The first stone tools
Someone at Lomekwi deliberately strikes flakes from stone 3.3 million years ago — 700,000 years before the Oldowan.
- When
- Known to
- ± 50 thousand years
- Era
- Pliocene, Cenozoic
The Lomekwi 3 site west of Lake Turkana yielded 149 stone artefacts in 2015, dated to 3.3 million years ago and made by a technique distinct from the later Oldowan: large cores struck against anvils or with a passive hammer, producing big crude flakes. No Homo existed yet. Whoever made them — Kenyanthropus and Australopithecus were both in the area — the find detaches toolmaking from our own genus and pushes the archaeological record back into a time when brains were still ape-sized.