten Human History
🌘Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week. For more than a million years, early humans crafted stone tools as part of the Oldowan tradition, which is the oldest sustained tool-making industry in the archaeological record. Now, scientists have discovered that Oldowan tool-makers who lived in Kenya at least 2.6 million years ago transported high-quali…
Stone Age humans traveled for miles to find the perfect rocks
It may not seem like it at first, but there’s a big difference between the Stone Age human ancestors who crafted tools from nearby rocks, and those who trekked to find the right materials. The ability to mentally map surrounding locations—especially far away places—requires an advanced level of cognition that many now-extinct hominin species lacked. For at least one Paleolithic community located in present-day southwestern Kenya, that evolutiona…
Stone tools unearthed in Kenya reveal ancient human relatives regularly moved raw materials several miles
In southwestern Kenya more than 2.6 million years ago, ancient humans wielded an array of stone tools—known collectively as the Oldowan toolkit—to pound plant material and carve up large prey such as hippopotamuses.
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