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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Science
Hannah Devlin Science correspondent

Discovery of 3m-year-old stone tools sparks prehistoric whodunnit

Rick Potts
Examples of an Oldowan percussive tool, core and flakes from the Nyayanga site
Examples of an Oldowan percussive tool, core and flakes from the Nyayanga site. Photograph: TW Plummer, JS Oliver and EM Finestone/Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project/SWNS

The discovery of stone tools dating back nearly 3m years has raised questions about which hominin species was behind the ancient technology.

The artefacts, found at a site in Kenya, are thought to be the oldest known example of a specific set of stone tools used for butchery and pounding plant material. The emergence of the so-called Oldowan toolkit is viewed as a milestone in human evolution and was assumed to be an innovation of our ancestors.

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