Palaeolithic tools found on Greek island

Driven by the need of food and shelter, or perhaps by the very common to humans curiosity, nomads of the Lower Palaeolithic Era were traveling constantly, covering vast distances of land that separate their starting point in Africa from Asia or Europe. When the level of sea dropped by approximately 60 meters, during the glacial periods of the Pleistocene –known also as the Ice Age-, all they had to do is to cross a strip of land 20 km long to get from today’s coastline of Asia Minor to one of the eastern edges of Europe, the island of Lesvos.

A few hundred thousands years later, the research team of the University of Crete is revealing step by step what these first inhabitants of the Aegean left behind them, at the borders of an environment dominated by rivers and lakes. The stone tools and other artifacts witness that the Rodafnidia site, close to the thermal springs of Lisvori (Lesvos) had been in systematic use by the ancestors of modern humans – probably during Middle Pleistocene, that is from 125,000 to 78,000 before present, or even earlier [...] Read more