The ancestors of humans started making tools about 3.3 million years ago. First they made them out of stone, then they switched to bone as a raw material. Until recently, the earliest clear evidence of bone tool making was from sites in Europe, dated to 400,000 years ago. But archaeologists have now found and dated bone tools in Tanzania that are a million years older.
The tools are made from the bones of large animals like hippos and elephants, and have been deliberately shaped to make them useful for butchering large carcasses.
The discovery of bone implements that are the oldest ever found, by far, casts light on human evolution. It shows that our hominin ancestors were able to think about and make this technology a lot earlier than anyone realised.
