Archaeological Site in Kenya Opening Window on Early Human Tool-Making

The earliest known early human hunting?

At a site in the Homa Peninsula of Lake Victoria, Kenya, scientists are uncovering stone tools and fossils that are shedding new light on early human manufacture and use of stone tools, as well as their habitat and behavior.

Led by co-directors Dr. Thomas Plummer of Queens College, City University of New York and Dr. Rick Potts of the Smithsonian Institution, excavations at the site, called Kanjera South, have revealed a large and diversified assortment of Oldowan stone tools, fossil animal remains and other flora and faunal evidence that is building a picture of hominin, or early human, life and behavior in a grassland environment about 2 million years ago. Oldowan stone tools represent the earliest known human or hominin stone tool industry, named after the Olduvai Gorge, where Louis Leakey first discovered examples in the 1930's. This early industry was typically composed of simple "pebble tools" such as choppers, scrapers and pounders, a type of technology used from about 2.6 to 1.7 million years ago.

According to Plummer, the site "has yielded approximately 3700 fossils and 2900 artifacts.......This represents one of the largest collections of Oldowan artifacts and fauna found thus far".

But more significant than the numbers is what the analysis of the finds and the site has revealed.

Says Plummer, "the ca. 2.0 Ma sediments at Kanjera South... Popular Archaeology