Stone tools from Kenya give early glimpse of human behaviour
NEW YORK — Stone tools and other items from ancient sites in Kenya give a glimpse at the emergence of some key human behaviours, perhaps including a building of relationships with distant neighbours, new research says.
Scientists can’t be sure whether the objects were made by our species, Homo sapiens, or some close relative that’s now extinct. But at about 320,000 years old, they’re roughly the same age or a bit older than the earliest known H. sapiens fossils, which appeared in Morocco.
In any case, they show “foundations of the origin of modern human behaviour,” says Richard Potts of the Smithsonian Institution, one of the researchers reporting the find in three papers released Thursday by the journal Science.
The tools are much smaller and more sophisticated than the older, teardrop-shaped stone tools found in the same area in southern Kenya. Some were made of a volcanic rock, obsidian, that didn’t come from the area, meaning the toolmakers travelled miles to get it.