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Human Interest

World's oldest stone tools discovered

───   07:21 Fri, 22 May 2015

World's oldest stone tools discovered | News Article

Nairobi - The world's oldest stone tools have been discovered.

They were unearthed from the shores of Lake Turkana in Kenya, and date to 3.3 million years ago. They are 700,000 years older than any tools found before, even pre-dating the earliest humans in the Homo genus. The find, reported in Nature, suggests that more ancient species, such as Austra-lopithecus afa-rensis or Kenyan-thropus plat-yops, may have been more sophisticated than was thought. Nick Taylor from the National Centre of Scientific Research (CNRS) in France told the journal that the tools were significantly older than anything that has been found previously. The first tools from the site were discovered in 2011. They were spotted after researchers took a wrong turn as they walked through the hot, dry Kenyan landscape. By the end of 2012, a total of 149 tools had been found, and another field trip in 2014 has unearthed more still. Dating of the volcanic ash and minerals around the tools suggests that they are 3.3 million years old. BBC

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