A new study from Kent’s School of Anthropology and Conservation has found that Oldowan and Acheulean stone tool technologies are likely to be tens of thousands of years older than current evidence suggests.

They are currently the two oldest, well-documented stone tool technologies known to archaeologists.

These findings, published by the Journal of Human Evolution, provide a new chronological foundation from which to understand the production of stone tool technologies by our early ancestors. They also widen the time frame within which to discuss the evolution of human technological capabilities and associated dietary and behavioural shifts.1

Early stone tool technologies, such as the Oldowan and Acheulean, allowed early human ancestors to access new food types, and increased the ease of producing wooden tools or processing animal carcasses.2

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• 1. For the study, a team led by Kent’s Dr Alastair Key and Dr David Roberts, alongside Dr Ivan Jarić from the Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences, used statistical modelling techniques only recently introduced to archaeological science. The models estimated that Oldowan stone tools originated 2.617-2.644 million years ago, 36,000 to 63,000 years earlier than current evidence. The Acheulean’s origin was pushed back further by at least 55,000 years to 1.815-1.823 million years ago.
• 2. Dr Key, a Palaeolithic Archaeologist and the lead author of the study, said: ‘Our research provides the best possible estimates for understanding when hominins first produced these stone tool types. This is important for multiple reasons, but for me at least, it is most exciting because it highlights that there are likely to be substantial portions of the artifact record waiting to be discovered.’