PARIS: Our ancestors were making tools out of bones 1.5 million years ago, winding back the clock for this important moment in human evolution by more than a million years, a study said on Wednesday.

Ancient humans — also called hominins — such as the robust Australopithecus are known to have used fragments of bones to dig up tubers from termite mounds. Even today our closest living relative, chimpanzees, use sticks in a similar way to dig out termites for a tasty treat. And more than two million years ago, hominins were using crude stone tools in Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge, one of the world’s most important prehistoric sites.

But there were no known examples of anyone systematically making bone tools more than 500,000 years ago — until now.

At Olduvai, a Spanish-led team of researchers found 27 tools made out of the leg and arm bones of big mammals, mainly elephants and hippos.

The discovery “sheds new light on the almost unknown world of early hominin bone technology,” they wrote in a study in the journal Nature. To the untrained eye, the tools might seem like random bits of bone. But for the researchers, they are proof of the remarkable cognitive abilities of our distant ancestors, showing they were capable of choosing the appropriate material and fashioning it for their needs.

“There is a clear desire to change the shape of the bone to turn them into very heavy, long tools,” Francesco d’Errico, an archaeologist at France’s Bordeaux University and study co-author, said. The unknown hominins used rocks as hammers to shape the bones.

The resulting tools ranged from 20 to 40 centimetres long, some weighing up to a kilo. “In some cases there are even notches in the middle of the bone, possibly so they could hold it better in their hands,” d’Errico said.

Published in Dawn, March 6th, 2025