Early hominids such as the famous Australopithecus Lucy usedtools for cutting meat and separating it from bones for more than three million years, as revealed by the discovery of two bone fossils with marks made by a sharp instrument published this week by the magazineNature.
Specifically, the dating of a rib of an animal the size of a cow and the femur of an antelope the size of a goat in Ethiopia, with marks made by a sharp object, suggest that hominids already they used sharp stones to separate the meat from the bones or extract the marrow. This implies thatthe first to use them could have been members of the speciesAustralopithecus afarensis, and not of the genrehomo, as thought until now. However, it has not yet been determined if these hominids were limited to using cutting stones that they found in their environment or if they were the ones who sharpened edges to turn them into tools.
Zeresenay Alemseged, member of the California Academy of Sciences (United States) and co-author of the research, affirms that the discovery has “abruptly changed” the time frame established to determine the behavior of human ancestors. Until now, the oldest evidence of a use of stone utensils or animals from Buri or Gona in Ethiopia dates back to 2.5 or 2.6 million years. According to Zeresenay, it is urgent “to review the history of evolution” before the discovery of these fossils since until now it was thought that “only the species closest to man in evolutionary terms had been able to use tools, which allowed them to eat more types of food and exploring new territories. “
“Supposea change in the history of mankind“The expert defends. The researchers suggest that the fact of using such utensils shows that they competed with other carnivores for food and that this could have started theteamwork in our ancestors, and also the development of intelligence.
