The systematic use of tools is part of humanity. At least 3.3 million years ago, our ancestors made the first stone tools, then around 400,000 years ago also from significantly lighter and more flexible animal bones – at least the common assumption. But new finds from the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania now show that hominins were operating bone tool “factories” there 1.5 million years ago-a significant knowledge that could describe our development history, as the research team explains.
When asked what makes people humans, the ability to systematically manufacture tools is usually part of the answer. The fact that our previous ancestors made stone tools for the first time by specifically striking individual splinters from a larger stone and thus brought it into the desired form was at least 3.3 million years ago, as archaeological finds in East Africa. Over time, the advancement and early people learned to transfer these skills to animal bones- a significantly lighter and more flexible material. Archaeologists assume that this technology was used systematically in Europe 400,000 to 250,000 years ago, but new finds now question this assumption.
A million years earlier than expected
In the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, researchers around Ignacio de la Torre from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) discovered 27 different bone tools. According to dates, these tools date from 1.5 million years ago, so it was made around a million years earlier than previously assumed for the starting point for this technological innovation. The bones found are fragments of long leg bones, mostly by hippos and elephants, which were processed into a variety of sharp, heavy tools with a length of up to 38 centimeters.
It is still unclear who once produced the tools. At the time of its creation, both our human ancestor Homo erectus and another hominine species, Paranthropus Boisei, lived in this region, as the archaeologists explain. What the tools were used for is still unknown. Due to their overall shape, size and sharp edges, De la Torre and his colleagues assume that the bone tools were used to process animal carcasses.
From dinner to the source of raw materials
The fact that before and early people made tools from bones 1.5 million years ago was not the new thing about this discovery. Because it had already been assumed that early hominins made such bone utensils sporadically-rather as an exception than as a rule. However, the new finds now indicate that the early people in Olduvai may have chosen certain bones from large mammals and then formed them according to standardized production patterns, as the archaeologists report.
“This discovery suggests that the early people have significantly expanded their technological possibilities, which were limited to the production of stone tools until then, and have now been able to include new raw materials in the repertoire of possible artifacts,” says de la Torre. Animals were no longer only considered dangerous, as competitors or as a food, but also as a source of raw materials for the production of tools.
Clever hominins
“At the same time, this expansion of technological potential indicates progress in the cognitive skills and mental structures of these hominins to integrate the technical innovations by adapting their knowledge of stone processing to the manipulation of bone remains,” explains de la Torre. It fits that the bone tools found in Tanzania come from a time of the history, in which the early Hominine cultures experienced one of the first technological upheavals at all. It is the transition from the so-called “Oldowan” age, which took place 2.7 to 1.5 million years ago and was named after the Olduvai Gorge, to the “Acheuléen”, which started roughly 1.7 million years ago. Characteristic of the Acheuléen age is the systematic manufacture of complex handwhaters and fisten.
“Before our discovery, the technological transition from Oldowan to Acheuléen was limited to the examination of stone tools,” emphasizes de la Torre. Now the differences between the two age can also be researched on the basis of bone tools. De La Torre and his team therefore hope that their unexpected discovery causes other archaeologists to examine bone finds all over the world again if other evidence of bone tools has been overlooked.
Source: Ignacio de la Torre (CSIC-Spanish National Research Council, Madrid) et al., Nature, DOI: 10.1038/S41586-025-08652-5