A team of scientists in Kenya has discovered the oldest known stone tools, but their creators remain a mystery.
The tools are 3.3 million years old, an astonishing 700,000 years older than the previous record holder. But that's not the strangest part — the tools are older than the Homo genus' earliest humans, BBC News reports.
The findings, described in the journal Nature on Wednesday, include 149 stones and stone flakes found near Lake Turkana in northern Kenya. Many of the objects found at the site are "cores," which are stones with chipped-off flakes. The find also includes "anvils," which are stone tools used to chip other stones.
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The researchers from Stony Brook University first discovered the Kenyan site in 2011, but the findings have only now been confirmed as the oldest-known stone tools. In addition to predating the next-earliest stone tools, the Kenyan artifacts are also much larger than other stone tools.
Before the discovery, scientists believed that only members of the Homo genus knew how to make sharp-edged stone tools. But the new find suggests that more distant human ancestors, with smaller brains, knew how to make the tools, too. The scientists are now looking into what, exactly, the tools were used for.
