Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania is a place of historic significance in human prehistory. Most prominent fossils found here include Paranthropus boisei, Homo erectus. Homo habilis and Homo sapiens. This site is very rich in stone tools. Till now, the stone tool assemblage included simple tools like chipped pebbles and flakes, choppers and hammer-stones which were used for cutting, and chopping. We have known that making of stone tools and its use is a special human characteristic. Although some other species do use twigs and stones to catch the ants and crack open the nuts but they lack the ability to consciously make tools which are non-perishable and reusable.
Recently on 5th March 2025, Ignacio de la Torre and his team of researchers published an article in ‘Nature’ “Systematic bone tool production at 1.5 million years ago’. This discovery of bone tool assemblage in Tanzania dating back to 15 lakh years was hitherto unknown in human history at such an early date. The earliest record of bone tool assemblage till now has been estimated at 5 lakh years old. But the present discovery pushes back the making of bone tools by human ancestors by a huge margin of 10 lakh years.
These bone tools were mostly made from the large animals like mammoths and hippos. This also indicates their preferred diet of large animals and also of their special hunting skills. The bone tools had sharper edges than the stone tools and hence were much more useful in cutting and piercing the animal skin to cut open the flesh for food. The cognitive skill of the ancient human ancestors reveals their deep understanding of the two types of tools
Changing the medium of tools from stone to bone seems to be a quantum jump in technology of the prehistoric man which would have accelerated the pace of human evolution. This also is an indication of the rapidly evolving brain of the humans evidenced by the increasing size of cranial capacity of successive human species which had ultimately culminated in the evolution of Homo sapiens.
Professor S. P. Singh, Ph.D.
Editor-in-Chief, Human Biology Review
Former Dean, Faculty of Life Sciences,
Punjabi University, Patiala, India