Ancient humans moved diverse stones over substantial distances: Study

A recent study led by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History has uncovered a 2.6 million-year-old Oldowan stone toolkit in southwestern Kenya that provides the earliest evidence of ancient humans transporting diverse raw materials over distances exceeding six miles. This finding pushes back the timeline for long-distance resource transport by 600,000 years, indicating that early hominins possessed advanced planning abilities and mental mapping skills to source high-quality stones far from their habitation sites. The toolkit, found in Nyayanga, includes tools used for butchering large animals, highlighting the role of stone tools in expanding dietary options and enhancing adaptability during this early stage of human cultural development. The research emphasizes that these early humans did not merely create tools but intentionally moved raw materials to “homebases” for tool production, demonstrating foresight and complex behavior previously thought to have evolved much later. Unlike nonhuman primates, who transport food and rocks over shorter distances, these hominins exhibited a significant milestone in human evolution by carrying