Human Use of Tools Earlier Than Thought

Scientists have made a stunning discovery in Africa that pushes back the human or human related use of tools (and meat eating) by roughly 800,000 years.  This discovery places the use of tools at roughly 3.4 million years ago rather than the 2.5 to 2.6 million years from previous discoveries.  The time of the tool usage corresponds roughly to the same period as “Lucy,” one of the oldest hominid skeletons discovered in Ethiopia in 1974.

Now these tools are not advanced in any way.  The tools the garage door repairman would bring with him to fix the damaged garage door are light years beyond the tool complexity discovered but just the fact that tools were used that early is an astounding discovery.

The report says the tools were mainly of stone, and in fact may have just been stones available locally but were used on bones from cow sized animals and antelopes.  It would still be millions of years before the tools developed by humans would be made of metal of any sort much less the space age, tempered metals used today.  

Probably the folks from Colonial American days would be astounded by the tools of today, much less the humans from 3.4 million years ago.  The tempered tools used by today’s garage door repairman might bear a resemblance to the tools from colonial days that might have been used by the local blacksmith or cooper or carpenter but the strength of today’s tools would far exceed the strength of the tools available even one hundred years ago.

So hominids were using tools 3.4 million years ago.  The tools were rudimentary but they were tools nevertheless.  The chain of human related species using tools moves backwards even as humans move forward into space (although recent reports of astronauts using “brute force” to fix problems on the International Space Station would probably be somewhat familiar as a method of achieving results to those from 3.4 million years ago).

People can only speculate as to what tools might be available to the garage door repairman in one hundred, one thousand, or one million years.  The hominids of 3.4 million years ago would look on people in today’s world as gods, just because of the technical capabilities, even with the capabilities of basic tools available today.  Given the advancement of human species in 3.4 million years, just think of the wonder of humanity in 3.4 million years in the future and how they will look back at the “primitive” world of the early 21st century.